The current attitude by the Australian government about the Internet filter is a worry. A self righteous disdain for anybody else’s opinion. Or the collateral damage that they will cause.
Reminds me of the Lieutenant Colonel from Apocalypse Now, who took joy in the deployment of napalm with no regard for the collateral damage.
In the current debate Rudd and Conroy seem to just keep churning out the same statements about the internet filters, despite what anybody says. Childish really.
It was interesting to watch this video about ‘Cognitive Surplus‘. What people do when they have too much free time. And how the Internet is a vent for the creativeness that everyone possesses.
On the other hand this cartoon conveys the problem encountered when there is a clash of creativeness on the Internet.
Just updated my Australian Internet Blackout WordPress plugin to version 1.0.
Version 1.0 makes use of the wp_enqueue_script() function to load the Blackout JavaScript. This should stop the double loading of jQuery, and avert possible conflicts (that is the theory anyway).
You can find the new version here:
You can also get later versions of WordPress to install it themself. Just search for ‘blackout’ on the ‘Add New‘ plugins page.
One of the big problems is the anti filter campaign at the moment is its divided front. There is no clear leader giving direction to the campaign.
The No Internet Censorship site, run by the Australian Democrats, has an interesting article about this problem: ‘Taking control of the campaign against internet censorship‘. It clearly addresses the problem with having multiple bodies trying to run the campaign from different angles.
Although, it makes me think of Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Here is my adaptation of The Colosseum skit:
Brian: Are you the Internet People's Front?
Reg: F*ck off.
Brian: What?
Reg: Internet People's Front. We're the People's Front of the Internet. Internet People's front, caw.
The article mentions that there are 3 political parties involved in opposing the filters: The Australian Democrats, The Greens, and The Australian Sex Party. And it asserts that one of these would be best to lead the campaign.
Brian: I hate Stephen Conroy as much as anybody.
PFI: Sssh. Ssssh, sssh, sssh, ssssh
Judith: Are you sure?
Brian: Oh. Dead sure... I hate Stephen Conroy and his Internet filters already.
I noticed they missed Pirate Party Australia. Though, reading PPA’s FAQ, I see that they are not yet a registered party. Hence the current membership drive to get the required 500 members.
Reg: Listen. If you really wanted to join the PFI, you'd have to really hate Stephen Conroy.
Brian: I do.
Reg: Oh yeah? How much?
Brian: A lot!
Reg: Right. You're in. Listen. The only people we hate more than Stephen Conroy are the f*cking Internet People's Front.
The underlying message of this article is good, but it also looks like political posturing. With The Democrats having no members in parliament since the last federal election.
In my opinion these political parties should take a back seat on pushing the issue. The Democrats are seen as irrelevant to current Federal politics; The Greens polarise people with their other politics; and The SEX Party is seen as representing that which Conroy is telling the public is bad about the Internet.
Their article also forgets to mention of the two non political party groups that are involved in the campaign: the Electronic Fronteirs Australia (EFA) and GetUP. Both of whom have had an important role in delivering the message to the public.
In my opinion the EFA has the best mandate for being the focus for the campaign. The EFA is an organisation ‘independent of government and commerce‘ and formed in 1994 ‘representing Internet users concerned with on-line freedoms and rights‘.
There are many sites that are campaigning against the filters. There needs to be one central hub, that people link to and that provides a clear direction to the campaign.
Conroy already has the jump on the anti censorship people. The anti filter folk don’t have time for a long Darwinistic evolution to find the best candidate, the creationists are currently on their crusade against the Internet. And a divided campaign will be easily swept aside.
And on the 8th day God created the Internet Filter.
Commanding ‘Thou shall have no other Internet before me’.
Stephen Conroy has delivered his Christmas present early, ISP level Internet filter. Tuesday afternoon the government announced that was giving the green light to its controversial censorship plan. And Conroy stated that we can look forward to legislation being introduced next year, ahead of the election.
Yesterday news sites, blogs and twitter erupted in a furore over the plans. Below are some articles on the subject I though were interesting:
Unless you have been living under a rock, or have no internet connection, you will know that the Australian government is proposing to censor the internet in Austrlia.
The recent events in Iran, and people’s use of twitter, show how effective censoring the Internet in a country can be. Not very. Not without inadvertently affecting numerous other things that depend on the network infrastructure.
Maybe we need to have mandatory filters installed on all computers, just like like China? No, we already know there is an army of 16 year olds waiting to break them.
No other option then, just make accessing sites on the Office of Film and Literature Classification banned list a criminal offence.
Mr Smith goes to answer a knock at the door. Standing there are 3 burly AFP agents holding an arrest warrant.
“Good evening Mr Smith. You are under arrest for accessing sites on the OFLC banned list.”
“What?…I haven’t accessed anything illegal!… What is this about?”
“You have been accessing the web site of dentist in Queensland. Don’t attempt to deny it Mr Smith. We have logs from your ISP.
“And hand over that smart phone too. The community do not need to see any more tweets about your visits to the tuckshop.”
Putting asside the feasibility aspect for a moment. Do we really want Australia grouped with countries with such poor human rights records as Iran and China? Do we want a central regime that controlls all access to information?
Today the Australian government announced its decision on submission to build the new National Broadband Network. Telstra put itself out of the bid last year by putting in an incomplete submission. So who of the remaining tenders were to take the cake?
None of them it seems. The government decided that none of the bids were up to scratch. So awarded the contract to itself.
The government announced its intention to establish a new public company to build the network. Spending $43 billion on the new entity to create a new fibre network. And interestingly, they now intend to do fibre to the home, rather than fibre to the node. Which seems like a much better proposal.
A question remains though, which a friend put forward: If the government is building the network, is this so it can bypass all the ISPs, and more easily implement its own filtering/censorship policy?
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