[2] Websites to be blocked feature pornography showing rape, bestiality, child sex abuse, small-breasted women (who may appear under the legal age), and female ejaculation.

[4] A leaked version of the proposed blacklist (also referred to as the "refused classification" or "RC" list) also showed sites that did not include adult content.

A poll conducted by McNair Ingenuity Research for the Hungry Beast television program found that 80% of their 1,000 respondents were in favour of the concept of the plan.

[8] A statement released by Anonymous to the press two days before the attack said, "No government should have the right to refuse its citizens access to information solely because they perceive it to be 'unwanted'."

[9][10] Anonymous had previously garnered media attention with protests against Church of Scientology (Project Chanology) and the Iranian government.

[11] In September 2009, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's website was hacked in a similar protest to proposed web censorship reforms.

[16] The Systems Administrators Guild of Australia said that it "condemned DDoS attacks as the wrong way to express disagreement with the proposed law".

[11][16] A purported spokesperson for the attackers recommended that the wider Australian public protest the filter by signing the petition of Electronic Frontiers Australia.

[18] Anonymous coordinated a second phase with small protests outside the Parliament House in Canberra and in major cities throughout Australia on 20 February.

[19] Several supporters of the attack later said on a messageboard that taking down websites was not enough to convince the government to back down on the web filtering policy and called for violence.

[1] One writer wrote that the provisions leave "no place for legitimate acts of online protest, or at least sets the penalty far too high for relatively minor cyber-vandalism".

[21] An Australian teenager was charged with four counts of inciting other hackers to impair electronic communications and two of unauthorised access to restricted data for his role in the attack.