i am very thankful to live in a country where censorship is very minor, and we have the right to freedom of speech both online and off. but unfortunately it is not the same all over the world.

a very good friend of mine from second life, moggs oceanlane is raising awareness to this completely ridiculous plan that her government is attempting to put into action. its ment to protect children from inappropriate content however it also punishes adults who are doing nothing wrong. it is not the government’s place to decide what is right and wrong to look at online or what information one can access. it should be up to the individual to make that decision. parents should pay attention to what their kids are doing on the internet and that’s it!

if this law goes though, austrailia will become the 4th country in the world to have centralised internet filtering, joining china, iran and saudi arabia. as well, the filtering will not only limit what austrailians are able to access but it will also significantly slow the broadband network and it is likely to cause an increase in price for internet service.

what can we do to help? well if you are an aussie and you agree that this is complete bullshit, write your government! let them know what you think! spread the word to your friends, get as many people involved as you can! you do not deserve to be filtered out and cut off from the world’s information.

other ways to raise awareness (stolen from moggs’ blog):

• black out your online profile pictures. overlay your profile pics with a black layer and display the #nocleanfeed text.
• inform your friends via your social networks- if you tag your blogs or twitter posts, use the tags nocleanfeed and if you wish, openinternet
• sign this petition being run by Electronic Frontiers Association

lets help austrailia maintain a little piece of freedom.