protest against s92a, how sites looked like this morning(click for full image, coypright:cc-by Creative Freedom Foundation).

UPDATE: It worked. About 4pm today the government has announced that it will delay the implementation of s92a til end of march. If there's still no agreement at that time then the act will be suspended.

Today many New Zealand sites, mostly blogs, but also some well known NZ sites like throng and scoop, have voluntarily blacked out their sites, cut access to all content on their sites to protest the to be effective Section 92A of the copyright act.

This kind of Internet protest is quite rare in NZ, especially when you consider the fact that political blogs from across the political specturm, from Act supporter to Green supporter have all joined this protest. Those people usually disagree with each other on everything, but in this instance, they had come together. It just shows you how deeply unpopular this S92A thing is among the people who really understand the Internet.

And no, those people are not youngsters who are just protesting because they will soon unable to illegally download pirated materials.  I think it's bit sad that in some people's mind Internet is merely a place for email and news. Internet in my opinion, it is fast becoming another life necessity, part of people's basic right. It's like road, we, including criminals, all have the right to use public road, but you don't expect Ministry of Transport to police road users to see who's using the road network for illegal activities?

And National cannot get away with this. Yes it was passed under the previous government back in 2008, however, both Labour and National supported this law, and I quote from parliamentary record, Christopher Finlayson(National):

The Minister [Judith Tizard] knows, and I certainly know, that we have all had approaches from various commercial entities ...

I didn't  fake anything nor took it out of context, this is not kidding. See what our politicians have become.

Well, one week to go, try to enjoy the freedom while it lasts.

People are expecting total chaos in tomorrow morning's commute hours, and starting to blame the truckies.

I agree that we are a democratic society and people do have the right to protest and I totally respect truckies' right to protest.

However, those truckies should also keep the purposes of a protest in mind:1) to threat somebody(or an organisation), 2) to win more support.

Clearly, the blockade tomorrow is more like a threat to government, with little or no consideration to the people who want to support them.

Yes, every protest will inevitably create some inconvenience  to other people, it should be minimised for the sake of those people.

I supported bus driver strike. One of the reasons for that is because they didn't drive the buses on the road to protest, instead, they stopped driving and protesting at bus stops and depots.

Sure that made some of us unable to go to work, but that is quite understandable - you can't expect them to drive buses while on a strike?

Life is hard for every one of us already, so next time when you want to do something, please, minimise the impact on others. Why not just park all the trucks in an open ground and have a all day loud shouts + BBQ?

They plan to tear down that page and return the rest of the magazine.

First I want to make my point very clear: I don't like Fa Lun Gong, I always feel disgraced of them, and I will never accept Fa Lun Gong as part of Chinese Culture.

So I totally agree the view of those fellow Chinese students.

BTW, if you don't agree with me, you are most likely a non-Chinese influenced by Fa Lun Gong's propaganda. Their propaganda skills are far beyond your expectation, even more skilled than Communist Party of China, the master of propaganda.

Just a simple example, Fa Lun Gong member claim that they are non-political, that's totally untrue. Fa Lun Gong is nothing but a political group. I personally talked to some of its members, they have absolutely no knowledge on any of their "spiritual pratices", apart from "how bad the communist regime is."

Those are not the Fa Lun Gong people you saw? I already told you about their propaganda skills. Oh and, I believe you've never been spammed by Fa Lun Gong? Well that's because they only spread politically driven spams in Chinese.

I can list another hundreds of reasons for why you shouldn't trust Fa Lun Gong, but it's not the point I want to talk about.

....

Although I may agree with my fellow students' views, I feel extremely offended by their action.

Before the Fa Lun Gong is outlawed in New Zealand, the group and its members entitle every right rest of us who live in this country enjoy, and that includes the right to express their views, freely.

And most importantly, for me, as a free person, regardless of my nationality, entitle to read stuffs that aren't censored to favour one point of view.

I lived in China, a country where everything in media must be approved by government's propaganda department for most of my life. I absolutely hated it, the reason is simple: I'm not a mentally retarded person who need others to tell me what is right or wrong, even what I have been told is actually true.

I'm not a computer whizz but in terms of bypass the Great Firewall of China, I have at least a master degree on it. I don't necessarily agree with some "anti-Chinese views" outside the "Greatwall", but I believe it's my right to have free access to them and make my own judgment.

So I treasure the free environment right here in New Zealand. I strongly believe that while everyone and every government entitles to have their own views, no one has the right to force others to accept one particular view by any means, including censorship.

I treat the incident as a form of media censorship - Chinese government removes materials that it doesn't want Chinese people to see; those people tear down the page that they don't want you and me to see.

Me and most of my friends in China yearn to have a environment free of media censorship, and yet my fellow countrymen are so eagar to build a new Great Wall of Censorship right here in this country!? I just cannot believe it.

What I have found really surprising is, the people who organised the stealing, were largely the same people who organised the protest to NZ Media's biased view on Tibet last Saturday(all organisation works happened on a Chinese BBS), while most of them have no comment on the heavy censorship in China.

So I take it as they like censorship, as long as it favours their view.

In my view, those students are no more than Chinese partriots. They believe in partriotism, the partriotism as in that famous quote made by Samuel Johnson: "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel".