Australia will soon require Internet service providers to provide filtering tools for so-called inappropriate material including pornography. At first blush this may be seen as an attempt by the Australian government to censor parts of the World Wide Web, and a slap at free speech. We haven't seen the details of the plan to determine inappropriate content, but is this any different from parental controls to keep young minds away from violence and pornography? If the Australian government is the sole determiner of what is inappropriate, we have a problem with that. Another issue is the "opt-out" feature. Lots of room for abuse here, we are thinking.

While some will undoubtedly argue this is a huge infringement of free speech, there are a few important differences between Australia’s proposed policy and those of other countries like China and Iran, who arbitrarily block web sites from being used (for some examples of how other countries censor the Web, check out our round up of the year in censorship). Although Australia’s policy basically gives the government the ability to determine what appropriate is content and what isn’t, the “opt-out” option is an important distinction. It’s similar to public libraries in the US, where filters are often present but can be overridden at your request. On the other hand, the government could track those “opt out” requests, which does create privacy issues.

That said, it is still a fairly significant move when a Western-style democracy imposes censorship on Web access. It could provide impetus for government officials in other parts of the world to say “well, if Australia’s doing it …” and usher in an era of government controlled Web access, which, isn’t in most people’s best interest.