Went to the Brisbane internet censorship protest yesterday, the video below from the ABC says that there was around 200 people there. It was a very hot sunny day. Overall I think everyone had a good time, the speakers were good and the crowd was getting behind them, occasionally people made internet geek jokes, it was cool to be around such a large crowd that actually get those jokes. Good work by the volunteers and protesters. I took a whole bunch of photos you can see below, hopefully people will add comments to those photos so we get a better idea of whos who. Thanks Jack for getting involved in the protest and helping with the photos. Some of the signs were funny, my favourites are the lolcats, fail whale, leet speak and of course don’t censor my dofollow links.
One of the more serious speakers was Kieran Salsone , he gave a good short talk, and asked who was a member of the EFA, only one person raised their hand and then Kieran said something like “ok just one, well the rest of you may as well go home” and also said something about playing with the big boys. He really did resemble tom cruise in tropic thunder which kind of made me chuckle. I do know he was very serious and passionate about what he does, when he stepped down after his talk you could see his adrenaline pumping. Anyway I’ll join the EFA, its only $41 a year for individuals, they could learn a few things from the FSF and Bradley Kuhn about how to increase their membership, I guess thats if they’re interested in getting more support from “small fry” people like me.
The only other thing I did was print some flyers on banner vinyl and gave them to Varg Narseth from DLC. They are pretty much the best quality stickers you can get so it was nice to contribute something to those guys.
They say a picture tells a thousand words so check out my 31000 words below, I’m sure a lot of academics wished it worked like that.
Also check out Janet Hawtins Designs.
Edit: I’ve updated this article thanks to comments on flickr and this post. Thank you everyone for helping me piece this together.
ABC Brisbane — ‘Net Censorship Protest
Check out this article “Hands off our internet, say free-speech protesters” in the brisbane times.
thank you for the coverage chris, i was the lad you passed the stickers to =]. again, thank you for contributing. Every little bit of effort helps!
-Varg
Thank you for the stickers you donation – we’ll put them to good use! I’m glad to hear you had a good time at the rally yesterday and hope to see you involved in DLC’s upcoming campaigns against internet censorship.
Kind regards,
Jasmine
Rally Coordinator
Thanks for your comments guys, I updated some of the flickr descriptions and thanks for all your efforts putting together the rally. I’m a little run down at work this time of year, hopefully next time I can be better organized and contribute more.
The person who mentioned joining EFA was not a speaker for EFA, nor a board member. They were not speaking on EFA’s behalf. The speaker, Kieran ( http://twitter.com/websinthe ), is simply a paid member of EFA to the best of my knowledge.
thanks for the info and link
@ Michael:
Thanks indeed for the information. I’d hate to think that a comment like that was indicative of EFA’s official position.
haha that guy was pretty hardcore, saying something like
‘if you’re not a member of the EFA you might as well go home’
Thanks for straightening that out for me Michael.
I was using the EFA as an example. I’ve been criticised fairly broadly for taking the stand that I did. In hindsight I would have used less harsh wording, especially given that nobody remembers a damn thing else I said.
Thanks for the positive comments Chris. I feel less likely to insult people in the future already.
Thank you for the link and information!