Two major internet companies, Google and Yahoo, have criticisedthe mandatory internet filtering system planned by the Australian government,calling it a heavy-handed and reactionary move which will have a negativeimpact on that country’s internet performance.

The filter will be applied to all Australian ISPs, requiringthem to block sites on a government-created blacklist. The move is aimed primarilyat child pornography, but internet and civil liberties groups claim the criteriaapplied are too broad and open to abuse.

In submissions to the federal government on the filteringpolicy, Google says it has listened to the views of many groups, particularlyits own users. The strong view from parents was that the Government's proposalgoes too far and would take away their freedom of choice around whatinformation they and their children can access.

“Our primary concern is that the scope of content to befiltered is too wide,” Google’s submission said. “At Google we have a bias infavour of people's right to free expression. While we recognise that protectingthe free exchange of ideas and information cannot be without some limits, webelieve that more information generally means more choice, more freedom andultimately more power for the individual.

“Some limits, like child pornography, are obvious. NoAustralian wants that to be available – and we agree. Google, like many other internet companies, has a global, all-product ban against child sexual abusematerial, which is illegal in almost every country, and we filter out thiscontent from our search results and remove it from our products. But moving toa mandatory ISP level filtering regime with a scope that goes well beyond suchmaterial is heavy-handed and can raise genuine questions about restrictions onaccess to information.

“Another key concern is that the implementation of amandatory filtering regime – across all of Australia's hundreds of ISPs,millions of internet users, and billions of web pages accessed – is a massiveundertaking which could negatively impact user access speeds. Furthermore, thefiltering of material from high-volume sites (for example Wikipedia, YouTube,Facebook, and Twitter) appears to not be technologically possible, as it wouldhave such a serious impact on internet access.”

Yahoo says mandatory filtering of all Refused Classification (RC) materialcould block content with a strong social, political and/or educational valuesuch as:

• Safe injecting and other harm minimisation websites,
• Euthanasia discussion forums,
• A video on creating graffiti art,
• Anti-abortion websites,
• Gay and lesbian forums which discuss sexual experiences,
• Explorations of the geo-political causes of terrorism where specificterrorist organisation, and propaganda is cited as reference material. 

“Clearly some of this content is controversial and,depending on one’s political beliefs, rather offensive,” Yahoo said “However wemaintain that there is enormous value in this content being available toencourage debate and inform opinion. Furthermore, the existing classificationregime has developed in a piecemeal and reactionary manner with little regardto or basis upon empirical evidence around public attitudes or expert studiesinto how consumers interact with media, and particularly digital media. 

“A filterwhich only blocks URLs will not address the threat of children being approachedby predators in chat rooms, through Instant Messaging software, or withinsocial media applications. In addition, the dissemination of illegal images ofchildren through peer to peer file sharing networks will also be left untouchedby the Government’s current filtering proposal.”

A date hasyet to be set for the legislation concerning filtering to be introduced toparliament. All the submissions can be read here.

New Zealandhas just introduced a voluntary filtering system which has yet to be adopted byany major ISPs.