Ground To Zero

Freedom and music

This was going to be my rousing “Ground To Zero is back in action” message… however something more urgent has come up.

You may have noticed a No Clean Feed banner on this site lately. If you’re unfamiliar with this cause, you should know that No Clean Feed is an initiative by Electronic Frontiers Australia in protest against the Australian government’s proposed mandatory internet censorship filter, a filter not unlike the infamous Great Firewall of China. This is the first of its kind in a democratic country and hopefully the last. You might think this is a good thing to help protect children from all the bad stuff in the world (wide web), but here’s why it’s not:

• It doesn’t work.  The proposed censorship system only filters unencrypted web (HTTP) traffic.  Not only is this relatively easy to circumvent (for those so inclined), but the filter has no effect on chat-rooms, peer-to-peer file sharing and other internet mediums, which is where you’ll find most of the stuff they want to block.
• The filter is based on a secret blacklist.  Only the government gets to decide what’s on the list, we don’t get a say when they get it wrong.  There have already been reported cases where legitimate business were blacklisted during the filter trials.
• There is no opt-out.  Even if you’re a consenting adult over the age of 18, you’re still treated to the same content censorship as everyone else.
• We pay the price.  The cost of rolling out a censorship filter that no one wants will be passed on to the ISPs, and then on to us.
• It’s a dangerous precedent.  This could be the start of a global trend that will cripple the web for everybody.

Surely no free country would introduce such a scheme, right?  Think again: in December 2009, Stephen Conroy released the reports from the trial program and now it seems the federal government will give it the go ahead.

Blood boiling yet?  Good, now you’re ready to fight back.

You can help raise awareness by darkening your website (like we did) or your profile photo during The Great Australian Internet Blackout from January 25 to 29 (which includes Australia Day).  Find out how to black out your profile picture and join the resistance.  We lost the battle, but the war has only just begun.