Australian anti-censorship video trying to get on Qantas

CensorDyne Australian Censorship
by rasterblaster

Itsumishi sez, "Remember that absurd Internet Filtering Scheme Stephen Conroy and the Australian Government has been continuing to push onto the Australian population? Well GetUp the amazing organisation that has been involved in a lot of great campaigns in Australia has created a very hilarious advertisement they're hoping to get onto every Qantas flight in the country while for next sitting in Parliament. The idea is that most politicians will be flying at some time during this time and they'll be a captive audience. Anyway, the ad is brilliant and they need donations to get it on air, please help!"

Censor this? (Thanks, Itsumishi!)

• [Anonymous]

  I agree with Moss. The humor is spot on as a parody both of the toothpaste ads and also of government education campaigns. Because it’s now on the front page of the Age website it’s going to get huge numbers of views for free. GetUp are very good at getting free media coverage and pushing issues into the mainstream. I’m already aware of the filtering issue, that’s one of the reasons I’ve already got a VPN but for people who aren’t aware this is a great educational tool which is funny and not preachy.

• [Maddy]

  … hmm, I thought I submitted this yesterday, the 8th. Oh well …

• [Antinous / Moderator]

  Timothy Hutton,

  Reading comprehension – ur doing it rong. Cory is quoting Itsumishi. We don’t edit quotes. If you would like us to start editing quotes, I could have a field day with your comment history. Let me know.

• [Timothy Hutton]

  Cory wrote:

  a very hilarious advertisement they’re hoping to get onto every Qantas flight in the country while for next sitting in Parliament.[emphasis added]

  I think you need to add a couple words – “waiting” and “the”, but you’re the wordsmith, I’ll defer to you…

• [Anonymous]

  Oh if only you could get a video of the guy watching the video?

• [wizardofplum]

  #1 Timothy Hutton-Nitpicker!did you understand the comment?Yes! then move on.

• [LuminousMaximus]

  I hope they succeed ;-)

  But booking & paying for advertising in our media does not mean that the ads will actually run !!!

  It’s not only our Government that’s trigger happy on censorship :-(

  Here’s an example of a pro Tibet advertisement that was due to air during the opening of the 2008 Beijing Olympics on Channel 7 ( our local Yahoo news partner ) & guess what ?

  ” The ad, produced by GetUp!, was all set to run both before, and after, the Olympic opening ceremony. However, those GetUp! supporters who sat up all night and into the morning never saw their ad, even though it had been booked and paid for. When the group spoke out about this, Channel Seven management went in into a spin of excuses, none of which added up. ”

  http://www.greenleft.org.au/2008/763/39390

  accountability anyone ?

• [ZincOrange]

  I have a relative who does this same kind of Nitpicking, she’ll waste so much time, correcting spelling, grammatical errors et al. Why? I don’t get it, just pick up on the gist and absorb: In the end, fed up, I sent her to Spam. Move On, you got that right!

• [Nocterro]

  And let’s not forget that Fascism is Fun.

  Beautiful work from GetUp, I might add.

• [Anonymous]

  while making fun of censorship, the ad doesn’t show it’s bad move. it makes it simply more popular – not frightening.
  a politician or a software editor would INDEED go into that direction after such an ad.

• [Itsumishi]

  I think you need to add a couple words – “waiting” and “the”, but you’re the wordsmith, I’ll defer to you…

  My apologies! I watched the video on my lunch break at work and felt it needed to be shared with the Boing Boing community A.S.A.P.

  As a result my typing was faster than my thought process.

  I’m also in agreeance with MossNZ, this ad will bring much more attention to the matter than an add that tried to make it seem really frightening. That sort of ad would too quickly be dismissed/forgotten by the average Aussie and too easily rebutted by those that think the filter is a good idea. This on the other hand plays right into the Australian sense of humour and will make people think a bit.

  I especially love the “only if you listen to the experts” line.

• [pimlottc]

  #2: As a matter of fact, I couldn’t understand what the sentence at all. It’s not just nitpicking; poor grammar impedes understanding.

• [pimlottc]

  And of course, I fail. That should be, “I couldn’t understand what the sentence meant at all”.

• [pimlottc]

  And of course, I fail. That should be, “I couldn’t understand what the sentence meant at all”.

• [Timothy Hutton]

  Antinous – I thought the accepted form was to put corrections in parenthesis in place of the corrected/missing words…

  As in:

  hoping to get onto every Qantas flight in (to) the country while (waiting) for (the) next (seating of) Parliament.

  Have you really never seen that before?

  How am I to know if there was a transposition error or if the error was in the original -oh yeah, you add a [sic.] after the error in the text.

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    We correct ourselves. We never correct quoted text. It’s cut and pasted into the post

• [mossnz]

  I think some people, and by some people I mean Anonymous who say that this ad fails because it’s not making censorship “frightening” enough, are either *being* sarcastic in a different way than us Australian / New Zealanders are, or are missing the way we use sarcasm.

  This ad totally works for this part of the world – CensorDyne is a parody of a brand of toothpaste that advertises for sensitive teeth, with the same sort of tone and expression that now you can live life because you can eat ice cream!

  In fact, I showed it to my mum, who’s typically very conservative and would kind of like the “internets” to be “made safer”. Even she laughed and then turned to me and went “Oh that’s terrible, they could stop anything!”.

  I hope they get it somewhere where other people like my mum can see it.