Australian government and search engine giants lock horns

Google, Yahoo! and the Australian Library and Information Association have valid grounds to protest. Firstly, the extremely wide system would backfire as it is likely to filter out harmless material and deprive citizens of educational and social material.

Secondly, the filter would give Australian parents a false sense of security that trusts that the firewall is keeping their kids safe. In fact, the Safe Internet Group has warned that the real offensive and harm to children happens in chatrooms and peer-to-peer networks which are completed ignored by the filtering system.

Finally, the group warned that sites like YouTube, which would probably have files ending up on the filter blacklist would congest the filter and create bottlenecks.

In response to this, the librarians have proposed a three-pronged approach to improving internet safety.

The first way is through education for children and parents regarding online safety and ways to avoid abusive material. Secondly, P2P networks should be given due attention by the police as this is where all the child sex abusers are really lurking and carrying out their underground activities.

Thirdly, the group said that if the government, and society, still insists on introducing some sort of nationwide filter, the European experience should be taken as a lesson. There should be a clearly defined band of child sexual abuse material and the government should focus on cracking down on those.

It is important for the government to nip the problem in the bud. If the filter is too broad, the plan may backfire and cause even more harm to society.