Big Brother – big problem for Australian government

Security guards escorted Michael Cox of Perth and Michael Bric of Melbourne - known on program as "Ashley" and "John" - from the house on the Gold Coast late on Sunday night.

Photo: Big Brother – big problem for Australian government

Behind Big Brother forum webmaster Tim Trainor said about 60 per cent of postings declared the incident that involved a male contestant waving his penis in the face of a restrained female contestant, had been over-hyped.

The unofficial internet forum has more than 16,000 members and has been forced to stop taking new members because of heavy traffic, the Age reports.

The number of individual visitors to the website increased from about 20,000 a day to 120,000 a day after the incident.

The communications regulator has found Network Ten did not breach broadcast rules involving a controversial incident on its reality show Big Brother.

Senator Coonan says she's ordered a major review of the television code with the view to extending it to the internet.

Senator Coonan said The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) would be directed to do a review of the free to air television code of practice.

She said legislation would be introduced into Parliament to extend content regulation to video streamed on the internet.

She said the ACMA review would include community consultation, according to the Daily Telegraph.