Two of the world's leading providers of online services have criticised the federal government's plan to censor internet content as heavy handed.
Both Google and Yahoo say the government's plans to introduce a mandatory internet filter threaten to restrict legitimate access to information.
"Our primary concern is that the scope of content to be filtered is too wide," Google said.
The comments are included in a list of a 174 submissions related to the filtering policy, released on Tuesday by Communications Minister Stephen Conroy.
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Yahoo was also highly critical of the plan.
"We are concerned that the scope of content to be filtered is too wide," the company's submission said.
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But the company said mandatory filtering of all banned material could block content with a strong social, political and/or educational value.
The Australian government has been putting its censorship plans in place for more than a year now. And it plans to introduce legislation this year that will require that ISPs use filters to block content such as child sex abuse, bestiality, detailed instruction in crime or anything advocating terrorism, according to Australia’s Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy.
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The company’s [Google] objections don’t end with its free-speech concerns; it says that such large-scale filtering “appears to not be technologically possible” and would “negatively impact user-access speeds” in a serious way.
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