NOCENSORSHIP.INFO

From news.com.au

AAP

March 30, 2009 01:35pm

The media this week has been awash with articles regarding Internet censorship, the ACMA Blacklist and proposed Internet filter.

Following are artlices from www.news.com.au regarding these issues.

Website watchdog ACMA says it wasn’t behind German police raid of Wikileaks.de, 26 March 2009

Telstra worker Leslie Nassar hasn’t been sacked for Fake Stephen Conroy - yet, 26 March 2009

Rudd Net filter ‘a shambles’, 25 March 2009 Thank you Senator Minchin for your comments, we most definately agree with you. - ” “I don’t think (Communications Minister) Senator (Stephen) Conroy thought the policy through at the time,” he told ABC Television. “It’s been a shambles from the outset.” ”

New ‘ACMA blacklist’ leak claims banned websites list was recently edited, 24 March 2009

Whilst many members of Anonymous have shown undying support for the free speech posse of the Digital Liberty Coalition, their international brothers and sisters have released a call to arms.  Offers of support have flooded in from the ‘hackers on steroids’ from ebaumsworld, with bold rhetoric threatening to thwart any attempts to censor Australia.

“The Internet is a medium founded on free speech and anonymity. What they are doing threatens that. Information is supposed to be free. Knowledge is power. And they are seeking to remove that power from us. It is well known that Australia is being used a test ground for this idea to spread it to the rest of the world. ISP bans such as this one have already been implemented in various nations such as China, Thailand, and some Scandinavian countries such as Sweden. We cannot let this happen. Everyone has the right to information. The criminals responsible for the illegal material should be brought to justice to remove this problem, the Internet users themselves should not be censored from this as well as things that do not fall into this illegal category. This must not be allowed to be spread to the rest of us. If we don’t stop it now, it will come for us.”

The 21st of March marked the first meeting of all stake holders from all states who have come together to form the Digital Liberty Coalition. Speakers included Colin Jacobs, Jim Stewart, John Kaye, Fiona Patten and the DLC’s very own Jeremiah Hutchinson, with entertainment on the day provided by A.COE, Super Best Friends, and Dave the Happy Singer.

The day started slow, with small clusters of the great unwashed brothers and sisters of the digital realm milling about in the shade, distributed like a peer to peer network, eyes catching packets exchanging, confusion rife. As soon as the PA’s crackled to life the crowd began to form, a brief head count revealing that the trickling distributed masses numbered into the hundreds.

We wish to thank everyone who came out on the day to show your support for free speech, and equality for internet users. The government would NEVER use an arbitrary heuristics driven pithy program to filter print medium, or television, so it follows that it is illogical for the internet to be subjugated to Stephen Conroy’s cut down version of Windows 3.11 1984.EXE and the horrific effects it would have on internet speed across our great nation.

“This is a digital generation, this is a digital century, to slow down the internet is to give our economy a lobotomy,” said John Kaye, before suggesting that a one size fits all internet filter is an open door to censorship and dictatorship suggesting an alternative of taking the $44,000,000 the Government plans to waste on censoring the internet and instead provide half to the federal police to stop child pornography at its source and the other half to an education program to ensure children and parents are net savvy.

Jim Stewart addressed the fact that with the Google adaptation of the Gutenberg project, arbitrary censorship using filtering technology would yield to utter irony with the most likely censoring of George Orwell’s 1984, “I don’t care about these surveys out there that say 80% of teenagers stumble upon porn while doing their homework, rubbish, that’s what I tell my mum too!”

It is worth noting that Canberra is quite an abhorrent city to navigate, and whilst we’re thankful to all the wonderful netizens (and even the IRL mobs) that showed up and made the trek to convene on our nations capital, it goes without saying that clearly seeing the brain numbingly poor road network and complete lack of public transport we can see why parliamentarians would be foolish enough to think censorship, in any form, is an acceptable way to stop any action. Their minds are clearly addled by the hot days, cold nights, and horse shoe’s being passed off as ‘circles’ with hidden slip roads marked ‘heavy vehicles only’ usually being the only way to get where you’re going.

We’ll leave you with YouTube videos of some of the wonderful speakers who graced us with their orations thanks to an unknown videographer; the Digital Liberty Coalition had two broadcast quality cameras running at the event but as volunteers are in short supply getting the film edited and put together takes a little while, that footage will be up soon!

Earlier today the ACMA blacklist was leaked on Wikileaks.

We have declined to comment to the media for the most part at present, and are waiting for Saturday’s national rally to point out some interesting things we noticed, even before the list went live. A full statistical work up was carried out on the list, and chatter amongst the DLC staff over Conroy’s inevitable need to deny it’s the ACMA list has continued for days.

The stats are in, and it’s pretty novel what we’ve found. Further, as predicted, about an hour ago at a press conference Conroy finally came out rather than being ‘unavailable for comment’ with a blanket denial that it’s the ACMA list.

I submit one question to Senator Conroy; if it’s not the ACMA list, why is an ACMA staffer who’s been discussing the list with several anti-censorship folk been running around asking what to do with it? Giant practical joke, or Conroy caught in a lie, you be the judge.

Whilst the list in question contained a certain amount of porn, it did not by any means limit itself to that. It’s interesting to note that independent researchers doing statistical run downs on the list have noticed almost every single website linked to from the TGP’s on the blacklist conform with 18 U.S.C. 2257, meaning they keep records on file that all models depicted are over legal age in the US.

What is more interesting is the other sites that are on the list. Wikipedia? Seriously?

See you all down in Canberra, let’s put an end to this pithy tirade of idiocy. It’s quite clear to all of us now that we have few parliamentarians who are in touch with contemporary technology, or internet savvy in any way other than news websites and email. It’s time we show them if they want to represent the Australian people, they ought to at least TRY and be in touch with social norms, or at least consult with us before blanket banning half the net. Let’s make sure our voices are heard this Saturday.