Conroy's Con - the new grass-roots campaign against the Government's mandatory internet filter

On Monday 21 December 2009, I attended the Brisbane Stop Internet Censorship Public Meeting. The meeting was organised by Nicholas Perkins and had a fantastic turnout - close to 90 people! There is clearly a lot of interest around this issue.

The meeting was focused on what we can do to get the message out about Conroy's mandatory filter and the negative impacts it will have. Mainly, that the filter will NOT stop child pornography or protect children from the dangers that lurk online (including online predators and cyber bullying) but it DOES pose a serious risk of political censorship.

It was generally agreed that at present, we are losing the great internet filter battle. Conroy has used strong rhetoric that casts anyone who opposes the filter into the role of child pornographer (or at least, supporter of child pornography). Further, we are not aided by our own "geekiness" - as tech-savvy Twitteratti, we do not appeal to mainstream Australia who may not know what a "feed" is, let alone the significance of the "clean feed" proposal.

So what can we do?

The answer is a lot. But we need to do it fast, and we need to apply a lot of pressure consistently. We need to reach both the pollies and the general Australian public, and we need to turn this debate around soon or the battle is lost for good.

The Stop Internet Censorship meeting had two speakers, each of whom presented compelling options for moving forward. Each speaker took a completely different approach, but I believe that both approaches can be effective and if we apply them together, even more so.

Nicolas Suzor from Electronic Frontiers Australia spoke first and outlined the importance of keeping this debate rational. He argued that we shouldn't get sidetracked on issues of speed. The most important issues relate to censorship and control, and the fact that the RC list has a far wider ambit than child porn. Nic stated that the most effective thing we can do in terms of reaching the politicians is letter-writing. Many MPs do not really have a clear idea of what this debate is about. We should inform them and make our case. Write, write write! EFA has provided a template on their website, if you are not sure what to write.

Nic also highlighted the Great Australian Internet Blackout, an online protest that runs from 25th - 29th January, in which you can blackout your online profile picture and/or website to protest against the filter. Additionally, Michael Meloni of Somebody Think of the Children has developed a website called The Gift of Censorship, which allows you to leave a short (500 characters or less) message for Stephen Conroy. For every 1000 messages sent, Michael will send a Christmas stocking of coal to the Senator.

Finally, Australia Day is the national day of action for this debate. EFA are asking you to spread the word about what the filter really means for Australians, by bringing it up at your Australia Day Party.

The next speaker was Cameron Reilly, who spoke about the propaganda techniques that Conroy has used to swing the debate his way. Sometimes, you need to fight fire with fire, and in addition to the more reasoned approaches above, we may need to develop our own propaganda techniques. We need to bring this issue to the masses.

Andrew Bartlett suggested "Conroy's Con" as our slogan. More meetings will follow to discuss what techniques we can employ to show mainstream Australia that this filter is not what Conroy promises. Importantly, we need Mums and Dads, family groups and church groups on our side.

To find out more about the next meeting, visit http://www.stopinternetcensorship.org/

Videos of the December meeting have been posted on YouTube.
You can see Nicholas Perkins speaking here
Nic Suzor is here
Cameron Reilly is here and here

and the public debate is here, here and here

You can also see the Twitter feed from the night by searching for #sicbne

I think my blogging is over for the day... #bbfqld

We are engaging in general discussion now in Brisbane, which probably means it is easier to follow this via Twitter, rather than me trying to follow it all.

So, I guess this is where I sign off.

Phew! It’s all over! Live blogging is exhausting – not to mention trying to keep track of the twitter feeds, the Google Wave discussions and all the other activity going on! There has been a hive of activity here in Brisbane and I can only imagine the same (or more) has occurred in Sydney.

I think the Brisbane forum has been very successful and thank you to everyone who attended, whether in person or online. I’d also like to extend thanks to the wonderful speakers on the program today, Prof Anne Fitzgerald and Paul O’Keeffe for organising the forum, Pia Waugh, Senator Kate Lundy and our friends at the main forum in Sydney, other members of our research team – Elliott Bledsoe, Jessica Coates, Cheryl Foong and Jimmy Ti – for helping with taking notes, making tweets and taking photos, and finally Patrice Meixsell-Draper and the QUT AV services and technical services teams for assisting with the venue, wireless connectivity and audio recording of today’s events.

Brisbane forum #bbfqld - Stream 5: e-Community

The final stream (Stream 5 – e-Community) was facilitated by Fee Plumley of the Australia Council for the Arts.

Fee described the Geeks in Residence program that the Australia Council is running – putting “geeks” within arts organisations to help them with their digital agenda.

The Geeks in Residence program is interested in three things:

1. What innovation can take place around artistic programming?
2. Audience development (marketing through digital – but this needs to be done strategically – must build community of users within the organisation) – need cultural change within the organisation – staff are taught to use networking in a productive way
3. General operations – something often overlooked in terms of how technologies can improve productivity

Fee also made the point very well that it is important to have clear and sensible policy around use of social networking in the workplace. You must let your staff engage with and network with their communities online. Talking about their work with passion to others is just as important as the actual work. Passion spreads the message further.

Discussion then turned (very strongly) to copyright. Fee made the following arguments:

The first thing we must do, alongside the NBN, is to re-examine the copyright system. All we have currently is blockades, because the old organisations are just working to preserve old industry and old business models. This may rock the boat – but the boat needs to be rocked.

We need to get Creative Commons, APRA, MEAA, whoever, to work together – to try a number of case studies of business and copyright models with difference content and different audiences – to see what happens. Sick of hearing “it can’t be done” and closed doors – let’s do it as an experiment! If at the end, the best answer is to shut down the process and fiercely protect the copyright, then “I will shut up”. We need to let new business models develop. We must demand that even though we are small and niche (“the arts”), we have an important part within the economic system. We need knowledge investment. We must question why we accept models from the past.

Other debate –

Fee Plumley: Artists need to stop feeling bad about asking for money. The subsidising system makes artists feel like beggars.

Elliott Bledsoe: Similarly, artists need to stop expecting other people (intermediaries) to ask for money for them.

Fee Plumley: There must be a balance across the whole space. We don’t just want commercially-driven art

Brisbane Forum #bbfqld - Stream 4: e-Business

In the e-Business stream we had an overview of the Peer to Patent Australia Project from Professor Brian Fitzgerald. I'll let you see my earlier (more extensive post) for information about this project and I'd also encourage you to visit the website.

There was also some general discussion around some e-business issues, all of which were well covered via the twitter stream (#bbfqld) - so again, I will let you read the tweets there.

Brisbane Forum #bbfqld - Stream 3: Digital Education

Stream 3 was on digital education.

First up was Linda Pitt, Manager, Discovery Programs, eLearning, QLD Department of Education and Training. Linda gave an overview of The Learning Place. I encourage you to check it out – they are doing some fantastic things.

The Learning Places works on the theory that a robust digital education infrastructure involves three limbs – digital pedagogies, digital content, and e-learning spaces. It is trying to give students a ‘real-world’ experience through online networks. It is encourage use of digital spaces (such as Second Life) and tools such as blogging. It helps to have people blog their teaching and learning experiences to share with others and grow from everyone’s experiences.

Some other points made by Linda:

• Smart Classrooms not only need bandwidth they need access to trained facilitators that can show students how to learn online (via @MichaelSmale)
  

• One of the biggest problems for the learning place is low bandwidth in most QLD schools – only have a small number of schools with definite broadband – this is poor

• We want teachers to be able connect with experts out there, and we want teachers and students and students and students to be able to connect with each other, no matter where they are.

Second up was Professor Greg Hearn, ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (QUT), Director Creative Workforce Program.

Main points made by Greg about new broadband technologies were:

• There is potential for a major paradigm shift in education

• We need innovation in all three layers (technology, content, social) to have real progress in education

• Some provocations for education –
  

o Is the music industry a model for the education system? Do we need new business and content models? What is the disruptive innovation that will bring about a paradigm shift in education?

o Should bots (online games) be adopted as the new primary school classroom?

o How do we harvest and accredit web 2.0 learning?

o Which is a more important budget item – the teacher or the IT infrastructure? They are roughly 50/50 at the moment – what should we spend more on?

o Who will be the gatekeeper of the virtual classrooms (that have no boundaries)

o Which physical facilities still add value in the education process?

Greg then moved on to facilitating discussion around some specific discussion points.

We focused on the two later discussion points of those provided to us by the main forum:

(2) Reality Check – what is holding us back?

• The digital literacy of the educators (may need retraining)

• One of the key restraints in our current education = regression in the mean i.e. we need to tailor programs to the less able students. One of the big changes that broadband can offer is bringing experts closer to students and tailoring education to the individual.

• How will we create the right environment for teachers to be able to handle multiple students using multiple technologies, at different levels and in different regions? – it will bust apart the system – it is a challenge – but we need to create digital support networks.

(3) Next steps – what needs to be done?

• Why don’t we de-regulate the university curriculum and let students do the individual courses they want to take?

• Individuals will be better catered for in an open system