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Governments should not censor the internet

Architects of the internet have championed its promise as an instrument of liberty – a free-wheeling republic in which the ordinary person can bypass the gatekeepers of power and influence.

Beneath the shiny towers of liberty electronic sewers run thick with child pornography, terrorist propaganda, racial hatred, crazy conspiracies and other products of the grimy denizens of the internet’s underworld.

Some governments think that they should protect us from what they deem to be harmful to the common weal.

Can we not be trusted to care for ourselves? And if not, then will censorship inevitably shut out the light along with the dark?

It is important that audience members are seated by 6.35pm as the event will be screened live.

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Speakers

For

• Antony Loewenstein is a Sydney-based independent freelance journalist, author and blogger. He is author of a of book on the Israel/Palestine conflict, My Israel Question, and is a board member of Macquarie University’s Centre for Middle East and North African Studies. He is an Honorary Associate at Macquarie University’s Department of Politics and International Relations, and is the co-founder of advocacy group independent Australian Jewish Voices. He contributed to Amnesty International's 2008 about Chinese internet repression and the Beijing Olympic Games. He is author of The Blogging Revolution, a revelatory account of bloggers around the globe who live and write under repressive regimes - many of them risking their lives in doing so.
• Rachel Whetstone, VP global affairs, Google, London, joined Google in 2005, after fifteen years advising senior politicians and companies on their strategic communications. She leads the company's global teams for public policy and communications. Rachel has a bachelor’s degree in history from Bristol University.
• David Marr is one of Australia’s most influential commentators, having spent the last thirty-five years reporting for Fairfax, broadcasting for the ABC and writing books. He first trained in the law and became an award-winning investigative journalist. He has many areas of expertise and a broad range of interests, including politics, censorship, the media and the arts. David has written a number of highly acclaimed books. His biographies of Sir Garfield Barwick (1980) and Patrick White (1991) are regarded as seminal works and held up as being among the finest biographies written in Australia.

Against

• Melinda Tankard Reist is the founder of Women's Forum Australia, an independent women's think tank. This year she is co-founder of a new campaign Collective Shout which aims to expose businesses who objectify women and sexualise girls to sell products and services. Melinda is author of many books and publications, including Getting Real: Challenging the Sexualisation of Girls. She is a commentator and advocate with a special interest in issues affecting women and girls.
• Dr Abigail Bray is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in Women’s Studies at the university of Western Australia. Her research interest centre on the cultural politics of child sexual abuse literacy in the last thirty years. She is involved in other joint research projects, including the youth Chastity movement in Australia, and teen mental health.
• Kaiser Kuo is a Beijing-based columnist, and commentator on technology and politics. He currently serves as consultant for international business, and does media relations for Youku.com, China's leading Internet video site. He is a musician and was co-founder of China's most successful heavy metal band, Tang Dynasty. He is a frequent guest on China Central Television, and speaks frequently on topics related to the Chinese internet. Kaiser graduated in Polictical Science from the University of California, Berkeley (1988), and has an MA in East Asian Studies from the University of Arizona (1992). He is presently writing a book about the impact of the internet on US-China relations.

Chair:

Dr Simon Longstaff is Executive Director of St James Ethics Centre. Simon spent five years studying and working as a member of Magdalene College, Cambridge. Having won scholarships to study at Cambridge, he read for the degrees of Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy. He was inaugural President of The Australian Association for Professional & Applied Ethics and is a Director of a number of companies. He is a Fellow of the World Economic Forum and a member of the International Advisory Committee of the Foreign Policy Association, based in New York. Simon has been Executive Director of St James Ethics Centre since shortly after it was founded.