Over 400 people have stormed Senator Conroy’s new blog to protest the proposed net censorship scheme. Commenters have complained that the filters won’t work, that it infringes on freedom and democracy, and that the money would be better spent elsewhere.
But among the 400 protesters, one person — just one — said that he supported the [...]

Senator Conroy has launched a new blog in which he calls for feedback about the proposed net filtering scheme.
The Digital Economy Future Directions blog was launched today as a platform for discussion about Australia’s digital economy. Topics will include measuring success, access to public sector information and environmental concerns.
But the most notable topic is “How [...]

We interview a hacker from the Anonymous movement about 4chan, freedom and whether hackers will bring down the net censorship scheme.
“I don’t think they’re going to build a firewall that we can’t get around,” said Anonymous as we sat in a noisy café. “There’s always a way to get around, and there are always loopholes [...]

Internet-based lobby group GetUp raised $30,000 in one day for their ‘Save The Net‘ campaign, which hopes to ‘plaster the internet’ with ads opposing the proposed net censorship scheme.
The campaign urged readers to donate in lots of $50 and $100.
“Your $50 will show 4000 people this ad, $100 will buy 10,000 views. Thanks for chipping [...]

Senator Conroy came under fire during Senate Question Time yesterday for failing to answer questions, after concerns were raised about the credibility of the live censorship trials.
Watch the debate here, courtesy of Tech Wired Australia.
Senator Bernardi, a South Australian Liberal, asked, “How many customers would an ISP need to enlist for a trial to be [...]

The Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (DBCDE) has published a paper outlining the technical testing framework for the upcoming live trials of its ISP-level censorship scheme.
The purpose of the test is to see how various filtering products and schemes work when given URLs to censor in a live ISP driven situation, using [...]

Members of Senator Conroy’s own political party have called on him to change his policy, Ban This URL has learned.
“We want an opt-in system,” Janai Tabbernor, president of NSW Young Labor, told Ban This URL.
The junior political party unanimously passed a motion at last weekend’s conference, calling on Senator Conroy to switch to an opt-in [...]

“We will be operating on the newly coined ‘Conroy rule’,” wrote executive director David Vaile and researcher Alana Maurushat of the University of New South Wales’ Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre in an email last week. Participants at the Internet Filtering Forum were told that “it’s a variant of the ancient and practical ‘Hitler’ rule [...]

Activists will take to the streets around Australia to demonstrate against the government’s proposed censorship scheme.
The Electronic Freedom Project, which describes itself as “dedicated to protecting the freedoms of Australians on-line”, is staging a protest at Sydney’s Town Hall Square on 13 December, starting at 12pm.

Censoring the internet, or at least trying to maintain some degree of control over its content, has a sordid past, and is a political issue. Australia’s current government is proposing ISP-level censorship, also known as a “clean feed”, in part as a result of the previous Government’s failed policy.