In addition to joining with the Australian Library and Information Association, Yahoo! and the Inspire Foundation in proposing some core principles for a Safer Internet today, Google also posted to its blog some further comments on the Government’s proposed mandatory Internet filter.  These comments were drawn from Google’s recent submission to the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy:

It would block some important content. The scope of content to be filtered (“Refused Classification” or “RC”) is very wide. The report Untangling The Net: The Scope of Content Caught By Mandatory Internet Filtering has found that a wide scope of content could be prohibited including not just child pornography but also socially and politically controversial material. This raises genuine questions about restrictions on access to information, which is vital in a democracy.

It removes choices. The Government’s proposal removes choices for parents as to what they and their children can access online. Moreover a filter may give a false sense of security and create a climate of complacency that someone else is managing your (or your children’s) online experience.

It isn’t effective in protecting kids. A large proportion of child sexual abuse content is not found on public websites, but in chat-rooms or peer-to-peer networks. The proposed filtering regime will not effectively protect children from this objectionable material.

Moreover, the filter appears to not work for high volume sites such as Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, as the impact of the filter on Internet access speeds would be too great.

Read Google’s entire blog post here.