The protest movement against internet censorship in Australia

There is a very active and passionate protest movement against the Australian Federal Government’s proposed ISP-based filter, which aims to block material deemed inappropriate for children. In other words, censorship of the internet for Australia.

Background:

A comprehensive history of Internet censorship in Australia has been compiled on Wikipedia. Here is a brief summary of the key milestones:

• 1999: Federal Government fails to get internet censorship regime together as part of the sale of Telstra
• 2001: CSIRO examines internet content filtering. Report evaluates the effectiveness of client-side filtering schemes (deemed ineffective) difficulties of ISP-based filtering
• 2006: Labor party (in opposition) commits to requiring all ISPs to implement a mandatory Internet blocking system applicable to “all households, and to schools and other public internet points” to “prevent users from accessing any content that has been identified as prohibited by the Australian Communications and Media Authority”
• 2007: Labor now in government, announces intention to introduce ISP-based filter with an ‘opt-out’ provision for adults
• 2008: government commences $82m “cybersafety plan” including additional mandatory filter with no ‘opt-out’ provision.
• Jan 2010: a Labor senator lobbies her party to include the "opt-out" filter when the legislation is debated in caucus, describing it as the "least worst" option
  

Protest Action:

To date, the protest actions which have received the most national and international media coverage are the cyber attacks on Government websites by the activist group Anonymous. The first attack occurred on 26 March 2009, when visitors to the Australian Government Classification website were redirected to a hacked version of the site’s content. Then on 9 September 2009 Anonymous initiated a Distributed Denial of Service attack against the website of the Australian Prime Minister, in a campaign called ‘Operation Didgeridie’. Then on 10 September 2010, the Australian Parliament’s website was endured a distributed denial of service attack for over two days, as part of a wider campaign that included ‘blackfaxes’ (solid black pages faxed to various government offices), prank calls and spam emails. This campaign was dubbed ‘Operation titstorm’, referring to the Government's banning of pornography featuring small-breasted women.

Protest movement:

These are the sites I’ve found so far that are either directly concerned with the issues of protesting Australian internet censorship or feature ‘3rd party’ reports/content about the issue:

Civil liberties, anti-censorship and protest sites:

http://www.efa.org.au/about/

http://openinternet.com.au/

http://opennet.net/

http://www.myspace.com/nocleanfeed

http://www.internetblackout.com.au/

http://www.thegiftofcensorship.com/

http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2009/12/how-to-protest-against-internet-censorship-laws/


Pages about Australian internet censorship issue and/or protests:

http://amyclaire01.tumblr.com/post/403295185/regulation-of-the-internet-and-how-this-will-effect

http://www.infowars.com/internet-censorship-protest-shuts-down-australian-government-websites/


Government and pro-filtering sites:

http://www.dbcde.gov.au/internet/online_content_regulation

http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/STANDARD..PC/pc=PC_311304

http://www.iia.net.au/

http://www.familyfirst.org.au/policy/policypornography.pdf


International comparisons:

I think it will be worthwhile to look at the US and China’s internet censorship policies and issues as part of a comparative analysis of the Australian situation, so I’ve started with the links below and will explore further:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_United_States

http://www.aclu.org/free-speech/internet-censorship

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_People's_Republic_of_China

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/filtering/china/


So that’s some initial research and broad areas of interest defined. In future posts I’ll take a more in depth look at some of the sites listed above and the issues they cover.