Rainbow Viewers for Virtual Worlds

I do not often have guest postings, but this one is important and needs to reach a wide audience. Please give your support. It's a small effort but if we all help it may lead to a success; if only small, still better than the current plans.

By Moggs Oceanlane

Without taking up too much of your time, I’d like to ask you to show support for Australians in the current campaign against centralised Internet Filtering/censorship. You don’t need to be an Aussie to help raise awareness.

The Australian Government is planning to put the proposal regarding centralised internet filtering (read censorship) through Parliment in 2010. This will put Australia in an elite club with China, Iran and Saudi Arabia – countries that already have centralised Internet Filtering - scary huh? (and you know, we are meant to live in a democracy!!).

The list of censored/filters sites will include “unclassified content” – but there are no indications that a list of what is being filtered/censored will be disclosed to the public – they’ll just have to find out as it happens. The filtering will not only limit what can be accessed online but, as indicated by the testing that has already taken place, will significantly slow down the Australian broadband network. This week there the “Great Australian Internet Blackout” campaign in running to raise awareness in the media of this issue – many Australians still have no idea of the Governments plans.

So what can you do to show your support?

• black out your online profile pictures (overlay your profile pics with a black layer) and display the #nocleanfeed text. What will this do? It will hopefully help raise awareness in the media and amongst the general population who still haven’t even realised this is now a very real possibility. New Zealand carried out a blackout campaign which was quite effective, Australia hopes to do the same.
• Inform your friends via your social networks – if you tag your blogs or twitter posts use the tags nocleanfeed and if you wish, openinternet
• There’s a petition you can sign – and yeah, it’s not some shonky ‘net petition – it’s run by the Electronic Frontiers Association who are very credible when it comes to online and digital rights
• and of course, you can write letters and more for a good list see the EFA what you can do to help list; great australian internet blackout website and the nocleanfeed.com website.
• Here are some of the key questions that many Australian citizens have been asking since last year (if not before) and would like answered. No satisfactory answers – if any – from the Goverment.

Smiles. Thanks for reading… I hope that some of you will show your support. Please feel free to contact me if you want help blacking out your profile or if you have questions – I’ll do my very best to find answers for you from legitimate sources .

The implications of what could happen should this go ahead – and thinking about where Australia might be in a few years if it does are … potentially horrifying.

- Moggs Oceanlane