Cyber laws shunned by top techs while Twitter thinks business

24/03/10 posted by Annie

The government yesterday published a mass of submissions critiquing its planned internet filtering policy, as voiced by Australia's biggest tech companies, communications academics and lobby groups. The big concerns are that free speech, choice, and information will be compromised, and that transparency of the inherently secret process should be maximised. It's also feared the policy could be freely abused by bureaucrats and politicians. Most companies supported a regular review of the list by an independent expert and the ability for blacklisted sites to appeal. Even though companies like Yahoo support making the internet safer for children, the overarching sentiment was that the filter was going way too far and was simply not needed.

The Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations is worried that "information, 'chat' and even pornographic sites [which] play an important role in providing information about sexuality and sexual health" might be lost as a valuable resource. Yahoo also spoke out, listing many types of innocuous websites which might also be wrongly blacklisted, like self-injecting sites, euthanasia discussion forums, gay and lesbian forums which discuss sexual experiences, and websites which explore geo-political causes of terrorism where terrorist organisations and propaganda may be mentioned in passing. Legislation to force ISPs to implement the policy is expected to be introduced within weeks, which will incorporate filters to block a blacklist of "refused classification" websites for all Australians on a mandatory basis.

Google spoke with Aussie users and parents about more innovative ways to filter the internet, like educating the masses on cyber safety, and providing tools for individuals to autonomously block unwanted content on their own computers. Google says, "the strong view from parents was that the government's proposal goes too far and would take away their freedom of choice around what information they and their children can access." Google worries that filtering may give a false sense of security to parents, and thinks filtering should be the onus of the individual - a point they proved by withdrawing from China's search market.

To end on a lighter note, Twitter is starting to show a bit more business savvy, which might see them leap ahead in the fiercely competitive social media domain. They've rolled out a new feature called 'Contributors', which lets multiple users tweet from the same business account, with individual names given as a by-line. This will see a greater level of engagement from businesses, and streamline the whole experience by having less log-ons and log-offs. It's currently free, however this new feature might be a sign of future plans and more business tools, and a way to finally rev up their revenue.