Australia's biggest technology companies, communications academics and many lobby groups have delivered a withering critique of the government's plans to censor the internet.
The government today published most of the 174 submissions it received relating to improving the transparency and accountability measures of its internet filtering policy.
Legislation to force ISPs to implement the policy is expected to be introduced within weeks. The filters will block a blacklist of "refused classification" websites for all Australians on a mandatory basis.
Most of the submissions called for full transparency surrounding the operation of the list and for all sites placed on the list by bureaucrats at the Australian Communications and Media Authority first to be examined by the Classification Board.
They supported a regular review of the list by an independent expert and the ability for blacklisted sites to appeal.
But many reiterated their concerns that the policy is fundamentally unsound and would do little to make the internet a safer place for children. Many said the scope of blocked content was too broad and would render legitimate sites inaccessible, while the process of adding sites to the blacklist could be subject to abuse by bureaucrats and politicians.
Google, which today officially stopped censoring search results in China, said it had held discussions with users and parents around Australia and "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 also said implementing mandatory filtering across Australia's millions of internet users could "negatively impact user access speeds", while filtering material from high-volume sites such as Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter "appears not to be technologically possible as it would have such a serious impact on internet access".
"We have a number of other concerns, including that filtering may give a false sense of security to parents, it could damage Australia's international reputation and it can be easily circumvented," Google wrote.
The search giant said it was preferable instead to focus on improving education around cyber safety and providing tools that people could install on their home computers to block unwanted content.
Many of Google's concerns are mirrored by many of the other submissions by academics, technology companies, industry groups, lobby groups and ISPs.
Microsoft demanded protection against "arbitrary executive decision making" surrounding content added to the list and noted the potential for banned material to be loaded on to a site without the sanction of the owner of that site.
Yahoo and Google's submissions, along with many others, expressed concerns that the scope of content to be filtered was too broad.
"Yahoo are entirely supportive of any effort to make the internet a safer place for children, however mandatory filtering of all RC material could block content with a strong social, political and/or educational value," Yahoo's submission read.
It listed some examples of innocuous sites that could be blocked including:
- Safe injecting and other harm minimisation websites.
- Euthanasia discussion forums.
- A video on creating graffiti art.
- Anti-abortion websites.
- Gay and lesbian forums that discuss sexual experiences.
- Explorations of the geo-political causes of terrorism where specific terrorist organisations and propaganda are cited as reference material.
Yahoo also pointed to a recent paper that provided "several examples where knee jerk regulatory reactions to 'controversial' content have been entirely out of step with broader public opinion".
The Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations fears sites that are valuable to sexual health promotion might be placed on the blacklist.
"Social research has shown that information, 'chat' and even pornographic sites play an important role in providing information about sexuality and sexual health, particularly for men who have sex with men and same-sex attracted young people," it wrote.
Mark McLelland, an associate professor in the sociology program at the University of Wollongong, said the filters could block access to an entire genre of niche but popular Japanese animated fiction.
Even the Australian Christian Lobby, one of the biggest supporters of the internet filtering plan, said inadvertently adding innocuous content to the blacklist would "undermine the entire policy".
Telstra fears the blacklist of banned sites could be leaked - as has already occurred last year - and "could be used as a directory of harmful content, which would therefore become more easily available to users that are able to circumvent the ISP filter or who are located overseas".
Colin Jacobs, spokesman for online users' lobby group Electronic Frontiers Australia, said it was clear from the submissions that the vast majority have a difficult time stomaching the filter at all.
"Many of the submissions stated flat out that the filter was not needed," he said.
"Most of the rest held their noses and tried to come up with a way this inherently secret process could be made more transparent."

Conroy's filter plan unworkable, says Google Australia