Anti-censorship Campaigns
Protests involving hundreds of people were held on 1 November 2008, with people in all capital cities nationwide marching on state Parliaments, and on 13 December 2008, in all capital cities. The Digital Liberty Coalition organised these protests, declaring an intent to rally continuously until censorship as a whole is taken off the table.
The Internet-based political activism organisation, GetUp!, which has previously run mainstream campaigns action against Work Choices and to free David Hicks, is backing the offline action of the DLC to oppose the web censorship plan. GetUp! first called for donations during December 2008 to raise awareness of Internet censorship in Australia. The group raised an unprecedented $30,000 before the end of the appeal's first day.
GetUp! teamed up with award winning, non-traditional and digital creative agency Fnuky Advertising to launch a campaign in Australia to raise awareness of the Australian Government's flawed plans to introduce web censorship. The campaign impersonated the Australian Federal Government by presenting web censorship as a mock consumer product branded as Censordyne, a parody of the toothpaste brand, Sensodyne. Fnuky Advertising's Creative Director, David Campbell selected toothpaste as the platform for the campaign after Stephen Conroy stated the purpose of web censorship in Australia was to 'Fight Moral Decay'. The Censordyne campaign was launched online during July 2009 by a single Twitter post by fake Stephen Conroy, a popular impersonator of the Australian Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy. The campaign featured an online video, a Censordyne product website and a Censordyne search engine. Within 24 hours of launch, the words GetUp and Censordyne were the number 2 and 3 most talked about brands on Twitter worldwide. The campaign received widespread coverage in most major Australian newspapers and news websites. Censordyne become a topic of discussion on Nova 96.9 radio in Sydney and was featured on the Australian ABC television program Insiders.
GetUp! raised over $45,000 in donations from the general public during July 2009 to see the Censordyne commercial on TV and on Qantas flights during the month of August 2009, where all Australian politicians would be travelling to Canberra. Following the Censordyne campaign launch, Qantas chose to censor the anti-censorship campaign from their flights.
Read more about this topic: Internet Censorship In Australia
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