Get your hands off my Feed!

shot of crowd at the Anti Internet Censorship rally in Melbourne, Saturday 13th Dec

So on this rainy Saturday afternoon, the No Clean Feed people organized a protest against the Australian Government's proposed internet censorship scheme. About 200-300 people turned up and they had about half a dozen speakers from ISPs, Amnesty International, Electronic Frontiers Australia, "Internet professionals" (not quite sure what that guy did) and some 'random dude' (more about Mr random later).

some dude from an ISP (Sorry, I didn't catch his name - ed)

A couple of take-away points:

• The scheme will use a blacklist of web sites that every internet company will be forced to use.
• This blacklist will be decided by the government.
• This blacklist has been 'protected' by Freedom of Information laws (FoI) so that ordinary Australians will not know which websites have been banned, and therefore will have no recourse to protest the banning of certain websites
• Telstra and Internode (Australia's largest and 2nd largest ISPs respectively) have point blank refused to take part in the trial.
• The proposed scheme will only prevent people from accessing certain websites. Illicit material swapped via peer-to-peer (P2P... think Napster or Kazaa) or any other mechanism that doesn't involve a web browser will not be stopped. For those not technically minded, I can assure you that the "bad people" on the net rarely use webpages to trade in their stuff.
  
  

The speakers for the most part all made some good points, and the temptation to compare the proposed internet censorship scheme to Hitler's bookburning was there in full effect from some of the more politically aligned speakers.


The crowd composition was mixed; families, IT workers, socialist activists, turtles.

An Anti-Censorship turtle?

I saw one keffiyeh and Mr random, as part of his speech against censorship asked the crowd "Did you know that there has been a genocide going on in Palestine for 40 years?" with some mutterings of assent from the crowd.

Now, for Mr random to say that would rather suggest that his internet at home is already being filtered by his own very misguided views. Also he started his speech saying "My dear old mum had a saying: I might disagree with what you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it." The more astute of you (or anyone who can use Google) may have noticed that Mr random's dear old mum did not invent this quote, it was the french philosopher Voltaire who said "I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".

Now I'm all for using quotes, whether they be from Mr random's dear old mum or one of the Enlightenment philosophers, but if you do use a grandstanding quote, I would suggest you attribute it to the right person, otherwise you might look a little 'foolish' however he clearly had the crowd on his side and those that might resent his misappropriation of a quote (ie. me) kept quiet.

St George slaying the dragon of censorship

All in all, not a bad turn out. If the socialist group organising the rallies can realize this issue transcends the usual left/right perspectives, they will have a greater chance of success. If, on the other hand, they use it simply as a springboard to indoctrinate individuals into socialist activism (which, by my conversation with the earnest young lad where I signed the petition, seemed to be going) they will be battling against the usual political apathy of the average Aussie, which is legend.

The crowd about to start some chants on the steps of the State Library