EFA publishes Takedown Hall of Shame

See full details here and submit your own candidates for this list here.

I understand that the recent takedown of an Australian political spoof site has already been sent to EFA.

The Townsville Bulletin objects!

On 7 November 2009 the Townville Bulletin published a sports article; A-League is no sprint.

On 10 November it sent a takedown notice to Google Inc. complaining about the blog North Queensland Fury FC: the journal taking liberties with the newspaper's copyright exactly twice in around 939 posts about this football club.
The second time being on that 7 November Saturday.

Seems this News Ltd rag with a circulation of between 27,000-42,000 plus is toeing Rupert Murdoch's line with a vengence.

Though I have to admit that posting an entire newspaper column (using an identical banner headline) on a blog the very same day the print and online edition of the paper carried it was stretching patience a bit too far.

I shouldn't read 'denialist' blogs.....

With global warming scepticism in full swing out in the blogosphere in the lead-up to the UN Climate Change Conference Copenhagen 2009 it is hard to resist opening some of the 'denialist' blogs referred to in passing by other bloggers.
A bad habit which can temporarily addle the brain.

This week I came across Denial Depot which apparently went online in April 2009 and boasts in its sidebar that:

We are not afraid to be called climate "deniers". In fact we embrace it as medal of honor bestowed on us by our alarmist foes. Galileo was a Denier. It is not an insult. I call this blog "Denier Depot" for that reason.
Welcome to my climate science blog.
I believe that one day all science will be done on blogs because we bloggers are natural skeptics, disbelieving the mainstream and accepting the possibility of any alternative idea.
We stand unimpressed by "textbooks", "peer review journals" and so-called "facts". There are no facts, just dissenting opinion. We are infinitely small compared to nature and can't grasp anything as certain as a fact.

The DD blogger Inferno (who has a twin blogging on Rouge Force with the occupation of Bum) comes out with confusing little gems which cast doubt on how well researched the main arguments being put forward in his posts are.

The latest brow furrow is this:

The difference between fraud and no fraud turns out to be about 0.4 degrees C ('C' means Cold, sometimes spoken in latin, 'Celcius').

Here I was thinking that C meant Celsius (named after the formulator of an early centigrade temperature scale, Anders Celsius) and that the usual Latin words for cold and very cold/icy are frigidus and gelidus respectively.

However, there is a rather large kernel of suspicion that Inferno and his {a presumption of gender} anti-global warming blog might actually be a giant leg pull.
The constant decrying of others cloaking identity behind a pen name, while continually doing the same on Denial Depot and repeated over-the-top boasting (along the lines of six impossible things to believe before breakfast) does make one wonder if he is having fun at the expense of others.

If Inferno is indulging in a little spoofing, I suspect that Britain, New Zealand or Australia might be where he hails from.

What is obvious from many of the comments attached to Inferno's posts is that he is taken very seriously by some readers.

Ralph Lauren brand owner hits out at blogger for laughing at advertisement blunder and blogger hits back

PRL USA Holdings, owner of the brand Ralph Lauren, issued a DMCA notice on 2 October 2009 to the blog PsD: Photoshop Disasters, for laughing at a Blue Label advertisement of a super skinny model (with distorted dimensions) which is still being displayed in Google cache as I write.

PsD now has a second Lauren advert posted The hits keep coming with a photo allegedly taken in Sydney - proving once more that displaying a humour deficit can lead to more people finding out about your company's photoshop blunders than if you had originally just taken it on the chin.

Image from PsD post The hits keep coming, 14 October 2009

North Coast Voices turns two in blog years

North Coast Voices celebrates its second birthday today.

Everyone here would like to say a big thankyou to all who have visited this blog and stayed to read and sometimes comment.

A special thanks also to those locals who decided to participate by using Guest Speak to add their views to the post mix.

American multinational tries to lock the gate to is website? Happy little Vegemites around the globe must be laughing

I have to admit that I haven't tried the new Vegemite with added cream cheese. My traditional tummy churns at the mere thought of this almost blasphemous concoction.
However recent Core Economics and Boing Boing posts aroused my curiosity as to why U.S. multinational Kraft Foods doesn't want anyone to link to its official Vegemite website.
Kraft's site states:
Terms of Use, Disclaimer and Copyright Notice
This website (http://www.vegemite.com.au) (the "Site") is owned and operated by Kraft Foods Limited (ACN 004 125 071). Access to and use of this Site is subject to the following terms and conditions and all applicable laws. If you do not agree to these terms and conditions, you must not access or otherwise use this Site.
In this Notice, "KRAFT Australia", "we" and "us" means Kraft Foods Limited.
The Site is designed to be useful, informative and fun. We welcome any comments and inquiries in relation to the site.
Er...... I had to access the site to read this notice.
So who's going to knock me off the Internet instantanément?
Does Kraft have a 24/7 cyber bully out there with its finger on a get-outta-here button?
Is its 'competition' to name the new pseudo Vegemite throwing up some abuse from happy little traditionalists or have there been more than a few critics out in the blogosphere over the years causing this attempt to restrict access?
Is Kraft going to send a cease and desist notice to the Wikipedia for multiple linkings, The Vegemite Wife ex-pat for posting images of that spread jar, Australian Flavour for linking to its jingle audio or Rupert Murdoch's News Ltd Weekly Times for linking to the website in para 2 of its 28th August 2009 article?
Want to ask Kraft what this guff is all about - email australia@kraftasia.com. G'arn!

North Coast Voices: blog visitor profile

Earlier this week North Coast Voices received a rather nice email via Boy the Wonder Cat's address:

Just a short note to say what a good job you do at independent news gathering. The site looks great. Too many great contributions to reply to all, so pass on my regards. I felt a bit intimidated that there are no comments for any posts. Do you get many hits locally? I hope so, it is a much better read than the Star or the Echo.

Now it is true that there are few comments made on North Coast Voices posts and, it is always fascinating to see the number of emails sent to our blogging cat or mention made of us in the local media in lieu of using the blog's comment section.

However, this is not something that troubles us as we are like half the blogosphere ourselves - mostly 'lurkers' nor comment makers.

The email did get me thinking though about giving readers a little feedback.

Yes, we are getting a growing number of local northern NSW visitors to the blog and North Coast Voices now appears in blog roll links on a number of other Australian websites for which we are grateful.

Current readership is roughly divided into 50 per cent Australian visitors to the blog and 50 per cent visitors from overseas. Some readers stay for a minute or so and a few stay for half an hour or more.

Readers can be as close as the Tweed and Coffs Harbour or as far away as Tunisia and Chile. Both Canberra and Washington DC frequently feature in any location breakdown by month.

Various government department and university computers across the country also have a peek at what our authors have to say. As of course does Monsanto and other multinational companies we mention from time to time.

North Coast Voices has been up and running for twenty-two months and has it's second birthday in early October.

A big thankyou to all who read this blog.

What do they say? No press is bad press - just spell the name right

The hard working North Coast Labor MP for Page Janelle Saffin found herself picked out for a rather truncated mention in a bible-quoting Canadian market opinion blog post courtesy of Joel Bowman, reporting from Taipei, Taiwan on 17 August 2009.

This post was apparently echoing seven other blogs or media reports, mostly from earlier in the year, which commented on the fact that $900 2008-09 tax refunds sent out as part of the Australian Government stimulus package also went to the estates of taxpayers who had died in or after the last financial year.

Apparently the general sentiment was; when it comes to tax refund money you're not supposed to take it with you no matter how hard you worked when alive.

Never mind, Janelle - at least they all spelt your name correctly!

Memo to Dear Rupert and the Mainstream Media

These past few months I've been reading a lot of online chatter about how mainstream media needs to recoup the costs of providing news, make a profit for shareholders and stop advertising revenue haemorrhaging.

I've also been reading items on the expense associated with researching in-depth news stories and how unfair it is that bloggers apparently get a free ride on the backs of MSM journalists.

Now I can't answer for every other blogger or online news website visitor, but I think that Rupert Murdoch and other print media owners are allowing their financial problems to overly colour commercial responses to emerging trends in how ordinary people access/receive their daily news.

I suspect that part of the reason that traditional media owners are so blinkered is that their own editors and journalists are not being entirely honest with them about how they come by some of the facts which end up in published articles (and it's not just that some journos surf the blogs looking for information or ideas for a story).

The reality is that not all bloggers or online news readers simply take from the MSM without giving back.

Whenever I come across something of significant political, environmental or social interest and, after I have gathered together a parcel of research on same, I often pass it on to journalists at no cost and for no glory.

I do this because I feel the material is important and traditional media still has a readership reach that I, as a small blogger among many millions world-wide, cannot hope to emulate.

It is not unknown for my research to form the body of a Page One or Page Three article in local and sometimes even national newspapers.

I rather suspect that I am not unusual in doing this and, I also expect that Australian bloggers like myself will no longer feel inclined to pass on what has often been many hours of research (including emails/long distance phone calls to confirm documents) if the likes of News Ltd or Fairfax decide that MSM news will no longer be free to view online.

So Mr. Murdoch, be prepared for the possibility of an inexplicable spike in costs associated with news gathering and 'scoops' if you go ahead with user-pays news online. Bloggers may just decide that giving you something for nothing is no longer a good idea.

At least Chris Ahearn, President, Media at Thomson Reuters realises that matters are not as black and white as Murdoch suggests when he writes Why I believe in the link economy.

The faces behind "Mr. Monsanto"

I've been told in no uncertain terms that it's my turn to do a post on Monsanto & Co., so here it is - a view of some of the faces behind Monsanto's media monitor, Mr. Monsanto.

PHOTO: Mica Veihman, head of Monsanto’s social media team (seated), with Chris Paton and Kathleen Manning, is tapping into Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. From the St. Lois Business Journal on 8th August 2009.

Regular readers will remember Kathleen for the noteworty line that no blog is too big or small for Monsanto to monitor.

* This post is part of North Coast Voices' effort to keep Monsanto's blog monitor (affectionately known as Mr. Monsanto) in long-term employment.

There aren't any jobs on a dead planet**

By the time Kevin Rudd had closed comment on the inaugural Focus on Climate Change post at PM's Blog last week there were 939 published comments listed.

This was a fairly respectable response given that all participants had to register, comment was moderated and, comment publication was restricted to business hours which meant that there was limited debate on opinions put forward.

This week it appears that the Prime Minister via his second post wants a very brief snapshot of the nation's reaction to the NHHC report on health care reform, because there are less than four full days allotted for comment.

By 12.45pm on Tuesday 28 July 2009 there were a mere 20 comments on his health post, which worked out at only 1.1 comments per hour since that post went online.

Oh, and by the way, the Prime Minster's second post is erroneously tagged as a health blog when in fact it is a post on the PM's Blog - a mildly annoying little error.

** Line from a comment on Australian Prime Minister's first post on his new official blog.

Update:

no_filter_YambaPM's Blog a fail with only 97 comments on his health reform post? Or too early to tell? http://bit.ly/2K2Hzbless than 5 seconds ago from web

Australian PM says no comments supporting the Opposition on my blog thankyou

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is prepared to have a limited dialogue with others on his new blog at PM Connect starting off with the question; How do you think we can make Australians more aware that we need to act on climate change now?

But only between 2pm 16 July 2009 and 5pm 22 July 2009 and only if you restrict yourself to 300 words or less.

Don't think that you'll be able to anonymously offer a comment or two either in this mini debate as you have to register a legitimate email address, but pen names for publication are O.K. apparently.
Due to comment moderation only occurring during business hours be prepared for a long time lag until your own after-hours comment is published.

Oh, and don't dare include a link in your comment or indicate that you support a particular political party or you'll be binned!

do not include internet addresses, videos, images or links to websites, or any email addresses, in your contribution; and

do not post overtly party political comment (eg. reference to candidates, fundraisers, support for political parties).

Here are the 55 moderated comments published on the first day.

Spontaneity is definitely missing from this blog and it seems that the Prime Minister's minders have learnt nothing from Stephen Conroy's abortive attempt at an official blog.

Blame it on the bloggers!

Chairman and CEO of News Ltd John Hartigan had a simple message to deliver as part of his televised address to the National Press Club on Wednesday 1 July 2009.
Pared down to the basics it went like this: Journalists good, bloggers B-A-D. Hard copy and online newspapers very good, blogs even B-A-D-D-E-R!

Just last month ex-CIA Director Michael Hayden writing in The Washington Post opined that the blogosphere was partly to blame for a CIA analyst withdrawing his nomination for U.S. Undersecretary of Homeland Security for Intelligence.

Australian Communications Minister Senator Stephen Conroy obviously doesn't know what to make of bloggers and oppressive regimes world-wide try to silence the most politically vocal of them.

One gets the general impression that the blogosphere must be doing something right.

Image from Google Images

Update:
The Herald Sun has obligingly published the full text of Hartigan's address.

Lost in translation..........

This turned up in the blogosphere recently. It seems to be a case of lost in translation for this look at North Coast Voices by Sustainability Definition.

North Coast Voices: It's crack 'em when they're down despite it at Fiscal Star

Hi! My personage is Boy. I'm a manful bi-coloured tabby cat. Ever since I discovered that Malcolm Turnbull's dogs were allowed to blog, I be subjected to been pestering Clarencegirl to okay me a petite place on North Coast Voices. Departed blue-eyed boy musing: The deddie scintilla has raised its CEO in a blog. The Orstrahyun mentions hearing more a fortune-teller who charges at least $100 an hour crusade of speaking to departed pets and conveying messages. I don't regard as we would be less chatty than beforehand - I'm dependable we would also utter "Let me in", "Let me out", "Just up to snuff behind my consideration intention you", "Why is the dog in my bed?", "Take it away - it's not up to my culinary standards"and "Is Malcolm Turnbull STILL moaning?"An Easter Bunny musing: It was a tittle of a petrify to the Easter Bunny when on Easter Sunday the ABC TV Landline program ran not one but three stories on rabbits - involving profit as good as poisoning, trapping, blowing up burrows and preparing crusade of the gut. ......This entry was posted on Freitag, Mai 29th, 2009 at 15:17 and is filed under Allgemein.

Sometimes those free 'translate this' sites on the Web are just not up to snuff.

Main stream media wants news blogs to pay for approval - now I've heard it all

It has been obvious for some time that the Mainstream Media is not only worried about revenue and profit margins, it is also worried about online competition from some of the larger blogs which carry a degree of credibility when it comes to political and social commentary as well as sometimes displaying an investigative element in presentation of news items.

The lure of money and wider readership has been used in the last couple of years to try and corral some well-known bloggers within the confines of 'old' media.

Now the MSM is casting its net wider and without the financial bait - it wants to invite certain websites to pay it for a credibility tick and an over the shouder policeman.

According to Mumbrella on 14 May 2009:

He also warns that the funding of the Press Council is "rapidly falling apart". This week, The Australian reported that its members were threatening to cut its budget by a third.
Kennedy suggests that a way to bridge the funding gap would be to invite news websites and other organisation to come under its remit.
He said: "For online publications, which don't have a high traffic flow, we could come up with a system similar to the Standards Association tick which is keenly sought by companies wanting to give their products credibility. We have 'street cred', built up over the past decade. For a fee, we could offer a Press Council tick, logo etc to online companies which subscribe to our principles and agree to be part of the complaints procedure. The selling attraction is that, as online news sites become more prevalent, they will be seeking some way to establish a point of difference between a credible site (Crikey.com.au, for example) and one drummed up in the garage of a bunch of anarchists."

If it wasn't so desperate a measure it would be funny.........

Image from The Wall Street Journal

Fiji Update: blogging from behind the palm curtain

From Raw Fiji News, 17 May 2009:

The European Union has reaffirmed its total opposition to the Fiji military's refusal to allow a return to democracy for at least another five years. One of the EU's commissioners says virtually all financial assistance to Fiji has been suspended.
Presenter: Sean Dorney, Australia Network's Pacific correspondent
Speaker: Joe Borg, European Commissioner for Fisheries and Maritime Affairs .

Discombobulated Bubu scriptwrites on 15 May 2009:

Good evening people of Fiji.
The rate at which The most honirable, his elexensi, his majesti Common-dor LMAO, FFS, BDOE and OFB, Voreqe's Military shoes have to be replaced with new or rebuilt shoes varies widely under diverse climatic conditions.
(Sound of birds tweeting) ..... In the tropics of the SouthPacific, however, two pairs of shoes last, on the average, only five months, especially if the Commondore needs to run very fast down tapioka laden slopes under stress inducing mortar and gunfire..... (sound of heavy tweeting)
The replacement rate is not constant. It varies with the terrain, the weather and the type of warfare, and many other factors. It must be estimated before he and his loyalist troops even land on new territory such as in the hills of Naitasiri ... (sound of weeds tweeting) or on the porches of Methodist Churches or even within the confines of the Hot Bread Kitchen stores.

Luvei Viti: Children of Fiji, 15 May 2009:

Fiji Community & Friends of Fiji in Wellington were able to witness & enjoy the beautiful harmony by these school children who sang their hearts out last night. We cried silent tears as we soaked in the sweetness of their voices knowing well that our beloved Homeland Fiji is in dire strait.

Intelligentsiya home page:

Heroes Roll Call

1) Mr Edwin Nand - Released 15/4/09, mid-morning
2) Mr Dorsami Naidu - Released 15/4/09, mid-afternoon
3) Mr Kavai Damu - Detained 5pm 15/4/09, Released 6:30pm 15/04/09
4) Mr Pita Ligaula - Detained 2pm 16/4/09, Released midday 17/04/09
5) Mr Shelvin Chand - Detained 9/5/09, Released 11/5/09
6) Dionisia Turagabeci - Detained 9/5/09, Released 11/5/09
7) Theresa Ralogaivau - Detained 14/5/09, Released 14/5/09

Fiji Silenced, 14 May 2009:

Fiji Today on May 17 2009:

I am in the IT industry in Suva and spend most of my installing or maintaining company computer systems.
Yesterday I detected an unknown program operating on a system in an Internet Cafe. I copied the OS files but as they were encoded I was unable to ascertain their purpose.
I posted this segment of code on an international industry chat room and asked "What is it?"
The reply came from the author of the program that it was a "Keystroke" program designed to record all keystrokes on the computer and when "Pinged" from the outside to pass on all sites visited, usernames, times and passwords.
He is confident that his program has not currently been detected by virus software so will still be active. He has sold over 300 copies of the program at $US 2500 per copy. The sales are mainly to large companies or Spooks in various Governments. He offered this information in exchange for how I had detected it. He intends to rewrite the code so it is better hidden in the future versions.
Warning: Everything you type into any computer in a Fiji Internet Cafe can be viewed later by the Military. Do not do anything that requires you to use a password. If you have done so change your password immediatly.
I suspect this may be the reason that several blog sites were hacked and killed in the past.

Who reads Bolt and Blair anyway? An update

I've often wondered who actually reads Andrew Bolt and Tim Blair's MSM blogs.

It seems I'm not alone in this as it is mentioned from time to time in the blogosphere.

Google Trends cannot give a definitive answer, but it most usefully supplied this short profile of who visits News.com.au websites in 2009.

It is likely that those who read Murdoch's online newspapers mostly hail from Australia and America, favour the Herald-Sun, are sports fans and look up telephone numbers on the Internet.

Not the same profile as those visiting the Prime Minister's official website , the Australian Financial Review online, Crikey's website, the Club Troppo blog or even visitors to local newspaper the Northern Star .

Goldman Sachs threatens blogger but only ends up advertising the dissident blog

Goldman Sachs like any other big financial institution is more than a little sensitive to criticism since the global financial crisis exposed the greedy underbelly of financial institutions.

On 25 March 2009 Mike Morgan set up a blog at www.goldmansachs666.com aimed at airing information about this merchant bank.

The blog's banner is Info, Comments, Opinions and Facts About Goldman Sachs, its first post was on 26 March and its first legal letter on behalf of Goldman Sachs was dated 8 April.

Apparently the banking group is asserting that use of the wording goldmansachs666 is a breach of copyright, unfair competition and implies the blogger has an affiliation or relationship with Goldman Sachs.

Rather a thin argument to put forward I would have thought and somewhat misleading; as it is clear as day that what these bankers are really objecting to is information being published about such matters as the amount of taxpayer money Goldman Sachs received from the US Government's financial institutions bailout.
Information which unsurprisingly is already in the public domain at websites such as Market Watch.

It is very interesting to note that a copy of the legal letter was sent to the blog's host GoDaddy Inc. in what looks like a move to unsettle the host and have it bring pressure to bear on Mike Morgan.

This would have to be a first surely for a young blog - threatened with litigation within the first fortnight of its existence.

One wonders if Sinewave who created the Goldman Sucks blog in April 2009 will also eventually fall foul of these bankers.

Of course once Goldman Sachs decided to set out down the legal path the outcome was inevitable.

Now the blogosphere is discussing the situation with posts such as What's Goldman Sachs Hiding? Is it another Madoff scam?, Goldman Sachs is worried about its reputation ~ LOL and Goldman Sachs Seeks To Stifle Blogger Critic (GS)
While Google is returning over 2,000 results on a search for the term goldmansachs666.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc Chairman and CEO Lloyd Blankfein stated in a speech to the Council of Institutional Investors in Washington earlier this month:

To begin with an obvious point, much of the past year has been deeply humbling for my industry. We held ourselves up as the experts, and the loss of public confidence from failing to live up to the expectations that we created will take years to rebuild. Worse, decisions on compensation and other actions taken and not taken, particularly at banks that rapidly lost a lot of shareholder value, look self-serving and greedy in hindsight.

Might I suggest to Mr. Blankfein that trying to bully a blogger into silence when he does not appear to have actually breached any law (yet) is not the way to rebuild confidence in the Goldman Sachs brand.

It's raining on our blog!

Due to prolonged wet weather here on the NSW North Coast at least two of North Coast Voices regular authors are having problems with their phone lines and Internet connections.

We are hoping that the problem will be resolved by Wednesday.

Our apologies if posts on this blog are rather erratic over the next few days.

What the blogosphere is saying this month about the Rudd-Conroy plan to censor the Australian Internet

First up, ACMA is already using its soon-to-be executive muscle to bully Australian-hosted websites into not linking to sites on its 'blacklist'. One of the sites disbarred — among many others — is a perfectly legitimate anti-abortion site that at worst could be described as 'cheesy'. ACMA's bullying is on the pricy side, too — AUD$11,000 a pop. The blacklist (as you would expect) has been leaked, while Conroy himself is now planning to 'monitor blogs'. Quite apart from the egregiousness of this exercise in censorship, it is important to realise that Ruddy is trying to bypass parliament with this stuff, so that they don't have to deal with that pesky Senate (Xenophon and the Greens as well as the Opposition in this case). Government by executive order, anyone? Skepticlawyer 23 March 2009

Is Conroy a fundy? Will this site be on his list 'cause we all know that you can't be good without religion. *Palm/Head*
You don't have to look online for sexual predators, look no further than your local church. Atheist Nexus 21 March 2009

Stephen Conroy is a Cnut 21 March 2009

STEVE CONROY BELONGS ON THE BACK BENCH AND FAILING BEING ABLE TO GET THAT RIGHT, MAY POSSIBLY FIND PURPOSE AND MEANING AS A DOOR STOP. Thinkers Podium 23 March 2009

It was only a matter of time, but it's finally happened. The DBCDE has alienated enough of its private sector partners that one of them has leaked the blacklist. Websinthe 19 March 2009

Apparently, Australian Communications Minister Stephen Conroy is wetting his bed over the thought that his fellow Australians might think somewhat less of him for so enthusiastically promoting the idea of an Internet filter. Kerplunk 23 March 2009

Guys, we're in trouble.
My assistant was reading the internet to me this morning, and do you know what she said? She said that the average punter doesn't think the filter is going to work. We're spending a couple of hundred million dollars on this thing! If John and Jane Easy-to-Scare think we're wasting money in the middle of the GFC, we're f##ked, okay? F##ked.
We've got to get these shmucks back on-side.
Leaking the list was a good start. Lots of scary-sounding websites, "violent"-this, and "rape"-that, and whoever came up with the dentist? Genius. That is the kind of attention-to-detail that makes me proud to be part of this shadowy conspiracy. People are scared of the dentist; visits are painful and expensive and wasn't someone raped at a dentist once? Why, it's almost as if "false-positives" in the list are a good thing! Nicely done.
In 1960, I bet if you told an American that men would walk on the moon, they'd have said you were crazy, then robbed you at gunpoint. But as soon as the Americans faked that moon landing, all those doubting pieholes became true believers.
I want you guys to find out what can we learn from the American experience, and how we might apply those learnings to the trial. I want it on my desk by the end of the day.
Look, we're doing good work. The Lord's work. We can't allow these Mountain Dew-sucking deviants to keep running circles around us. Get your shit together, get me some answers, then get me a latte and a mini-muffin.
Lots of love,
Fake Stephen Conroy Department of the Internets 20 March 2009 [apologies to the fake Stephen Conroy but obscenities are masked because existing voluntary filters being used by some ISPs make North Coast Voices emailing posts option difficult to use successfully otherwise]

Here's a summary of the views of many in the real and virtual world. Senior nanny Conroy is a dipstick, an unresponsive loon, an ill-mannered and unpleasant smear tactician, an intellectual thuggee, and a morally derelict moralist dedicated to calling opponents of his oppressive, inept, useless and futile proposed filtering regime supporters of paedophilia.

Never has one man so singlehandedly struggled to institute a policy reviled by so many without actually listening to anything anyone was telling him, for reasons that have to remain inexplicable and mysterious, even when far-fetched notions that he belongs to Opus Dei or just wants to suck up to Steve Fielding are trotted out.

He's no more capable of sophisticated policy analysis of the new world of the intertubes, new media and new digital content than a Balmain member of the Labor party armed with a hammer and a baseball bat. If it's a nail, bash it with the baseball bat. If it's the intertubes, hit it with the hammer. The Michael Duffy Files 23 March 2009

Senator Conroy has a lot to answer for. Between trying to destroy filter the internet and keeping the whole NBN process clouded in secrecy (so nobody can criticise his handling of it, we suppose), there are a lot of arguments and issues that the Minister needs to answer for. And considering he's going to be a guest on the ABC's Q&A program next Thursday, this could be our chance to ask him the tough questions.

So, this is a call to arms. All of you Gizmodians who are interested in asking why Senator Conroy has so badly mishandled everything he's touched so far should head over to the Q&A website and ask their questions. Melbourne readers should also try and get into the audience for the show. And everyone make sure you watch Q&A next Thursday to watch just how Conroy responds to the difficult questions. Gizmodo 20 March 2009

...Conroy's filter proposal represents the greatest assault on free speech and an open society in the country's history. By its very nature, it is categorical and self-concealing, far beyond the sleazy and capricious "sedition" laws of the Howard government. For the left and the libertarian right it has to be recognised not only as an utter priority, but as the point on which a political realignment occurs. Crikey 19 March 2009

It is disappointing that the Communications Minister's department, and the Age, are so ignorant that they think Whirlpool is a blog. Whirlpool discussion forum 22 March 2009