Hi all, I've sent this to linux-aus and to OSIA and I thought I'd pass it on here :)
Rusty Russell is going to have a live Q&A session about anti-circumvention issues in Australia, and how it impacts the Australian FOSS community. James Purser will be running the show, interviewing Rusty and taking questions from you, the live audience real-time via IRC. This will be live on Friday night 8:30pm Sydney time and the web streaming location will be posted in the #linux-aus IRC channel on irc.freenode.net from earlier that day. Please post your questions there too during the session for James to ask Rusty and have your questions answered. The stream will also be posted on the LA site after the event for others to catch it, however make sure you come to the live session to get your questions in and find out how anti-circumvention issues in Australia affect YOU. The event will include a short presentation by Rusty followed by questions from you received on the IRC channel above. Rusty has been working very hard to educate our politicians, our policy makers, our community and our businesses about anti-circumvention, patents, and other IP issues. He is always a fantastic speaker and will no doubt be excellent to listen to and speak with. I strongly urge the entire community to take advantage of this opportunity to find out about this important issue. Rusty can be a hard person to catch :) On a related note, Linux Australia has a petition up for LUGs to take along to meetings to get signatures. We need to draw Government awareness to anti-circumvention issues and how they can impact freedom of competition, and the freedom of consumers to use their own legally purchased products. Read up on this issue and others at http://www.linux.org.au/law/ Print out the petition and take it along to your FOSS usergroups, to your SIGs, to your IT orgs, your work, your family and friends. This issue affects everyone, not just geeks, so lets show a great community effort and get as many signatures as we can. We literally need thousands to be taken even vaguely seriously by the Government, so if we all put in an effort, we will make a difference, and avoid the further monopolisation of the market which hurts consumers, and hurts Free Software. Cheers, Pia -- Linux Australia http://linux.org.au/ "If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world." - J. R. R. Tolkien -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html