What if you gave an Internet censorship party and nobody came?

What if you gave an Internet censorship party and nobody came?
This bad dream is coming true this month for Prime Minister Rudd and his Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy.

A lone Foad has belled the Australian Communications and Media Authority cat by making a 'complaint' which saw that body place an anti-abortion website page on its URL blacklist, issue a take down notice and threaten to fine a server host around $11,000 a day if it didn't immediately get one of its clients to remove the offending URL from a forum page.

Small problem though.
Partially obscured Wikipedia screenshots of the banned URL are on the web as I write and, using that meagre amount of information, major search engines in Australia and around the world not only still display this indexed site but the site can be opened, searched and the page reached. [please note that the anonymous researcher did not inhale when testing the suspect page status]

Oh, and until that single public servant (or small coffee klatch of public servants) decided to act on Foad's stand alone complaint no-one at North Coast Voices had any idea the site existed.

However, even if ACMA decides never to mention specific banned URLs when it replies to complainants, the complainant is likely to already know the exact Internet address because they made the complaint in the first place and I'm sure that twittering a friend or two will be almost irresistible.

As for placing certain Wikileaks pages on the ACMA blacklist - what do they say about horses and stable doors?
I swear that there would be many hundreds of home PCs across the country which have looked at those Wiki pages about overseas banned URLs and more than a couple of web surfers who have taken a screen shot for posterity. [and yes, before you ask, this was another case where our anonymous researcher successfully refused to inhale]

Can you hear the cynical laughter yet Messrs Rudd and Conroy?
Or is the sound of the ocean rushing in to drown your foolish policy too loud?

Update 21 March 2009:

Wikileaks issues its own legal threat:

Anti-censorship site Wikileaks has threatened Australian Communications Minister Senator Stephen Conroy with criminal prosecution if he attempts to discover the source of its leaked Australian Internet blacklist. Wikileaks says that under Swedish law it is a criminal offence to try to breach confidentiality agreements between the press and sources.
Senator Conroy yesterday issued a statement in response to the release of the Australian Internet censorship list by Wikileaks, saying that his department, "is investigating this matter and is considering a range of possible actions it may take including referral to the Australian Federal Police. Any Australian involved in making this content publicly available would be at serious risk of criminal prosecution."Describing Senator Conroy as the person "responsible for Australian Internet censorship", Jay Lim, the legal adviser of Wikileaks publisher Sunshine Press stated: "Under the Swedish Constitution's Press Freedom Act, the right of a confidential press source to anonymity is protected, and criminal penalties apply to anyone acting to breach that right. "Source documents are received in Sweden and published from Sweden so as to derive maximum benefit from this legal protection."Should the Senator or anyone else attempt to discover our source we will refer the matter to the Constitutional Police for prosecution, and if necessary, ask that the Senator and anyone else involved be extradited to face justice for breaching fundamental rights."