[clug] Internet Censorship - Advice?

Anthony David adavid at adavid.com.au
Tue Dec 2 19:50:31 GMT 2008


David Adams wrote:
> Heya CLUGers,
>
> I'm back in Darwin for a bit and I managed to convince the chairwoman
> of the Country Liberals up here to let me give a short (10/15 minutes,
> with additional time for questions) presentation to the party
> regarding the proposed Internet censorship package proposed by Senator
> Conroy. I had a quick chat with her about it and was concerned (but
> not surprised) that she knew very little about it, its unintended side
> effects or why it has to be stopped.
>
> As most of you will probably agree, this issue is one that has to be
> fought anywhere it can be- if the APL or Family First or One Nation or
> whoever ask me to give a similar talk, I'd happily oblige. So,
> politics aside- anyone have any advice on how I should go about giving
> this talk, given in mind the very, very non-technical audience here?
> I'm particularly looking for clever analogies, interesting stories,
> relevant pictures or visuals, facts, statistics and things I can throw
> into a neat graph or powerpoint presentation. There's some good stuff
> on www.nocleanfeed.com, but if anyone has any insightful commentary to
> add, I'd appreciate it. I want to do this right.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Dave.
Hi Dave

The referenced web site has a sufficient number  of  points to make a 
cogent technical  argument.  One more thing that could be emphasised is 
the  fact  that  the  Internet  is  not  the  web. The Internet is a
constantly evolving conglomeration of technologies *including* the world
wide web. You could expand on this by using some examples of protocols
other than the web that would bypass the filter. We already know of the
young minds destroyed by LOL/L33Tspeak on game servers for example (:-)
You could also address the inadequacies of filters for these protocols
and the further slowing of Internet speeds as a result of something that
really worked.

One more point. Appeal to the heart as well as the mind. Talk about why
an unfiltered Internet is important to you and why it is important to
the people of the Northern Territory. Talk about the future innovations,
not only in the technology but also in how this medium can be used for
benefitting the people. How it allows people to not just be passive
receivers of content, but active participants in a connected world. This
access to a richly connected world is threatened by this ill-conceived,
draconian filtering and should be opposed by all right-thinking people.

If all that fails, try the slow-motion hair-swish feat. That should
impress them ;-)

Regards

Anthony
 


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