Web Giant Google has criticized Australia’s plan to filter the internet, declaring that this went too far and it might create a dangerous precedent.
Being right now in a dispute with China regarding censorship, the american company said that it’s main concern for Australia’s proposal is that the content that follows to be filtered is just too big.
Google proves that Australia has went too far, over the filtering level analyzed by countries like England, Canada, Denmark, Finland or Sweden, who are just focusing on filtering content related to sexual abuse against children.
” Australia is seen by the world as a liberal democracy that balances individual liberties with social responsibility. Other countries governments might justify, making reference to Australia, their own use of filters, the lack of transparency about what content is filtered and the political direction of agencies that administrates the filters” Wrote Google to the Australian Government.
Canberra announced in December a plan to block access to sites that present content about rape, drug abuse, sexual abuse or brutality through a filter that can cover the whole internet, and administered by Internet Service Providers.
Google demonstrated that such a massive filter will limit the speed, and content filtering of some of the popular sites like Youtube, Facebook or Twitter might be technologically impossible.
Also, this measure might offer a false sens of security to parents.
Yahoo! Australia also criticized this filter as being to broad and that it might block their content on subjects like ” important educational valor or politics, or subjects like euthanasia, graffiti, terrorism… ”
” Obviously, some of this content is the subject of controversy and, based on someone’s political believes. But, we think that the immense value of this content encourages debate and opinion” said Yahoo!
