As part of its effort to censor the internet, Australia's Communications and Media Authority has compiled a list of censored sites .

The blacklist includes several pages from Wikileaks - the popular website that publishes anonymous submissions of sensitive info relating to corporations, government and other areas of interest.

The number of blacklisted sites in Australia is around the 1,370 mark. According to the Sydney Morning Herald this could increase to 10,000 or more sites.

A very real concern here is that an internet censorship plan in Australia or elsewhere, could easily be extended to include censorship of sites carrying political opinion. In both the Thai and Danish cases the blacklist has gone beyond porn sites to include sites with political content. The Thai list reportedly includes more than 1,200 sites deemed to be critical of the royal family.

Blacklisted sites have been distributed to Australian ISP's. They are required by law to make filters available.

As it stands at present Australia's Communication and Media Authority (ACMA) isn't going after the average internet user but is targeting webmasters who post links to sites that are on the blacklist. A site named Whirlpool was threatened with fines of $11,000 a day unless it removed a link from its forum that connected users to a site hosting graphic abortion images.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported a few hours ago that Wikileaks has posted the Australian list. The leaked list, understood to have been acquired from an internet filtering software maker, contains 2,395 sites - so significantly more than the 1,370 mentioned up top.

According to the Herald, roughly half of the entries include "online poker sites, YouTube links, regular gay and straight porn sites, Wikipedia entries, euthanasia sites, websites of fringe religions such as satanic sites, fetish sites, Christian sites, the website of a tour operator and even a Queensland dentist."

Government attempts to censor the net have run into quite a bit of opposition. Senator Scott Ludlam of the Australian Greens describes the move as a "deeply unpopular and troubling experiment to fine-tune its ability to censor the internet."

Reporters Without Borders has placed Australia on its "watch list" of countries imposing anti-democratic internet restrictions that could result in abuse-of-power and control of information.