Canada

[posted anonymously at request of author.]

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ACTION ALERT --- ACTION ALERT --- ACTION ALERT

PLEA FOR ASSISTANCE TO HELP PROTECT ANONYMOUS POLITICAL DISCOURSE ON THE INTERNET

MIRROR WEB PAGE BANNED IN CANADA

18 MAY 1997

PLEASE REDISTRIBUTE THIS DOCUMENT WIDELY WITH THIS BANNER INTACT REDISTRIBUTE ONLY IN APPROPRIATE PLACES & ONLY UNTIL 2 JUNE 1997

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IN THIS ALERT

• Background
• What You Can Do

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Background

The Canadian government is enforcing a law that prohibits "political advertisements", including web pages, if they fail to identify the author or sponsor. (A political advertisement is defined in law to include anything that directly endorses or criticizes a particular candidate or political party.) The government is serious about this and has threatened to charge an individual. Rather than go to jail, this person took his web page offline.

http://www.achilles.net/~kebera/anon/vote-green.html

Electronic Frontier Canada will be taking this fight to court and the issue will surely reach the Supreme Court of Canada, but it will take several months before anything significant happens.

http://www.efc.ca/pages/elections/

In the mean time, there is a sense of urgency and a need to do something right away. There is an immediate need to promote debate among the general Canadian public about the merits of anonymous telecommunication and the infeasibility of Net censorship. The best way to get this discussion rolling is to create mirror sites of the controversial web page (the more the better) so that Canadians will start asking themselves, "Why do so many people think this is an important issue?"

It is important for you to recognize that this web page is not libellous, is not mean-spirited, is not pornography, is not hate propaganda. The sole reason it is ILLEGAL in Canada is because it is anonymous.

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What You Can Do

1. Create a "mirror site" by copying the web page now available at:
   http://www.jimcarroll.com/green.htm
2. Notify ELECTRONIC FRONTIER CANADA (efc@efc.ca) of your mirror site and include the following information:
   1. URL of your mirror site
   2. Geographic Location of the mirror site computer: (City, Country)
   3. Name of the person responsible for creating mirror site:
   4. Email address:
   5. Postal Mail Address:
   6. Daytime Phone:
   7. Fax:

It is particularly important that we maximize the number of distinct countries in which mirror sites are created.

-- an anonymous Canadian --

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This Alert is also available at http://pobox.com/~mbaker/mirror/

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Next: Update #1
Down: Canadian Banned Page

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