Lawyers push for neutrality ; Email links to great videos or sites to seanna.cronin@apn.com.au

REPUBLICAN lawmakers in the US are pushing to reverse the FederalCommunication Commission's recent net neutrality order.

The resolution of disapproval would need to pass in both housesof Congress to overturn the neutrality rules approved by the FCC inDecember.

The order prohibits broadband internet providers from blockingwebsites or competing applications, essentially banning internetservice providers (ISPs) from controlling what their customers canaccess for commercial gain.

It was also reported this week that industry leaders considerAustralia to be "well ahead" of the US in internet security.

John Pescatore, from IT research company Gartner, said Australiais rolling out key security initiatives such as secure domain nameservices and the new Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) faster thanother countries because of co-operation between the government andISPs.

"In Australia the ISPs and the Federal Government already co-operate a lot more, have an ISP Code of Conduct, they're talkingabout filtering more," Pescatore told ZDNet Australia at last week'sRSA Security Conference in San Francisco.