Just a quick post to wish everybody a very Merry Christmas! May this day be filled with joy, love and peace, and of course lots and lots of gifts from friends and family.

Malcolm Turnbull, Liberal leader and future Prime Minister of Australia has released his Christmas message, which you can watch below.

In a post on his department’s blog, Senator Conroy today said technology that could filter data sent directly between computers would be tested as part of the upcoming live filtering trial.

“Technology that filters peer-to-peer and BitTorrent traffic does exist and it is anticipated that the effectiveness of this will be tested in the live pilot trial,” Senator Conroy said.

Peer-to-peer file-sharing technology is the most common way for computer users to share video, picture and music files over the internet.

It was previously thought the Government’s filtering plan would be restricted to traffic on the “world wide web” – the channel through which users view websites like news.com.au.

Senator Conroy revealed the plan to trial peer-to-peer filtering technology in a reply to critical comments made on the Digital Economy Future Directions blog launched earlier this month.

The blog was launched to encourage public input on the future of Australia’s digital economy, but has so far been saturated with comments attacking Senator Conroy over the Government’s filtering plan.