The negotiations for the ACTA, the secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, are underway in Mexico this week, and there's been a lot of coverage around the world of the lack of transparency in these talks. For those who are not familiar with the agreement, I want to recommend Michael Geist's excellent five part ACTA Guide:

• The ACTA Guide, Part One: The Talks To-Date
• ACTA Guide, Part Two: The Documents (Official and Leaked)
• ACTA Guide, Part Three: Transparency and ACTA Secrecy

Parts four and five will be up later this week. So far, these posts do a great job of succinctly explaining the ACTA process, what we know of the content, and the concerns about the lack of transparency.

All this week Australian websites having been going black as part of the Great Australian Internet Blackout.  So far this online demonstration has successfully reached a wide range of audiences, educating them about the problems with the Government's mandatory Internet filter policy:

• There are 480 verified participating websites (and that only counts the websites that have directly submitted their sites for inclusion on our list),  including the websites of the Australian Greens, the Australian Democrats, iiNet, New Matilda and Online Opinion.
• More than 2300 Twitter users have blacked out their profile pictures using a countable method (Twibbon), while many more have blacked out their profile using their own artwork (which is much harder to count).  You can black out your Twitter profile picture here.  You can also set your Twitter background to 1000 supporters of the Blackout here.
• More than 5200 Facebook users have joined the Great Australian Internet Blackout group (quite a number of whom have blacked out their profile pictures), up from around 2000 at the start of the week.  You can join that group here.
• There have been over 260,000 unique visitors to the Great Australian Internet Blackout website.
• The blackout information popup (which appears on sites that have joined the campaign using our script) has been seen more than 375,000 times.

It's not too late for you and your business or organisation to participate in this demonstration.  Just visit the Great Australian Internet Blackout website for more information.

We will post the final numbers early next week.

Electronic Frontiers Australia today announced that over 500 web Australian sites will be "blacked out" on Australia day in protest against the Rudd government's mandatory Internet filtering plan. Included among them are the Australian Greens, an Internet service provider, media outlets, and hundreds of other Australian businesses and organisations.

"This policy has caused considerable anxiety amongst Australian Internet users," said EFA Vice-Chair Colin Jacobs. "The idea that the Government will be inserting itself in every Internet connection in the country is a tough one to swallow, especially without a workable policy goal behind it."

The "Great Australian Internet Blackout" was the brainchild of activist Jeff Waugh, and is endorsed and supported by EFA. For a week starting on Australia Day, participating web sites will appear to turn black and will display a one-time message to visitors explaining the Government's plan and offering them more information before allowing visitors to continue as normal.

The plan, which will see all Australian Internet connections subject to a Government-controlled blacklist of banned sites, will apply to all Australian Internet connections within 12 months of the legislation being passed. Although originally touted as a "cyber-safety" policy, the resulting filter will not filter out all material unsuitable for children, instead targeting a select list of "refused classification" material, which would includes content dealing with crime, drugs and certain types of adult material.

Greens Communications spokesman Senator Scott Ludlam, in deciding to support the campaign, said "The Government's plan will not protect children, will do nothing to crack down on criminal activity online, and sets a dangerous precedent of centralised net censorship."

Concerns with the list include its broad scope, it's secret nature, and the inability of Australian businesses to know if and when they have been placed on the list. "One of our main concerns is how the list might expand in the future," said Jacobs. "It's hard to imagine this and all future governments responding to special interests, electoral pressure and the news cycle only with restraint forevermore."

The Internet Blackout on Australia Day marks an escalation of opposition to the plan, which will continue throughout the year. "Our goal is to ensure the Australian public know what they're in for," said Peter Black, EFA's campaign manager. "It's important that such a major and expensive policy gets the public scrutiny it deserves."

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Ever since I became campaign manager for the EFA's campaign against the Government's mandatory Internet filter two and a half weeks ago, I have been overwhelmed by the level of enthusiasm and support for the EFA's campaign.  Accordingly, the most frequent question I have been asked is "what can I do to help?"  Given this level of support and the desire of so many Australians to help defeat the Government's policy, I thought I'd suggest ten things you can do to help the EFA's campaign against the Government's mandatory Internet filter.

1. Sign the Senate Internet Censorship Petition.

Last week the EFA launched a petition gainst the Government’s mandatory Internet filtering policy that will be presented to the Senate of the Parliament of Australia.  You can sign the petition electronically by going to this page and leaving your name, postcode and email address.

2. Collect signatures for the Senate Internet Censorship Petition.

In addition to signing the online petition, we are also looking for volunteers to collect printed signatures.  If you would like to gather signatures for the petition, please download and read the Senate Internet Censorship Petition - Instructions before printing the Senate Internet Censorship Petition.  Simply print out the petition and take it to work, parties, and anywhere else you might be able to talk to people about Internet censorship and persuade them to sign this petition.

3. Participate in the Great Australian Internet Blackout.

This week is the Great Australian internet Blackout, a week long online protest against imposed online censorship.  Over 500 groups and thousands of individuals are blacking out their websites and profile pictures to inform a wider audience about the Government's plan.  Learn how to black out your website here, and learn how to black out you profile picture on Twitter or Facebook here.

4. Renew your membership or donate to the EFA.

The EFA relies on membership fees and donations to fund its activities.  Renew your membership or make a donation so that we can continue to fund our campaign against the Government's mandatory Internet filter. (more...)

The next round of negotiations on the secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) are due to begin this week in Guadalajara, Mexico. On the agenda this week are civil copyright measures, border measures, internet enforcement measures, and, very briefly, the issue of the lack of transparency in the negotiations.

While much of the text is hidden from public view, the EU’s analysis of the negotiations was leaked late last year. The leak confirms that the ACTA is designed to impose the tough sanctions developed by the US for copyright infringement on other signatories. The main goal of the ACTA seems to be to bypass the WIPO system and entrench US-style copyright regulations around the world. In this sense, a multi-lateral agreement may be more effective than the series of bi-lateral agreements that we have seen in recent years because it has the opportunity to bind several countries at once to implement US-equivalent law.

By doing away with the open international process that WIPO conducts, the ACTA poses a real threat to the reasoned modification of intellectual property laws worldwide. By doing so in secret, it ensures that democratic processes are marginalised; the public will only get to see the text once it has been finalised, at a point when it is likely to be too late, politically, for states to withdraw support.

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U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday delivered an important, wide-ranging speech on the subject of Internet freedom. Coming on the heels of the Chinese cyber-attacks on Google and other U.S. companies, and the increasing use of online censorship by authoritarian governments around the world, the speech draws a line in the sand and presents the USA as the global champion of online openness.

Secretary Clinton Recognised that free access to information online is just as important in the modern age as the right to use a printing press was in earlier times. The ability to communicate with others over the net is as important, now, as the right to assemble and discuss politics ever was offline. Said Clinton, "The freedom to connect is like the freedom of assembly, only in cyberspace. It allows individuals to get online, come together, and hopefully cooperate. Once you’re on the internet, you don’t need to be a tycoon or a rock star to have a huge impact on society."
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The Rudd Government's mandatory ISP filtering bill will soon be introduced into Parliament, and we can only hope that the debate there will focus more on the real merits of the scheme - which are few and far between - than empty rhetoric about protecting children. When the debate happens, here are some questions the Government needs to answer under the glare of public scrutiny.

1. Given the trouble and expense of this policy, you must have some pretty convincing evidence that children are being constantly exposed to RC material. How was your research conducted and will it be released to the public?

(In fact, research indicates that of all the threats kids face online, accidental exposure to disturbing content is about the least significant.)

2. Two-thirds of Internet-connected households don't have school-age children. Isn't forcing a filter onto them as well as businesses unnecessary?

(We have never heard a cogent explanation why the filter should be mandatory and not opt-in, or why it's a better solution than more comprehensive and customisable PC-based filters.)

3. Given the reasonably poor uptake of filters by parents in the past, what makes you so sure the Australian people want a filter at a national level?

(Survey data shows that parents who don't install filters do so mainly because they consider them unnecessary or too restrictive, not for technical or cost reasons.) (more...)

Electronic Frontiers Australia has today launched a petition against the Government’s mandatory Internet filtering policy that will be presented to the Senate of the Parliament of Australia.

You can sign the petition electronically by going to the this page and leaving your name, postcode and email address.  Please talk to your friends, family and colleagues about the problems with the Government’s mandatory Internet filtering policy and encourage them to sign the petition as well.

We are also looking for volunteers to collect printed signatures.  If you are having a meeting or protest against the Government’s mandatory Internet filtering policy in the coming weeks, we would encourage you to distribute this Senate Internet Censorship Petition to collect as many printed signatures as possible.  There are detailed instructions about collecting signatures, and where to return the printed signatures, here.

Learn more about this petition at http://www.efa.org.au/petition/.

If you have any questions, please email Peter Black: pete.black at efa.org.au.

Because mandatory Internet censorship is such a hot button issue in the technology community, the technology media has understandably provided their readers with something of a running commentary on the proposal for some two years.  This has been great for campaigners who oppose the issue as it allows us to have a voice in ways that we can't achieve on our own, and to be fair, provides an outlet for the handful of supporters of censorship to engage in public discourse as well.

As EFA continues to work towards broadening the campaign against censorship, other folks with other opinions will continue to evolve their reactions.  One particular phenomenon I've noticed about the progression of ideas and the resulting writing, is the increase in people writing to draw attention to themselves or those they represent by writing material which has no real value but for how inflammatory it is.

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Luke Lawrie from r18GamesAustralia.com is organising a consultation event this weekend in Sydney about the introduction of an R18+ rating for computer games:

The Commonwealth Government has released a discussion paper which briefly summarises the key arguments for and against an R18+ classification for video games. Censorship Ministers have considered the issue of an adult classification for computer games on several occasions. However, they have not undertaken public consultation on this issue.

We will be hitting the streets of Sydney to try and make some sort of impact, our goal is to make the public aware of the outdated classification system by handing out information sheets about video games and the proposed classification changes. Also on the day we also want to see how many people we can get to fill out the submission template that the government has asked for.

Date: Saturday, January 9, 2010

Time: From 9:00am

Location: Outside Queen Victoria Building

Street: Corner George st & Druitt st

City: Sydney

If you would like to show support for this event please join the Facebook group, alternatively if you would like to help out in anyway possible please contact luke@r18gamesaustralia.com

I am very pleased to welcome Peter Black as our new campaign manager for the mandatory internet filtering campaign. We are all looking forward to working with Peter and are extremely excited to see his vision for the campaign.

The first step will be the unveiling of a new campaign website. If you would like to get involved in the campaign, if you can volunteer your time or provide any other assistance, please contact Peter directly at pete.black at efa.org.au.