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  • Planned US anti-piracy laws a draconian mess

    By Kim Heitman, EFA Secretary The battle over proposed anti-piracy bills in the US is not just about Hollywood versus the internet, it is a fight between the past and the future. It also throws up a real danger that the laws could become an easy way to silence critics. Internet sites such as Wikipedia, the user-built online encyclopaedia, yesterday “blacked-out” in protest against the two bills going through the…

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  • Melbourne event: War on the Internet

    War on the Internet Update: videos from this event are now available at: http://vimeo.com/efaoz Update: Julian Assange is recording a video that wll be played at this event.  For anyone unable to attend, we’ll be streaming the whole event here: http://www.livestream.com/efa_oz Electronic Frontiers Australia, in partnership with the Australian Greens, is proud to present: War on the Internet, an event featuring: Jacob Applebaum – leading computer security researcher and hacker Bernard…

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  • In principle support of R18+ rating for video games

    Some of EFA’s campaigns, such as fighting against the Internet Filter and pushing for a R18 rating for video games, can be seen as long-term goals. We’ve been fighting them for a number of years and sometimes it can be difficult to see light at the end of the tunnel, no matter how hard we try or how logical our arguments seem to be. Today we’ve made a significant step…

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  • New domain names on the way

    At last weeks ICANN meeting in Singapore, the ICANN board made a historic decision, to go ahead with a program of creating many new top level generic domain names, and EFA was there. A top level domain is one at the top level of the domain system (a name like .com, or .org, or .au), and a generic name is a name that isn’t a country code domain (e.g. a…

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  • EFA News

    I’d like to quickly update our members and supporters with a few bits of EFA news. Things have been outwardly quiet recently; although we have been active behind the scenes and in the media, commenting on issues such as privacy, copyright, censorship and games, we have not been producing as much content and commentary as we’d like to. Why is this? We’ve been working on some much-needed internal reorganisation, which…

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  • Conroy: Filter alive and kicking

    Communications Minister Stephen Conroy went in to bat for the Labor Government’s mandatory internet filter again, reaffirming the commitment to the unpopular policy. Nothing has changed since earlier debates; the filter still has the same problems it has always had – it’s useless, unworkable and expensive. It still won’t help anybody. The latest line, that the Minister trusts “to the common sense of the Australian public with respect to the…

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What We Do

Policy

We actively monitor a number of policy areas and specific issues. The topics below provide a detailed view of EFA’s policy positions.

Copyright

Australia’s copyright laws are outdated, inflexible and not fit for the digital age. As such, EFA is a long-standing supporter of reform of Australia’s Copyright Act.

Privacy & Security

Privacy is fundamentally about consent and control over access to information, and goes hand-in-hand with security. Privacy is a human right.

Censorship

Adults should be able to make their own informed decisions about what content they create and consume.

Encryption

Access to encryption technologies is vital for individuals and groups to be able to safeguard the security and privacy of their information.

Internet Safety

Surveillance is not safety. Safety for whom, against what? This complex problem is more likely to be exacerbated, rather than solved, by measures that allow for unaccountable surveillance and the undermining of communications security.

Surveillance

EFA is committed to ensuring that Australian’s home life is not subject to arbitrary interference.