Internet vigilante group Anonymous have stepped up their campaign against the Rudd Government and its Internet censorship scheme today. “Operation Titstorm” began with denial of service attacks against various Government websites including that of the Prime Minister.
EFA naturally condemns these attacks – not only are they illegal, but they damage the cause by playing to stereotypes of filter opponents as juveniles motivated by a desire to keep the Internet safe for porn. They serve no purpose but to give the Government the moral high ground, and distract from arguments about the ineffectiveness of the policy and its ramifications for free speech.
It’s easy to understand the frustrations that the Anonymous members feel – it’s true that the censorship plan has been thrust on the Australian public without consultation, research or a coherent policy objective. But this campaign just serves for Anonymous members to get a little revenge. It certainly won’t persuade anyone; rather, it will hurt the anti-filtering campaign.
Worse, their objections are ill-informed and easily countered. They claimed:
Brief background information: Chairmen Rudd and his aid Steven Conroy have recently passed a ban accross all of Australia on porography depicting women with small breasts, in a supposed crackdown on “simulated” child porn. He is now pushing for mandatory ISP filtering, allowing him to completely control what Australians can view on the internet.
(The misspellings are in the original.) Although they allude to a genuine problem with a nebulous and subjective classification standard for adult material – well covered by Michael Meloni at SToTC – the insinuation that this is a new thing, or that it is related to filtering, is incorrect. In fact, Rudd and his “aid” Conroy have not changed the classification scheme for movies.
It may be frustrating – and lot of hard work – but there’s only one way to keep this ill-conceived plan at bay, and that is by bringing pressure on our elected representatives to see sense and move on to other priorities. Let the Minister, his shadow Tony Smith, and your local MP know that you are against the plan.