Australia turns off the internet

Today is National Australia Day, a yearly event that sees pubs fill up with Australians standing at empty bars and wondering why there is no one there to serve them.

Coinciding with this year's event is the plan to switch off the internet as a protest against government plans to, er, switch off the internet. On their web page, confusingly set up to spread the word, the organisers of Internet Blackout Day, write, "The Federal Government is pushing forward with a plan to force Internet Service Providers to censor the internet for all Australians. This plan will waste millions of dollars and won't make anyone safer."

"We stand to join a small club of countries which impose centralised Internet censorship such as China, Iran and Saudi Arabia. The secret blacklist may be limited to 'Refused Classification' content for now, but what might a future Australian Government choose to block?"

Anyone interested in joining the protests is asked to blackout their photo on social networking and other sites, while organisations and other groups have been urged to black out their web sites.

But, rather than totally switch off sites webmasters are asked to add a piece of code to the page that will significantly darken it. It will also add a banner for the blackout week, in order to further spread the campaign.

With increasing state enforced censorship of the web and resulting protests happening across the globe, 2010 has the potential to become a watershed year for the internet. The fallout from the hacking of Google and other firms' systems by Chinese ne'erdowells is set to roll on for months and was recently escalated by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's remarks.

Back home, meanwhile, the controversial Clause 17 of the Digitial Economy bill has already drawn fierce criticism from all quarters, not least the ISPs who have branded it unworkable and the privacy protestors who see deep packet inspection as an affront to their civil liberties.

The desperate actions of governments to limit internet freedom of choice are unlikely to last forever, but the battles being fought over the coming year could prove to mark a decisive moment in the evolution of the web.

The Aussie campaign starts today and lasts for a week.

26 Jan 2010

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Radio and TV are censored. You only see/hear what they transmit. Newspaper editors have to be extremely careful what they print. Why is the Internet so different? That being said, the technology is such that "the net" will be impossible to control like other media and there is too much money involved.

Posted by: appkw 26 Jan 2010

The internet isn't an internet if it's censored. total waste of time and money.

Posted by: chum 26 Jan 2010

That is an absolute disgrace. Why does it seem that in almost every aspect of life in Australia, our rights seem to only be dwindling with new legislation being enforced almost every single day of the week. It is quite disappointing though. No gonvernenment should have the right to tell us ( the same people that 'elect' and empower these people by accepting their leadership and abiding the laws they set ) what we are 'allowed' to view on the internet, or in any other form one may wish to acquire any information. People should not be protesting, people should simply demand. The government should not even be given the option to push this absolutely ridiculous and simply outragous decision to imply such cencorship based on unacceptable attitudes which are negative, threatening, provoking, suspecious and offending to it's own people. No human being, other than myself, has the right to tell me what is 'acceptable' in any aspect of life. We are born on this planet at historically fragile times, and to get on with life piecefully and constructively for everybody sharing the planet, we have set laws. These laws define what is 'acceptable', and anybody who 'CHOOSES' not to obey, simply suffer the consequences. But, when the government intends to set laws to empower itself with the right and resposiblity to 'choose' without any form of liability for its discretion what material is 'acceptable' and what is 'not', People have to stop and think for a moment. We have to remember, we are whom who empower the government. If the the government is intending to take away our access to potential knowledge, something that couldn't be more versatile, then people as a whole can and 'should' simply disregard their authority, and laws, the same way they disregard our demand for freedom and rights. Majority can overpower anyone with insufficient capabilities to run our beloved Australia.

Posted by: Dontworry 26 Jan 2010

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