To Robert McClelland (Australian Attorney-General)

We the undersigned wish to express our disappointment with the recent decision to ban the game Fallout 3.

The decision is inconsistent with previous rulings where games with similar content were granted an OFLC rating and their sale permitted.

There are many precedents for games with similar content passing classification, and no precedent that justifies Fallout 3’s banning.

We request that you review this assessment. We welcome fair and just assessment of computer games, but we feel strongly that this decision causes confusion and can only result in a lack of faith in the ratings system for computer games.

We are concerned that this decision will result in Fallout 3 being purchased from overseas sources, which in turn will hurt the computer games industry as a whole.

We are especially concerned that this is yet another example of computer games being viewed needlessly harshly when compared to other forms of media with more mature content.

Thank you for your consideration in this matter.

Sign the petition at gameplayer

Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) has expressed its disappointment at the Federal Government’s decision to fund its mandatory “clean-feed” Internet in the 2008-09 federal budget.

At a time when the Government is cutting services to fight inflation, it’s bewildering that they would decide to spend tens of millions of taxpayer dollars on a filter before feasibility trials are even complete, said EFA spokesman Colin Jacobs: Given the manifest impracticality of the clean-feed scheme, I’m sure this money could have been put to much better use.

The 2008-09 budget allocates $24.3 million to the Government’s “cyber-safety” initiative, with the number to rise to $51.4m in the 2009-10 financial year. A media release from the Communications Minister, Senator Stephen Conroy, confirmed that the clean-feed remains a budgetary priority for the Government. Some funding will come from the Government’s now-defunct NetAlert filter scheme, which made PC-based software filters available for free to all Australian homes. Funding will be redirected to support ISPs making available a filtered internet service, or ‘clean feed’, to all homes, schools and public internet points accessible to children, said the Minister.

Australians are very uncomfortable with the idea of having the Government decide what’s appropriate for them and their families, said Jacobs. In fact, in a survey of 18,000 Internet users, only 13% agreed with the policy. That’s why we feel it is a shame, when the Government has identified real needs for better education and policing, that their approach to Internet policy is so skewed towards the filter initiative. There are greater risks to Australian children online, and real steps can be taken to mitigate these risks. That’s where the funding should be going.

The Minister’s announcement will undoubtedly rekindle concerns amongst the Internet industry about the priority the national filter has been given, and the effect this will have on data services in Australia.

EFA has launched a web site to highlight the concerns and educate Internet users about the Government’s plans, at http://nocleanfeed.com

His name is Tariq Biassi and he's 23 years old. He lives in Banyas with his mother and two sisters. His father was was a previous political prisoner.

Tarek sells and maintains PCs. He is described by his friends as shy and quiet, spending his time surfing the web and blogging.

On 7-7-2007, Tarek was asked by the security branch in Banyas to answer a few questions concerning a comment he left on one of the "sensitive" websites. That was the last his family heard from him.

Human Rights Watch mentioned his name in its report on Syrian officials' continuous arrests of people over online comments:

On June 30, 2007, Military Intelligence in the coastal city of Tartous arrested Tarek Biasi, 22, because he “went online and insulted security services,” according to a person familiar with the case. Biasi remains in incommunicado detention, his whereabouts unknown.

Recently, the new-formed “Ministry of Telecommunications and Technology” issued a new circular asking the owners of the Syrian websites “to exercise accuracy and objectivity (…) and to post the name of the writer of an article and the one who comments on it in a clear and detailed manner.”

Afghanistan's President, Hamid Karzai, has been inundated with appeals to save the life of Sayed Pervez Kambaksh, the student journalist sentenced to death after being accused of downloading an internet report on women's rights.

While international protests mounted over the affair, with the British Government saying it had already raised its concerns, hundreds of people marched through the capital, Kabul, demanding Kambaksh's release.

A petition launched yesterday by The Independent to secure justice for Kambaksh had attracted more than 13,500 signatories by last night, and a number of support groups have been set up on the social networking site Facebook with more than 400 joining one group alone.

Kambaksh was arrested, tried and convicted by a religious court, in what his friends and family say was a secret session without being allowed legal representation.

We the People will not be Chipped - No Verichip Inside Movement, is based on the irrefutable fact, that mankind has inalienable human rights that are absolute and can not be debased, nor perverted. Human life can not be degraded to a 16 digit RFID chip number embedded under you skin under any circumstance. By uniting on this common ground, we can send a strong message to the IBM funded Verichip that

We The People Will Not Be Chipped!

I will boycott eNom, Demand Media and its front organizations, resellers and affiliated entities by all means possible to me. Because of their involvement in Internet censorship and bad customer service but only if 50 other censorship fighters will do all they can to boycott them and encourage others to do the same.

The Internet should be a global medium for free speech and all companies active on this medium should advocate for this purpose. When one of the largest actors on Internet actively and willingly censor domain names, hides information and abuses their customer's action must be taken.

Demand Media, through eNom Inc, recently locked and blocked access to an innocent Englishman’s domain names without telling him; they also refuse to release these names. Forcing him to re-register his domain names with a different suffix.

They also did the exact same thing against the whistleblower's site wikileaks, when they disabled their domain name wikileaks.info. And obviously refused to reply until threatened with mass exposure.

Result: Success

50 censorship fighters signed up to boycott eNom