• Draft submission paper (MS Word format)

In the spirit of community involvement, and to ensure that we have the strongest argument we can possibly put forward, we are opening this draft paper for public comment. You can see (and edit) the paper on Google docs. Please provide us with your comments and suggestions on this paper. In addition to the draft document, we also have some research that we conducted (thanks to Julian Merlo and Matt Postle) that details comparative ratings for games in 2009 worldwide (showing that over half of the games that were rated as MA15+ here were given adult ratings by all five comparative jurisdictions overseas!)

To join in our discussion on the draft paper process, please join our discussion list. Putting these documents together takes money, and EFA is entirely volunteer funded. If you would like to contribute to our R18+ submission, please consider making a small donation to help us recoup our costs:

In addition to comments, we would like to see as many people as possible put together their own submission to the public consultation. You can do this either by using Grow Up Australia’s submission form or following the submission template and the instructions on the AGD’s website.

Here’s some tips for writing a submission:

• Be reasonable; don’t attack the classification board or any particular Attorneys-General. We have the facts and the theory on our side, and we don’t gain anything by sounding childish or petulant.
• Follow the submission guidelines – make sure your voice is heard.
• Make your points clearly and succinctly. Feel free to take any of the information we present in the discussion paper; you’re usually better served by being brief and to the point.
• Express the issue in your own words, and tell your own story; Explain to the AGD why you personally want an R18+ rating, and how it affects you.

The main points that we are trying to stress in this discussion paper are really quite simple:

• Gamers are adults; games, like films, tell expressive stories, not all of which are suitable for children. Banning everything that is not suitable for children amounts to unacceptable censorship of legitimate expression.
• Gamers are parents; as responsible parents, we take care to monitor what media our children consume, and can take responsibility for those decisions.
• An R18+ rating is about empowerment; the goal of Australia’s classification is to empower adults, protect children, protect people from accidental exposure to offensive material, and to take into account community concerns about particularly offensive content. An R18+ allows adults to choose what is suitable for themselves and for their children.
• An R18+ rating will be more likely to decrease rather than increase the exposure of children to inappropriate content, because it sends a clear message to parents that certain material is not appropriate for children; the lack of an R18+ for games, particularly when one exists for films, only causes confusion and lessens the ability of parents to take responsibility.
• Australia’s system is out of step with the rest of the world; games that are clearly not designed for children are being released with an MA15+ rating, and games that are suitable for adults are being banned. Our research shows that of the 47 games that were rated by the Australian Classification Board, the US ESRB, the UK BBFC, the EU PEGI, and the NZ OFLC, more than 50 per cent of titles that were rated MA15+ in Australia were given an adult rating overseas. The Australian system is demonstrably less effective in warning parents and gamers about the content of video games than our international counterparts. Introducing an R18+ rating will address some of this disparity and enable Australians to make more informed choices about what games they play or allow their children to play.

And with one tweet, iiNet CEO Michael Malone announces the result that we’ve all been waiting for:

IiNet did not authorize the infringements #iitrial

More analysis will follow when the full written judgment is handed down, but it is apparent that the Judge was convinced that iiNet has no control over bittorrent and is not responsible for the acitons of its users in the circumstances alleged by AFACT. From the preliminary information available, this sounds like a decision that is absolutely consistent with the theory of secondary copyright liability developed in the US case of Sony v Universal: the lack of control over the system means that iiNet has no legal responsibility over its users, despite knowledge that some users are obviously infringing copyright. In terms of the decision in Moorhouse, iiNet could not be seen as ‘approving, sanctioning, or countenancing’ the infringing acts of its users. This decision seems to fill the gap with the Kazaa and Cooper decisions in Australia, which both found that the intermediary in question facilitated and encouraged the infringements that occurred.

This provides important certainty for ISPs in Australia: “the mere provision of access to internet is not the means to infringement”. It also seems that more generally, this has important ramifications for innovation in Australia; in contrast with Kazaa, if you provide facilities that assist in infringement, but do not have control and do not act in bad faith, you will not be liable for secondary copyright infringement.

AFACT has been ordered to pay iiNet’s costs. Expect an appeal, but this first instance decision seems quite strong in favour of iiNet.

Stay tuned for further analysis.

The law seems poorly drafted and unworkable, but it may not pose as much of a threat as is suspected. See over the jump for my analysis.

The amended Section 116(1) provides that:

A person must not, during an election period, publish material consisting of, or containing a commentary on, any candidate or political party, or the issues being submitted to electors, in written form, in a journal published in electronic form on the Internet or by radio or television or broadcast on the Internet, unless the material or the programme in which the material is presented contains a statement of the name and address (not being a post office box) of a person who takes responsibility for the publication of the material.

‘Journal’ is defined to mean “a newspaper, magazine or other periodical.”

On its face, then, this legislation seems to be limited to periodical publications — magazines and newspapers and similar publications that come out at regular intervals. These publications were already required to provide the name of the publisher in print, so the extension of such a requirement to online publication seems not to raise any particular problems. It also covers material on ‘radio or television or broadcast on the Internet’. ‘Broadcast’, at least as it is defined in Commonwealth legislation, covers audio or visual transmissions but not text and static images (see s 6, Broadcasting Services Act 1992 (Cth)). So this requirement would cover radio and television stations and probably podcasters as well.

It is important to note that this legislation does not require each commentator on a website to be named. It requires the publisher of the site (or a responsible person) to be named. So it would appear that comments on newspaper pieces may still be anonymous, as long as the newspaper’s publisher is named. So far, there’s no real problem here.

The problem comes when we look closer at the types of publications this legislation was designed to cover. A plain English interpretation suggests that newspapers, magazines, and the more formal blogs will be covered. Reading the parliamentary debates, however, shows that Michael Atkinson has a different idea about the scope of the legislation. The amendments as they were first introduced did not broaden the scope of s 116. During debate, the SA Government amended its legislation to cover electronic publications:

Parliamentary Debates, House of Assembly, 02 June 2009, South Australia

I have amendments coming to section 116 which require, in the blogosphere, during the election campaign, attribution. You want to know that a real person of a real address is publishing the material and takes responsibility for it. (p 2857)

[Atkinson:] Government amendment No. 8 amends section 116(1) so the requirement to include a statement will also apply to material consisting of, or containing, commentary on any candidate, party or issues being submitted to voters that is published or broadcast on the internet.

Mrs REDMOND: I know that the internet is a very broad term, but again I ask the question: will it apply to telecommunication by mobile phone? I would assume it is not caught by
that. I wonder whether the term ‘internet’ is actually broad enough to capture everything that we presumably will be taking about like blogs, Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter and all the other things that could occur.

The Hon. M.J. ATKINSON: Yes. We aim to catch web pages and, therefore, it would cover blog sites, Wikipedia and internet newspapers such as Adelaidenow, but we do not want to go into twittering because that is too much like individual communication over a mobile phone. So, that is where we are putting the boundary.

Atkinson goes on a bit about “exercising some common sense” about the application of the rule; it seems to be sufficient, in his opinion, for the website to be well enough signed so that people know who is “taking responsibility for that commentary”.

There seems to be, accordingly, some confusion about what, exactly, this legislation is designed to cover; the text of the legislation seems to limit its application to periodical publications, which would only seem to cover the most formal blogs and broadcasters. This seems relatively desirable, in that it would be strange if these publishers could avoid any requirement of attribution by switching to electronic delivery. This conflicts, however, with Mr Atkinson’s statements that the requirement will extend to the blogosphere, to wikipedia, to websites, and internet newspapers (but not, for some reason, twitter).

I think the best interpretation of this law is probably the one that only ‘periodical’ publications and real broadcasts will be covered; so online newspapers and broadcasters will be covered, but not necessarily small personal websites or blogs. If that’s the case, then this legislation does not seem as bad as it first appeared.

The real problems with the legislation, however, are:

• it’s not clear how it will apply; the mere fact that we’re having all this confusion means the legislation is poorly drafted, and does not provide enough guidance as to what, exactly, political commentators will be required to do;
• it is being supported by Atkinson in the most appalling way – the news reports quote him apparently frothing at the mouth about ‘Adelaidenow’, which the law seems implicitly to target;
• to the extent that it applies beyond mid-sized media organisations, it is completely unenforceable. There’s no consideration given to how this will apply to people outside of South Australia or how exactly the thousands of websites that have political commentary will be monitored;
• and again, it’s not clear how it will apply; Atkinson suggests it applies to websites, blogs, wikipedia, but not twitter, but there is absolutely nothing in the legislation which supports that.

Please let your friends, family and colleagues know about the Government’s mandatory Internet filtering policy and what they can do to help defeat it, including signing the petition online as well as collecting paper signatures.

We now have badges you can use to help promote the petition.  If you would like to help publicise the petition, you can copy the code (next to each badge) and paste it onto your blog or website.  Or feel free to right click on the image, save it, and use it however you would like.

	<a href="http://www.efa.org.au/petition/"> <img src="http://www.efa.org.au/main/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/petition135.jpg" alt="EFAPetition" width="135" height="48" border="0"/></a>
	<a href="http://www.efa.org.au/petition/"> <img src="http://www.efa.org.au/main/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/petition180.jpg" alt="EFAPetition" width="180" height="63" border="0"/></a>

• 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.

• 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.

“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.”

- Ends -

Below is:

- Background information
- Contact details for media

Background:

* Great Australian Internet Blackout
- http://internetblackout.com.au/

* EFA’s No Clean Feed campaign
- http://nocleanfeed.com/

About EFA:

Electronic Frontiers Australia Inc. (EFA) is a non-profit national organisation representing Internet users concerned with on-line rights and freedoms. EFA was established in 1994, is independent of government and commerce, and is funded by membership subscriptions and donations from individuals and organisations with an altruistic interest in promoting online civil liberties.

Media Contacts:

Mr Peter Black
Campaign Manager
Phone: 0421 636 496
Email: pete.black at efa.org.au

Mr Colin Jacobs
EFA Vice-Chair
Phone: 0402 631 955
Email: cjacobs at efa.org.au

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.

5. Write to your Member of Parliament.

By letting policymakers know just what we think of the Government’s mandatory Internet filter, we can bring about a policy change. You can help by writing to your local Member of Parliament and explaining why you are opposed to the current policy.  If you’re not sure who to contact or what to say, we have some information and suggestions here.  You might also want to have a look at Bernard Keane’s advice on how to write a great letter.

If you receive a form letter reply from your Member of Parliament,  Mark Newton has drafted a form letter that you might like to send in reply.

6. Create content.

You can help spread the word by creating content online that illuminates the flaws in the Government’s policy.  Write a blog post, create a YouTube video, or draw a cartoon that comments on the proposed filter.  Disseminate your content virally by tweeting about it and/or posting it on Facebook.  Use the #openinternet or #nocleanfeed hashtags to make easier for people to find your content online.  We are also looking for content for our new campaign website, so please email me at pete.black@efa.org.au and let me know about your content.

7. Talk to your friends and family.

Talking personally with your friends, family and colleagues is probably the most effective way of communicating what is wrong with the Government’s mandatory Internet filter.  We find that people who work and live on the Internet every day understand why the Government’s policy is flawed, but we need to do a better job of communicating to people who don’t necessarily have the same familiarity with the Internet why the Government’s policy simply won’t work.  This is why talking to your non-technology savvy friends about the Internet filter can be particularly effective.  You might like to explain that:

• The category of ‘refused classification’ is much broader than child sexual abuse material.
• The key to protecting children online is education, empowerment, supervision, and voluntary filtering.
• The key to combating child sexual abuse is to fund police and foster international cooperation.
• There are technical issues with the proposed filter.
• There are free speech and censorship concerns with the proposed filter.

Learn more about what is wrong with the proposed filter here.

8. Volunteer.

We are always looking for volunteers.  Anyone who is passionate is able to help us make a difference, so please let us know.  In particular we are looking for:

• People to collect signatures for the petition (see point 2).
• Graphic designers to create logos, postcards, posters, banners.
• Web developers and designers to create web applications and websites.
• Community managers, project managers, or anyone else with skills or ideas to help us organise this campaign.
• People to take delivery of a stack of postcards and distribute them to people who will write a message and post them back to us.

9. Follow the EFA on Twitter and Facebook.

Follow the EFA on Twitter for updates @efa_oz and become a fan of the EFA’s Facebook page.

10. Send us feedback.

Please contact me at pete.black@efa.org.au with your ideas and feedback.  We’d love to know what you think is working and where you would like the EFA to focus it resources.  We know that we won’t be able to please everyone all the time, but we are working to hard to persuade the Government and the Australian people that the Government’s mandatory Internet filtering policy is a mistake that will waste tens of millions of taxpayer dollars and will not make anyone safer.

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.

The big problem for Australia is that we have already been strong-armed into US-style copyright laws. The Australia – United States Free Trade Agreement resulted in us adopting many of the measures that the EU and Canada have so far refused to adopt – including criminal sanctions for non-commercial copyright infringement; a full notice and takedown scheme; civil and criminal penalties for the circumvention of technological measures and the distribution of circumvention devices; and protection for ‘rights management information’. To add to this, our copyright law is already stricter than US law on third party liability, where we prohibit acts that are taken as ‘authorising’ the infringement of copyright, and, depending on the outcome of the iiNet case, we may well even already have a sort of three-strikes system to disconnect individuals accused of using their internet connection to infringe copyright (without judicial oversight).

Late last year, I had a telephone meeting with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), who are negotiating the agreement on behalf of Australia. DFAT’s position throughout these negotiations (as I reported in October 2008) has been that they are “not seeking to drive domestic changes” through the ACTA. While DFAT were not at liberty to disclose their analysis of the draft text, they were quite helpful and willing to provide what information they could. Unlike the US, DFAT is not willing to discriminate against stakeholders by providing text information under confidentiality agreements, which, while limiting overall access to the text, may be preferable in that it avoids the privileged position of special interest groups. I remain to be quite impressed with the degree to which DFAT is willing to be open, within the confines of the trade agreement process, about the details. I was told that for the most contentious internet and civil enforcement measures, there is sufficient flexibility in the text that means that Australia will not have to amend its laws. This is relatively unsurprising, as we already have the worst of US copyright law (without the concomitant balancing user right of fair use).

The two main threats to Australian law from ACTA are statutory damages and ISP liability. Statutory damages mean that the copyright owner does not have to prove any actual harm in order to recover significant punitive damages under copyright law. Recently in the US we have seen awards of $2,250 per song for filesharing (recently reduced from the $80,000 per song awarded in 2009) and another award of $22,500 per song. These damages are sought in order to provide a deterrent to copyright infringement, but they are clearly manifestly excessive and certainly do not appear to be achieving any significant deterrent effect. Australia has an aggravated damages clause, but still requires copyright owners to show harm, and awards as high as the US are highly unlikely. I asked DFAT whether the ACTA will require states to introduce statutory damages schemes and was told that there is sufficient flexibility in the current drafts to allow member states to determine their own damages regime and no obligation to introduce statutory damages. It was heartening to hear that DFAT will not support a position that limits this flexibility.

The other threat is the issue of ISP liability. The iiNet litigation is currently before the courts, and there is a chance that the Federal Court will find that iiNet had no obligation to pass on infringement notices or to terminate repeat infringers. It is conceivable that the ACTA will require higher standards of ISP liability, which could potentially see Australia introduce legislation to essentially overturn any verdict in the iiNet case. Apparently, again, the draft text does not exceed the standard required under AUSFTA (to which Australian law is compliant) and is sufficiently flexible to allow member states to develop their own case law on the interpretation of the safe harbours. If this is correct, then there will be no requirement to make changes to our safe harbours as a result of the ACTA.
All of this means that Australia’s participation in these negotiations is unlikely to mean significant changes to our law. For Australia (and unlike the EU, Canada, and many other states negotiating the ACTA), the problem is not necessarily this agreement, but the precedents it sets. Over the last half century, it has become absolutely apparent that the particular rules we choose for copyright have a huge effect on the ability of people to communicate and the way that societies can develop. The balances we enact affect the royalties that are payable to authors, the power of publishers and intermediaries, the freedom to innovate, the access of disadvantaged sectors of society to educational and entertainment material, the cost of education, and the freedom to engage (and critically engage) with our culture. Given the importance of the copyright balance to our society, there is no justifiable reason to conduct negotiations behind closed doors. The choices we make now will stay with us for the foreseeable future. If we value the democratic process, we should certainly not allow it to be subverted in this way; we should not tie the hands of our government to the will of the US copyright industry, and we should certainly not do it without democratic discourse.

The ACTA is not a trade agreement; it is an intellectual property agreement. It is apparently being dressed up as a trade agreement to avoid public scrutiny. We can only assume that this is because it does not, in fact, reflect the public good, but rather reflects the wish-lists of the copyright industry. It may turn out that because Australia has already submitted to US copyright policy that the ACTA will not drive changes to local laws; nevertheless, it is still a fundamentally bad way to make law. We should be concerned that the transparent international organisations like WIPO are being increasingly marginalised (presumably because they are becoming increasingly interested in developing nations and increasingly resistant to the US agenda); we should also be concerned that we will become increasingly bound by international agreements to the extent that we no longer have the flexibility to determine what rules are best for Australia and Australians.

It has been said a number of times before, but it bears repeating now. If the ACTA is designed to provide necessary remedies for copyright infringement in order to ensure that there are adequate incentives to maintain investment in the creation of expressive material, we should be able to have a public debate about whether it achieves that goal. If our governments wish to engender trust in this process, more transparency is required. There are two conclusions we can draw from the lack of transparency here: either the ACTA does not achieve a copyright balance that is in the public good, or our government simply does not care about democratic discourse. A democratic process after the negotiation has been completed is a mere shadow of the democratic process that we should aspire to.

Stay tuned for any updates from the negotiations this week, and any news of how you can help to send a message that citizens worldwide don’t want to be neglected in the process to make the laws that they must live by.

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.”

EFA applauds this tough and unambiguous stance by the US and finds it a heartening and welcome development in a time where the trend seems all to often to be heading in the other direction. The United States’ undertaking to help foster technology that individuals can use to climb the walls of censorship is an intriguing development that could prove very interesting to watch.

Unfortunately, our own record here in Australia on the subject has been lacklustre of late with a bill being prepared as we speak to introduce mandatory censorship of all Australian Internet connections. The timing of Google’s announcements and Secretary Clinton’s speech must be seen as inconvenient for the Government whose allies on the side of Internet censorship are not a bunch it pays to be seen to associate with.

Perhaps to counter this negative perception, the Government today endorsed the Clinton speech, but have done so in a way that can only be described as highly ironic and not a little self-serving. In a media release supporting the move, Senator Conroy spent the first half promoting the Government’s National Broadband Network, and the second half defending their mandatory filtering policy. Beginning with “The Rudd Government also agrees with Secretary Clinton’s observation that ‘all societies recognise that freedom of expression has its limits’,” Conroy then goes on to raise alarm about the nastiest of nasty content.

This is a cynical twisting of Clinton’s words by a Minister on the defensive. To use a speech that includes the lines “governments should not prevent people from connecting to the internet, to websites, or to each other” and “censorship should not be in any way accepted by any company from anywhere” to justify a censorship policy is nothing if not brazen. Clinton’s words are worth reading in context:

Now, all societies recognize that free expression has its limits. We do not tolerate those who incite others to violence, such as the agents of al-Qaida who are, at this moment, using the internet to promote the mass murder of innocent people across the world. And hate speech that targets individuals on the basis of their race, religion, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation is reprehensible. It is an unfortunate fact that these issues are both growing challenges that the international community must confront together. And we must also grapple with the issue of anonymous speech. Those who use the internet to recruit terrorists or distribute stolen intellectual property cannot divorce their online actions from their real world identities. But these challenges must not become an excuse for governments to systematically violate the rights and privacy of those who use the internet for peaceful political purposes.

It’s clear from their announcement that the Government sees this speech as inconvenient rather than uplifting. We at EFA think that’s a shame, but thankfully, we think the Australian people with feel otherwise.