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Almost exactly a year ago, “Is Australia the latest country to take on the role of corporate copyright cop?” – asked p2pnet, going on:

“In the face of determined opposition from Oz ISPs, chairman Rudd’s censorship plans may be far more wide ranging than first suspected.

“Kevin Rudd’s Labour government has already taken it upon itself to decide what Australians shall, or shan’t, see online, and its policies are looking increasingly oppressive as time goes on.”

In an update to events, Australia will introduce a censor-system “just before next year’s election”, said The Age this month.

A blacklist of “refused classification” sites will be compiled “using a public complaints mechanism, Government censors and web addresses provided by international agencies”, it said.

Fronting the move is minister for broadband, communications  and the digital economy senator Stephen Conroy who calls censorship ‘filtering’ and who hasn’t wasted a minute to start it happening.

“On the afternoon of Thu 17th, 2009 SAPIA Pty Ltd registered the domain name ’stephenconroy.com.au’ as a satirical platform on which to air grievances and promote debate about the Australian governments proposed mandatory Internet filtering scheme,” says a statement, going on >>>

By 5pm the next day, the website was forcibly taken offline by auDA, Australia’s domain authority body after a complaint concerning the registrant’s eligibility was raised, presumably by Stephen Conroy’s office: the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy.

SAPIA was given merely 3 hours to issue a response which is an unusually short period of time for domain eligibility complaints to be arbitrated. Typically domains in question are given up to 10 days for arbitration to occur. This time frame was manifestly inadequate to obtain representation and prepare an appropriate response and a request for additional time was denied personally by Chris Disspain, auDA’s CEO shortly before the domain was taken offline.

This naturally raises concerns about outright Internet censorship at worst, collusion between auDA and the government as a possibly, and at best a knee-jerk political reaction by auDA which appears on the face of it like the suppression of political debate in Australia.

This situation echos the 2006 takedown of Richard Neville’s John Howard “Apology” parody website, which disappeared without recourse.

The website will remain online at http://stephen-conroy.com regardless of future decisions by auDA. IT professionals, Law experts and the Internet community at large have contacted SAPIA expressing their support and we will continue to express our discontent in a democratic, law abiding manner as is appropriate for a free and civilised western country such as Australia.

Says f_bassman@Whirlpool on http://stephen-conroy.com:

“The interesting part of this is that it shows that the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy has not even been forward thinking enough to register his own name domain.”

Says the site, from whence came the cartoon >>>

Whats this about? Australia’s internet is about to be censored under a plan to implement state mandated filtering being championed by a fascist ass! Read all about Senator Stephen Conroy HERE!

DO YOU WANT AUSTRALIA TO JOIN THE RANKS OF CHINA, CUBA, NORTH KOREA, AND IRAN? FIGHT BACK AND DENY STEPHEN CONROY’S MANIACAL PLAN!

If you don’t think the Labor party has the right to arbitrate what you can and can’t see on the internet you need to TELL THEM! Email the Minister HERE, tell him that what he’s planning is completely unacceptable, and that you’ll punish his party at the next Federal Election if he proceeds.

Better yet, why not email every labor branch in the country and tell them what you think! Here’s a list of addresses you can easily cut-and-paste directly in to your mail client:

info@act.alp.org.au, office@nswalp.com, Territory.Labor@alp.org.au, info@qld.alp.org.au, info@sa.alp.org.au, info@tas.alp.org.au, info@vic.alp.org.au, info@wa.alp.org.au

And in an update today >>>

We’ve just sent this open letter to auDA regarding our domain dispute over the ’stephenconroy.com.au’ and other domain names, we now await their reply:

I’d like to take the opportunity to make the following representations to you on behalf of stephenconroy.com.au:

1) Our domain names were registered by a recognised business entity for the purpose of democratic protest against Senator Stephen Conroy. We feel that this constitutes a close and direct connection to the name. The website contains no illegal material.

2) We were given manifestly inadequate time to make submissions as to the validity of our registration. The research we’ve done indicates that this is almost unprecedented. We have been made aware of a policy dispute lodged over ‘financetech.com.au’ (auDA complaint C0908912) earlier today. In auDA’s reply Vanessa Stanford notes that an investigation of this dispute could take up to 30 days. This seems to be quite contrasting with the period of less than 3 hours we were given.

3) We are aware that auDA’s office is closed between 22?nd December (tomorrow) and 11?th January. This would mean that our domain ‘pending delete’ would expire while your office is closed and we would arbitrarily lose the domains. How do you expect to run an investigation in to our eligibility while your office is closed ?

4) We request that the stephenconroy domains are immediately returned to our control. If you would like to investigate this further we request that control is at least returned for the break period in order to avoid us arbitrarily losing them.

Please note that this is an open letter which we intend to publish and release to the press immediately. As you may be aware this issue has and continues to receive significant media interest. Given that your office is closing tomorrow we request a reply to this communication as soon as possible.

Definitely stay tuned.

(Cheers, everyone who sent this in)

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