EFA's anti-filter campaign dumps No Clean Feed slogan

James Riley
Thursday, 21 January 2010 08:45

IT Policy - Government Tech Policy

Electronic Frontiers Australia will relaunch its anti- internet filter campaign in two weeks to broaden its appeal among non-technical Australians, and will dump its No Clean Feed slogan in favour of a message with more mainstream appeal.

The group is also producing a television commercial to spearhead the campaign and is planning to invest financial reserves to carry the anti-filter messages into the lounge-rooms of everyday Australians.

The EFA's newly-appointed campaign manager for the mandatory internet filtering campaign Peter Black said the group was also putting renewed focus on fundraising to give it the option of a sustained mainstream media campaign.

A lawyer by training, Black is an academic at Queensland University of Technology where he has for several years taught internet law. He took up the three-month EFA position on leave from the University.

"We are in the process right now of redesign and rebranding our campaign, so in two weeks there will be a new campaign web site launched that will be moving away from the No Clean Feed label," Black told iTWire.

"Our research suggests that the No Clean Feed slogan is not resonating with non-technology savvy people. So we see the next big challenge for us as being to move the debate beyond the digerati, beyond people who work and live on the internet everyday," he said.

"We want to sharpen the message and to very much move both the message and the campaign beyond the technically savvy."

"We need to do a better job of explaining that to people who don't have that same inherent understanding. That’s behind the relaunch," Black said.

The new campaign slogan will be unveiled simultaneously with the new website and media campaign.

Though Black says the group does already have some resources to fund the media campaign, it is "encouraging anyone who’s interested and passionate and upset about this to go to our website and donate funds," Lack said.

The EFA earlier this week launched an online Senate petition aimed at convincing senators of the large scale antipathy in the community toward the filter.

Black says the group has stepped up its engagement with members of Parliament and since the change in leadership within the Opposition, has sought face to face meetings with shadow communications Minister Tony Smith and the leader of the Coalition Tony Abbott.

"We have had contact and discussions with a number of politicians on this issue, although it has admittedly been hard to get face-time with Senator Conroy himself," Black said.