Australia Day.
Letter published.
I wrote a short letter to The West Australian regarding the filter. The main aim was to make the public aware of the filter and that it might not be a good thing. Letter was published with a fairly large heading in todays paper (12-1-2010). I scanned the letter here as a PDF.
Censorship and vote buying.
Referring to statements made today by the Australian Christian Lobby on the proposed Labor Mandatory Internet Filtering plan. "Australian Christian Lobby managing director Jim Wallace met with communications minister Senator Conroy yesterday to get a status update on ISP-level filtering."
I find it outrageous that a bigoted group like the Australian Christian Lobby can label themselves as a stakeholder on this issue and manage to have private meetings with Senator Conroy.
Every internet user in Australia is a stakeholder in this.
Going from audio recordings of the last ACL meeting it appears that they have inside access to Labor party senators that other interested stakeholders on this issue do not have.
There are far more effective ways to spend my tax dollars to protect children than implement some filter which can be bypassed in five minutes by purchasing a VPN account on the internet. Give the money to the Australian Federal Police or similar.
GetUp!
I donated to the organisation GetUp! on the issue of mandatory internet filtering.
I just pulled my email subscription from them, why?
GetUp! seem to have a nasty habit of taking thousands in donations and then spending very little on the causes the money was donated for. There is no accountability from GetUp! If you donate, the money you donated could go towards some campaign you completely disagree with.
In summary, GetUp! = Good idea, bad implementation.
The Pirate Party
I've been following the current debate both on and offline regarding the proposed Labor
government "Cleanfeed" proposal closely. Since Labor are pushing the barrow on this and Liberal would be if Labor had not bought it up again first I thought, well, I'm an environmentally minded person and the Greens party are against the filter so I think I'll vote for them come next election.
Then the Greens went and did this: http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,28348,26265586-5014239,00.html
Well, Dr. Clive Hamiltons views on a number of matters are rather extreme and he's not even a climate scientist. I've writtent to a number of Greens senators regarding this, (Bob Brown, Scott Ludlam) and have yet to receive a reply where they clarify their stance on the Cleanfeed proposal.
So I had a look around at other parties and now I think I'll vote for The Pirate Party. Whoa you say, these guys just want to pirate software. Not true. They are for copyright reform, they are against the internet filter and have views on a range of other topics.
Let's face it, Senator Xenophon got voted in on his anti gambling stance pretty much so was also a single issue guy.
He now affects the balance of power in the Australian Senate. It's not like the Pirate Party are going to be running the country, however they could give pause to this draconian filtering law and perhaps get something done about copyright reform, which, thanks to Big Busines is in a real mess.
Links regarding discussion of this issue on Whirlpool can be found here:
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1237453
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1306190
If you are interested in learning more about the Pirate Party, follow this link: http://www.pirateparty.org.au/