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Toothpaste is the latest weapon mobilised to fight against the Federal Government's plan to censor the internet.Online activist group GetUp, which has already run ads slamming the internet filtering policy, today launched a new campaign - Censordyne - a parody ad playing on the Sensodyne brand of toothpaste. Censordyne promises to offer "unproven, ineffective relief from internet nasties", protection "against fast internet" and a "fresh multimillion-dollar flavour". The campaign comprises a parody website and a short ad that GetUp plans to run on every domestic Qantas flight into Canberra in August, around the first sitting week of Parliament."We want politicians, their staff - the decision makers - to see these ads so they can see just how ridiculous the scheme is," GetUp chief executive Simon Sheikh said, adding that he was hoping to begin selling Censordyne merchandise over the next few days. Sheikh said he also planned to run the ad on television, starting on Sunday during Meet The Press.When and where the campaign will run on commercial networks will be decided based on donations GetUp receives from the public. But the ad is already spreading virally through Twitter. The campaign's website includes a Censordyne search engine, which purports to offer a preview of what Google will be like under the proposed regime, which will mandatorily block all "refused classification" sites, including material that is perfectly legal to view in Australia."Our technicians simply rub Censordyne into every internet cable in the country. Sounds impossible? Only if you listen to the experts and, with Censordyne, you won't be allowed to," comedians posing as government officials in the ad announce.A group of mainly smaller internet providers are now finishing their trials of the Government's internet filtering scheme and Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has said he expects to release results in six to eight weeks.Senator Conroy has said the results will determine whether the Government proceeds with the controversial election policy."The campaign's aim is to ensure that, upon the release of the report from the trial, Senator Conroy pulls back from his command and control censorship agenda," Sheikh said.Today, child-welfare advocates including Save the Children Australia hit out at the filtering policy, saying it would divert millions of dollars away from tackling child pornography and that education was the key to protecting kids online. The scheme has already attracted opposition from a raft of lobby groups, most political parties and a significant number of web users.In response to GetUp's new ads, a spokeswoman for Senator Conroy said the campaign "misrepresents the Government's position''. "The Government regards freedom of speech as very important and the Government's cyber-safety policy is in no way designed to curtail this," the spokeswoman said. She said the Government was considering a range of measures to strengthen oversight of the blacklist of blocked websites, such as by a parliamentary committee or a review of all URLs by the Classification Board.GetUp's Censordyne ad was created by Dan Ilic, a video producer and comedian who last made waves in March when he published on YouTube a parody of the free-to-air television networks' Freeview marketing campaign.The parody was such a hit that the networks' tried to get it removed by sending a copyright violation claim to YouTube, which only resulted in the video clip spreading further across the internet
