Electronic Frontiers Australia ramps up anti-filtering campaign

Stuart Corner
Monday, 28 December 2009 01:38

IT Policy - Government Tech Policy

Electronic Frontiers Australia is planning a number of initiatives in January against the Government's plan to introduced mandatory ISP-side Internet filtering, including National Day of Action on Australia Day, 26 January.

During the week starting Monday 25 January, EFA is encouraging Australian Internet users to take part in its Great Blackout Campaign, by blocking their profiles on Twitter and by 'blacking out' the home page of their web site.

By adding a snippet of HTML code to the code for the site's front page, EFA says a description of the Great Australian Internet Blackout demonstration will appear above a significantly darkened version of the page. Visitors need only to close the blackout box to use the website as usual, and they will only see this message once.

On Australia Day, EFA is organising a nation-wide demonstration and inviting supporters to organise their own Australia Day parties. Full details of the demonstrations are yet to be provided.

In addition the organisation says it is working on a number of different campaigns, including a mainstream media campaign; distribution of postcards for people to mail in to a designated address with a hand-written message, to be delivered to communications minister, Stephen Conroy; a continued letter writing campaign; a testimonials site that will collect interviews with key figures about why the filter should not go ahead; and web banners for webmasters to link to the campaign.

The organisation is looking to engage a full time campaign manager for three months to co-ordinate its various anti-filtering initiatives. It is calling for volunteers on each of these projects, and says it is "continuously looking for new ideas to help progress the campaign."