If i was running a campaign about unnecessary gt intrusion and compulsory internet censorship, i would think it far more imaginative to gather a bunch of activists, head to some public/uni libraries and say, cling wrap up all the books that could be(absurdly) deemed inappropriate – med texts, art books, Cosmo magazine etc etc… I’d aim to generate some viral buzz online for a day or two, then repeat the exercise, only this time slap a censored sticker/postcard under the wrap, explaining why yr doing it, and include the address of a relevant website.

After the first stealth protest, you could send a teaser press release to the relevant MSM followed up by another the next day fully explaining the issue and outlining the specific point you are trying to make.

Just sayin’

Surely net-savvy folk can find much more creative ways of making their point

You could, I suppose, contrive to get some sites that are germane to Stephen Conroy’s interests – and are otherwise completely innocuous – onto the filter lists of the service the Government plans to use. It would be embarrassing and it would hit them in their home. The ALP website itself would be a PR masterstroke.

Would I be terribly surprised if the UK’s wikipedia blockage contretemps is a similar exercise? No, not really.

A heady mix!

But Point 3 is: Rinse and repeat until boredom and ennui set in.

I take your substantive point, though I note that Howard Dean in his time was thought to have ‘revolutionized’ online financing and activism too, yet it blew up in his face, yadda yadda, so it appears the terms of analysis for this phenomenon are not so simple. My guess is that the Obama phenomenon owes its legs to not just skill (though this was evident), but also to some rather peculiar conjunctions and accidents of historical timing, (not to mention a massive and wholly disgraceful MSM fix), and thus is not a great textbook ‘lesson’ from which we can profitably extrapolate. (Although there are doubtless many basic Web 2.0 lessons which laggards of any stripe must study; it’s just that I think Obama is the classic case of the rabbit hitting the tree stump, and not the new casebook on How To Catch Rabbits).

As to your sense that I have an “obsessive loathing” for Obama, let me just say you’re wrong. What I have, rather, is a great deal of healthy contempt for Obama (though not 100 per cent), and even more for his burgeoning cult of personality — which is not “loathing” and it’s certainly not “obsessive,” being quite coolly based on a citizen’s observations of his words and conduct. If I appear to be having a little too much fun with the guy, it’s only because he’s made it kind of easy. But any thinking person who heard or read (for instance) his ludicrous speech to the Germans, which made Sarah Palin sound like Marc Bloch, would have at least a dab of sympathy for my side; the fact that you leftists must always ascribe pathology to folks who simply beg to differ says something about your temperament, and I believe a look into Soviet psychiatric archives would tend to paint you in a regular Alice Neel sort of light. Nuff said.

On a different note, though, I understand what you mean about the broader context; it’s just that, given the on-going stupefying level of real-time hagiography, I must beg your forgiveness if I seem to hear loose phrases like “the message of Obama” as a sort of invitation a la Groucho’s Secret Word. Regardless of that, cheers!