This article was published on January 25, 2010

The Great Australian Internet Blackout Kicks Off


The Great Australian Internet Blackout Kicks Off

Picture 4I know we’ve been running a lot of stories on the CleanFeed / Mandatory ISP filtering in Australia, but its an important topic, so stick with me.

This week sees the latest action by Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) kick off – The Great Australian Internet Blackout.  And just in time for Australia Day too.

The plan is simple, build awareness of the EFA’s messaging and opposition to mandatory ISP filtering in Australia by providing website owners with an HTML snippet to put on their site. When someone lands on the site a lightbox launches explaining the EFA’s opposition to the filtering and explaining ways that people can act against it.

While the key message  “Your Internet will be censored” is a little misleading (Senator Conroy, in this Crikey article states what many people know,  the Internet is already censored in Australia) – I do like the fact that the EFA is trying new things to get the message out. It’s also good to see them move beyond social media into the actual domain of things that will be censored (i.e. websites) and to use those websites to scale the message out to their visitors.

If you’d like to join their campaign (and the many other websites that are already running the code), all you need to do is follow the simple instructions HERE.

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