Taking part in the protests is the first (and very important step). Here is the list of places where protests will be held:

Melbourne:
Saturday 13 December
State Library
12pm-5pm

Sydney:
Saturday 13 December
Town Hall
11am-4pm

Brisbane:
Saturday 13 December
Brisbane Square
11am-3pm

Adelaide:
Saturday 13 December
Parliament
12pm-4pm

Hobart:
Saturday 13 December
Parliament Lawns
11am-1:30pm

Canberra:
Saturday 13 December
Garema Place, Civic
12pm-2pm


Please also consider taking the following actions:

1) Call Senator Conroy's office on 03 9650 1188. Do not be rude, do not swear, just in a very reasoned and rational voice, express your disapproval, and in a few short sentences, say why you disagree. It matters a lot.

2) Write a letter to Senator Conroy, make sure it's between half a page to one page (no more than 400 words). Again, in a polite tone (that doesn't have to be formal, and doesn't have to have letterhead, etc., just your name and address) let him know why you disagree with him. His address is:
Senator Stephen Conroy
Level 4, 4 Treasury Place
Melbourne Vic 3002

3) Write a letter to your local MP. It doesn't matter what party he/she is from, Liberals will use your letter to back up their claims in Question Time, which gives publicity to the whole issue and will bring it to mainstream media's attention. Labor members will also express their criticism, privately, to him. This specially matters if your local MP is a Minister and serves in the Cabinet. To find out who your local MP is click here.

4) Write a letter to Prime Minister Rudd. Let him know that when the Australian people voted him in office last year, they didn't know "Education Revolution" means censorship. Rudd's address is:
PO Box 6022
House of Representatives
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600

5) Donate or become a member of Electronic Frontiers Australia . Right now the EFA is the sole organisation fighting this. They need all the help they can get.

6) Write a letter to your ISP. It doesn't matter if it's the Evil Telstra; on this, we're all together. They are fighting the battle for us right now, but it would help them to know that what they are doing is a good business practice, that you expect them to fight this to the end.

Don't just sit around and do nothing and then complain about how evil governments are. We, the citizens are the ones who allow governments to become evil, by our political apathy. Move! Take Action! Now!

The equivalent in Australia would be the Boxing Day (the day after Christmas). Especially the boxing day morning. There are long queues outside any retail shop in all major cities. Usually everything is sold out by midday. I lived in UK for a while and it's even bigger than the sale they have over there. Reading the Wikipedia page, it seems like the same phenomenon exists in Canada and South Africa as well, so it must have been a British Empire thing.

Very insightful argument. What is more and more pronounced everyday is the opportunity that Obama has to follow on FDR's footpath. FDR did exactly what you describe, getting around the reporting of his policies by newspapers, by his weekly radio broadcasts. Obama is reading a lot about former presidential transitions, he said on 60 minutes that he's reading a book on FDR's first 100 days in office, and I'm sure this wouldn't escape him.

A New Yorker reporter described the challenge of converting his huge online following during the campaign to be part of his government, to converting a population that had been mobilized for warfare to going back to civil industrial activity. It's not gonna be easy, and I think many people especially the youth who were part of the campaign and were energized and motivated by his campaign will switch off from politics again, simply because governing is more tedious and boring that campaigning.

But we don't know that yet, and this remains one of Obama's biggest challenges, how to keep people, and especially youngsters, engaged with him. That will be the major challenge of kicking the government, any government, into the 21st century, making it more open and transparent and eventually, more 'democratic'.

Dude, what's with the attitude? Calm down, it's Lego we are talking about.

Who is talking about "government keeping them in business" and "government forcing them to exist"? Which government are you talking about? They are a family owned business, and they've been profitable in the past two decades. Yes, they are facing rising competition from copy-cats, but they understand that that's their business. What's all this government nonsense you are talking about? Did you somehow think that everyone in Europe lives off government subsidies?

Fuck the town? Why? It's a small town, it's where Grandpa the Founder was born and grew up in. The town has grown with Lego. What's wrong with that?

I had been lucky to have observed Lego first hand for a couple of weeks, while I was working as a research assistant studying their IS project development methodologies. I thought since the discussion was about Lego, I'd share some of my stories here.

You wanna go and by cheap Lego-like bricks? Fine, who is stopping you? Good luck with your spaceship dude, and don't overreact to everything you hear please, it helps the conversation.

The problem is, Lego might be a household name, indeed in some countries it is a generic name for building blocks, but it is still a family-owned business. It's CEO and Chairman is a cool-looking grandson of the founder, and it resides in a rural town in Denmark called Billund, with a population of about 27,000 where nearly 90% of its manufacturing still occurs. The town is almost entirely dependent on Lego.

Lego is among the world's best employers (if not outright best). Equal opportunity in action. Employees, including the CEO, do not have reserved parking spots at the HQ's carpark, offices mostly resemble community areas rather than walled rooms, free food and drinks are all over the place, not to mention some of the best sporting and health facilities provided to employees. Blue collar workers receive the same treatment, for most things from gym membership to access to the health clinic, there is no difference between the executives and simple manufacturing employee. People don't wear name tags, they nearly always wear casual, unless they have a meeting with an outside party.

Lego has Idea Labs where people just experiment with new toys. It employs scientist, from chemists to child psychologists just to carry out all sorts of experiments. It is such a fun place, you'd be forgiven if you thought you where in Wonderland. It has a museum full of toys that it invented but failed to manufacture, mostly due to safety concerns. I can understand why some of them might have been thought of as dangerous, but boy are they cool!

Of course, with all the above, with the cost of employing and manufacturing in Europe, it can't compete with the cheapest-of-the-cheap Chinese factory which just mass produces plastic blocks. I understand that in this case, IP laws do not really cover its business, and anyone is legally able to copy them, but IMO it's rather sad to see that such companies can't really exist in this world, that consumers don't value the history and the culture of a company. They just look at a price tag and make their decision solely based on that.

Everyone I met at Lego is aware of these issues. They have carried massive restructuring plans since 2005, but they know they can't compete against most rivals whose costs are simply lower; yet they really want to preserve the unique culture that has made Lego, Lego for the past generations. Short of outsourcing manufacturing to some place in China, closing its museum and laboratory and airport and with it the town and becoming just another plastic manufacturer, I can't think of a way for them to survive. As I said, it's rather sad.

If you are an Australian, please take action:

1) Call Senator Conroy's office on 03 9650 1188. Do not be rude, do not swear, just in a very reasoned and rational voice, express your disapproval, and in a few short sentences, say why you disagree. It matters a lot.

2) Write a letter to Senator Conroy, make sure it's between half a page to one page (no more than 400 words). Again, in a polite tone (that doesn't have to be formal, and doesn't have to have letterhead, etc., just your name and address) let him know why you disagree with him. His address is:
Senator Stephen Conroy
Level 4, 4 Treasury Place
Melbourne Vic 3002

3) Write a letter to your local MP. It doesn't matter what party he/she is from, Liberals will use your letter to back up their claims in Question Time, which gives publicity to the whole issue and will bring it to mainstream media's attention. Labor members will also express their criticism, privately, to him. This specially matters if your local MP is a Minister and serves in the Cabinet. To find out who your local MP is click here [aph.gov.au]

4) Write a letter to Prime Minister Rudd. Let him know that when the Australian people voted him in office last year, they didn't know "Education Revolution" means censorship. Rudd's address is:
PO Box 6022
House of Representatives
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600

5) Donate or become a member of Electronic Frontiers Australia . Right now the EFA is the sole organisation fighting this. They need all the help they can get.

6) Write a letter to your ISP. It doesn't matter if it's the Evil Telstra; on this, we're all together. They are fighting the battle for us right now, but it would help them to know that what they are doing is a good business practice, that you expect them to fight this to the end.

Don't just sit around and do nothing and then complain about how evil governments are. We, the citizens are the ones who allow governments to become evil, by our political apathy. Move! Take Action! Now!