Remember the Australian internet content filter that the government feverishly defended after ISPs laughed at it? The plan is dead.

Senator Nick Xenophon (hell of a surname) has decided to join the Greens and Opposition in blocking any legislation necessary to jumpstart the scheme. Xenophon echoed the public and technology experts in questioning the many large ambiguities in the plan. “The more evidence that’s come out, the more questions there are on this,” he said.

The scuttled plan would have carried a price tag of $125.8 million AUD, and brought about the world’s first internet content filter in a democratic nation. Under the terms of the plan, Australian residents would have be forced onto a nationally-mandated blacklist that filtered illegal content at the ISP level. Users would have also been granted the choice to opt into an “unsuitable content” filter designed to pander to everyone’s love of children in filtering pornographic and other sensitive content.

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