Angus Kidman13 December 2008, 6:38 PM
Protest marches were held around Australia today against the Australian government's internet censorship plans. APC was at the Sydney march, armed with a camera.
Page 3 - Criticism of Senator Conroy
The central and longest speech of the day came from Sam Russell, another DLC co-ordinator and organiser of the Electronic Freedom Project Wiki on local censorship issues. One of his early comments summed up the issue for many people: "It is just stupid policy to censor speech in a democracy. Why are we going to tolerate a government limiting our political expression?"
Russell's impassioned speech repeatedly skewered Senator Conroy for failing to answer even basic questions on the project from media, his constituency or other members of parliament. He also urged people to continue contacting their local members to protest, though results so far have been mixed: "Don't hope for an adult response because you're not going to get one."
Russell also pointed out that the recent UK Wikipedia scuffle over an album cover meant that everyone in Australia who owned a copy of Nirvana's Nevermind, which similarly features a naked child on its cover, was potentially breaking the law.
Letting a small group of people determine Internet content based on their own particular moral judgements was a totally flawed approach, Russell said. "We live in an adult society, and a free society is based on offence. Why do our politicians only want to deal with people with the political intelligence of children?"
Pushing ahead with the scheme — where ACMA would control a blacklist whose contents were kept secret, and anything deemed "illegal" for whatever reason would be blocked — would make Australia unparalleled in terms of censorship, Russell said. "It's going to be far, far worse than China." Even more limited schemes like those used in Finland are open to abuse; in Finland, an anti-censorship site "accidentally" ended up on the list of URLs banned for containing child pornography. "How many 'accidentallys' are we going to tolerate from the Australian government," Russell asked. "None!" responded most of the crowd, though one wag shouted: "Over 9,000."
Russell also came out with my favourite quote of the day about wowsers: "People who should shut their eyes would rather shut our mouths." Then he reminded us again that a single protest would not suffice: "This is going to be a continuing issue, because politicians are that stupid."
The next scheduled speaker was supposed to be Greens' Senator John Kaye, but he got held up in transit (and ultimately never appeared). A bunch of concerned individuals from the crowd stood up to add their 10 cents worth and round out the day. The impossibly tall Kieran pointed out the consequences of such a system: "With every oppressive regime throughout history, they have started with censorship of the media." Blogger John Seymour argued that the system would inevitably moderate the porn consumption habits of adults who have never broken the law.
Blokes called Dave made a particularly strong showing. Dave E pointed out that while the technically adept could easily dodge filters, the average Australian would find it too hard. Tech journalist David Field, sporting a banthisurl.com banner, noted that criminals could easily break into the proposed censorship software. "The system will be really easy to hack because it's running on Red Hat boxes and there are lots of known vulnerabilities to exploit."
Even Dave The Happy Singer offered up a sombre warning: "This going to set a dangerous precedent for the rest of the world if it goes through." He might have been wearing a sparkling purple jacket, but he still came across as the voice of reason. Whether reason will work with an obstinate and non-responsive government remains to be seen.