For those of you in South Australia, there will be a meeting this Tuesday to discuss what you can do to fight the Internet filter.

The Federal Government plans to introduce mandatory internet
censorship, at the ISP level, for all Australians in 2010.

There is overwhelming opposition to the Government’s proposal from:

The IT and Telecommunications industries, the Right to Know Coalition, the Australian Librarian
and Information Association, child welfare groups such as Save the Children, major online
content providers like Yahoo! and Google – not to mention the Liberal Opposition,
Nick Xenophon and the Greens.

Street protesting and online campaigns have raised awareness in the online community.
Now it’s time to really step up the pressure on the Government and convince them that they
could lose votes, or even power, if they introduce this legislation.

Join other activists and concerned citizens to discuss lobbying techniques and
help develop a coherent, ongoing strategy to ensure Australia’s Internet access
remains open to every one of us. Your thoughts and input will be appreciated.

To be held in the Harry Medlin Rooms, Union House, Adelaide University
Tues March 2nd, 6.30-8.30PM
Meet from 5:30PM in the Cloisters to eat and network before the meeting commences

Here is the Facebook event page, including a map of how to get there.

These two videos are from our Adelaide meeting held on January 14th. They show Mark Newton, a leading anti-Internet-censorship campaigner, and Senator Simon Birmingham, a Liberal senator for South Australia, both talking about the campaign to stop Internet censorship.

Mark Newton

Simon Birmingham

Here is a nice invitation to the Australia Day BBQ next Tuesday. Feel free to post it on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, your mum’s website… wherever really. You can click on the image to get to the original size image.

Please repost anywhere you like, as long as you use this for good not evil.

We’re having a BBQ on Australia Day, Tuesday January 26 – just a casual way you can meet up with other people who want to stop Internet censorship, and find out what you can do to help us do that. We’re at Orleigh Park in West End from 11am till about 4pm.

We’ll have a few sausages and some bread and sauce at the BBQ, but bring your own drinks and most of your own food.

We’ll have some posters up to make it easy to find us, but we’re not here to get into people’s faces on Australia Day. What we want to do is make it easy for you to do some things to help us, and we’ll be chatting with you about those things at the BBQ. We’re also aiming for a big rally of our supporters in February where we set people up with the tools they need to organise small public meetings in the suburbs to discuss Internet censorship with people who don’t already agree with us – these meetings are where we’ll try to win those people over to our point of view. The BBQ is part of our lead up to that.

The BBQ is at Orleigh Park in West End – click here for a Google Map. You gan easily get there by public transport – either catch a 199 bus from the Cultural Centre bus station to the very end of the line, or catch a City Cat to the West End ferry terminal. If you check out the Google Map, you’ll see both these services stop right at Orleigh Park. You can also click here to use the Translink journey planner to find out public transport timetables.

EDIT: Speakers at this Thursday’s meeting will be Mark Newton and Liberal Senator Simon Birmingham. Please come along for a great night.

Are you in South Australia (more specifically, near Adelaide) and want to get involved? This Thursday January 14th there will be a anti-censorship meeting at Adelaide University.

This meeting is intended to be an informal think tank to both discuss some of the upcoming anti-filtering endeavours on the horizon by other groups within Australia that we can assist, and to bounce ideas off members.

Come along from 5:30pm for a 6pm start in the Flentje Lecture Theatre, which is in the Plaza Building. (map of Adelaide University) Take the North Terrace level entrance to Plaza at H9 — signs will be posted in advance.

Don’t forget to go over to the Facebook Event page and let them know that you’re coming.

This is a report of what was said at Monday’s meeting. Not everything here will be things the organising group agree with, but it’s important that everyone who couldn’t go gets a chance to have their say too. We must let everyone’s voice be heard.

Organisation

We need a wider organisation for other issues as they come up – we’re proposing “Australian Internet Lobby” as a name for that.

We will keep “Stop Internet Censorship” as name for the campaign – this is clearer than “No Clean Feed” or “Open Internet”.

Great Australian Internet Blackout during week 25-29 January 2010

The New Zealand Blackout campaign (against a planned law saying you could have your internet cut off if you were accused of illegal Internet filesharing) was a big success and reached the mainstream media there.

Anything we do with people who agree with us has to be based on going beyond online services like Twitter and talking to people who don’t already agree with us and trying to win them to our point of view.

On the Saturday before that week (Sat Jan 23rd) we will be planning to do roadside stalls in the suburbs promoting our campaign, talking to ordinary people.

Australia Day, January 26th

Protests and rallies have been proposed. We prefer the idea of an informal BBQ which won’t be as confronting. We’re planning to have this at Orleigh Park in West End. It will also be a way for us to get our own supporters motivated.

Main purpose of Australia Day BBQ (and rally we plan to hold in mid-Feb) is to build up our own supporters and set them up to go and meet with others and try to convince them to oppose censorship

General Strategy Discussion:

Two important points that came out of this article by “Liberal hack” Tim Andrews are that we should talk about how this is a Nanny State plan, and also about the taxes it will cost and the costs it will impose on business.

Some of the things discussed included:

• We need to work out what our single key issues are
• We need powerful ideas to convince others to our point of view
• How are we going to make sure ideas in the meeting don’t disappear?
• Specifics on a media/communications strategy

We also need people to:

1. Spread the word about our meetings and events – watch our Facebook group and/or this blog for details
2. Edit the Wiki with campaign ideas
3. Create content for the campaign

If you couldn’t make the meeting please let us know if you have any ideas or want to help out – just leave us a comment.