Petard, Meet Australian Government

Welcome back to the dark ages, Australia:

Plugging a word or phrase into a search engine may soon give you fewer results if proposed new Australian copyright laws are adopted, according to Internet giant Google.

The laws could open the way for Australian copyright owners to take action against search engines for caching and archiving material, Google says in a submission to a Senate committee considering the legislation.

This could potentially limit the scope of the search engine results, which the Internet company describes as effectively "condemning the Australian public to the pre-Internet era".

This is what kowtowing to intellectual monopolies gives you. (Via Boing Boing.)