MELBOURNE, Australia — Google has withdrawn from China, arguing that it is no longer willing to design its search engine to block information that the Chinese government does not wish its citizens to have. In liberal democracies around the world, this decision has generally been greeted with enthusiasm.
In one of those liberal democracies, Australia, the government recently said it would legislate to block access to some Web sites. The prohibited material includes child pornography, bestiality, incest, graphic "high impact" images of violence, anything promoting or providing instruction on crime or violence, detailed descriptions of the use of proscribed drugs, and how-to information on suicide by Web sites supporting the right to die for the terminally or incurably ill.
A readers' poll in the Sydney Morning Herald showed 96 percent opposed to those proposed measures, and only 2 percent in support. More readers voted in this poll than in any previous poll shown on the newspapers' Web site, and the result is the most one-sided.