It seemed as if talk of the flawed government filtering proposal had gone quite. My Google alerts only dug up old news, ridicule from overseas, and dated blog posts. This no doubt, suited Senator Conroy, he could quietly let this donkey of a policy die or perhaps seize the initiative and get the jump on his opponents with filtering trial results. Politicians know the electorate has a short memory and the longer the issue is left quiet the more chance they can distract us with some political smoke and mirrors.
But then GetUp did their job with the Censordyne video and got the issue up and talked about again. GetUp intended to have the ad played to politicians returning to Canberra on Qantas flights, the wrench in this machine was, however, the Qantas policy of not airing political adverts:
….Qantas refused to run the ad, which lampoons the Government’s forthcoming internet filtering scheme, saying it had a long-standing policy not to run "political advertising". [Asher Moses writing in the SMH]
Then of course GetUp forgot to mention their parody add (which alludes to Sensordyne toothpaste) to , GlaxoSmithKline the makers of the toothpaste – ooops. GetUp may face legal action over this small oversight.
"GSK are currently considering its options in relation to any potential action regarding this matter," a GlaxoSmithKline spokesman said. [read more]
Regardless of the two outcomes above it seems that GetUp and the campaign have benefited from the added attention surrounding the issue. No such thing as bad publicity?
Michael Meloni at Somebody Think of the Children also shows us that Senator is either a fool, a liar or both with his articulate dismantling of Conroy’s statements over refused classification in, Is Conroy deceiving the public about what his filter will ban?
Mark Newton (Via twitter) alerts us to this nice little summary of the situation.
Related posts:
- GetUp launches Save the Net campaign Image via Wikipedia GetUp the, no party aligned, grass roots...
- Filtering Senator Conroy Last month I commented on Senator Conroy’s plans to...
- Censordyne – the Australian Governments response to online child abuse You can sign up to the getup campaign here....
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The Censordyne advert is quite funny, but the first time I saw it I wondered if GSK might have a problem with it.
Hopefully a bit of common sense might prevail and GSK will just ask GetUp to stop showing the video and apologise. Comedians parody things all the time so really this shouldn't be much different.
I would think that a little disclaimer at the end would be sufficient. Let the general populace know your company can take a joke.
im sure someone at GSK will, like getup realise that there is no bad publicity, and is secretly rejoicing at having their (almost ) logo splahed across the internet and seen by millions of people for free. Censordyne / sensordyne relation could bring nothing but brand recognition / sales increases….. im sure the "we are contemplating a law suit" is simply an extention of the free press coverage they are entitled to.
Yeah you are probably right. At least I hope you are I'd rather my money went to combating conroy than legal defense