The question I'd like to have answered is why Gregory Storer and whoever else engineered the economic boycott on OLO didn't make complaints under the Anti Discrimination legislation instead?

That's what it's there for. They would have received plenty of support. They wouldn't have copped any valid criticism for taking that action.

And had the anti discrimination board found in their favour, they would have had the opportunity to raise the bar for all on line comments and forums, something that is long overdue.

Then they would really have been gay activists, achieving something that would benefit everyone.

Instead they have used what can only look like revenge as a motive, and as their first port of call. In approaching ALL the advertisers on this site, they must have intended to cause it financial distress to the degree that it might close down.

This achieves nothing for the gay community. It does not address vilification, abuse or anything else. It merely satisfies the unsavoury need for personal revenge on the part of some people.

We have legislation in this country to prevent vilification. Try using it instead of immediately attempting to shut down an entire on line community, many of whom are strong supporters of gay rights.

What an opportunity missed!

As I am wont to do when considering posting upon a thread which IMNSHO has lost its way, I have just re-read the article.

Given that the article is by the principal of OLO, and that Graham Young stands accused by some of publishing the Muehlenberg article purely as link bait for his site, I paid particular attention this time to some of the links posted within his own article. One of them (this one, the text link words 'secondary boycott': http://skepticlawyer.com.au/2011/02/05/of-secondary-boycotts-free-speech-and-revenue/ ), claimed to have been the basis for Christopher Pearson's item in The Australian*, contains pure gold.

Helen Dale (aka Demidenko), the skeptic lawyer, says about one sixth of the way down that linked page:

"Do read Pearson’s piece*; it’s a good
and careful documentation of something
that this lawyer has long suspected was
coming: a straight-up, bald conflict between
the [Australian] Trade Practices Act and internally
developed hate speech and advertising codes."

It could be important for viewers to know that the words 'internally developed' have meaning especially with respect to an entity known as the 'Internet Advertising Sales Houses Australia' (IASH Australia), an entity not mentioned in Graham Young's article, but identified in Pearson's news item* as the proponent of the hate speech and advertising code in question.

IASH Australia, with a founding membership in 2009 of 12 predominantly trans-national internet advertising entities (see: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=11583#197541 ) seemingly has inherited its mantle of self-appointed authority from a US-based and apparently US government sponsored organisation, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA).

There is thus the added dimension of IASH Australia, and advertisers like IBM and ANZ that may have associated themselves with this hate speech and advertising code, of not only breaching the Trade Practices Act by promoting a secondary boycott, but of having done so collusively as agents of a foreign power in usurpation of the role of the Australian Parliament.

I am therefore proposing that supporters of OLO should mobilise in a way that will see the Australian banking industry, whether it likes it or not, fund the OLO revenue deficit.

TBC
* http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/oversensitivity-can-only-compromise-debate/story-e6frg6zo-1226000416817

Continued

In the second paragraph of her blog entry of 0550, 5 February 2011 ( http://skepticlawyer.com.au/2011/02/05/of-secondary-boycotts-free-speech-and-revenue/comment-page-2/#comment-108629 ), Skeptic Lawyer Helen Dale says:

"The revenue from the ads Graham brokered
paid off my Australian credit card .....
My application for a scholarship at the
Scottish Bar was held in high esteem thanks
to the quality of this site. I wouldn’t be
studying my Roman/Scots law conversion course
without it–it would otherwise cost me £8000.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t happen to
have £8000 just sitting around."

Ah, but that's where you may be wrong, Helen Dale, in suggesting many of the readership of OLO and the other participant sites of The Domain don't have, say, $10,000 'just sitting around'. Courtesy jointly of that part of the Australian finance industry that issues credit cards, and the National Australia Bank, very many of us may have thousands of dollars sitting around that we simply don't realize is there!

Have a look at this NAB web page: http://www.nab.com.au/wps/wcm/connect/nab/campaigns/personal/39/1

The NAB are offering that if you successfully apply for an NAB Gold credit card before 18 March 2011, you will be charged no interest on balance transfers from other institutions' credit cards until 1 January 2012. That is a period of between nine and ten months interest free.

I happen to have an ANZ Visa credit card with at least $10,000 of unused credit limit available. Many others among OLO's viewers and users would have, or could get, similar credit limits approved that they would have no intention of actually exploiting in the normal course of events.

The prospect of OLO, and other sites, having to shut down because of unlawful interdiction of their revenue stream is not something to be classed as being in 'the normal course of events'.

Now if OLO was to be able to process a credit card transaction depositing, say, $10,000 into a trust account on my behalf, that transaction would become a transferable balance to my new NAB Gold card, wouldn't it?

TBC

Continued

Now if I could be sure of being able to recover my $10,000 that I surrendered into OLO's safekeeping just before 1 January 2012, I might be very pleased with the possibility of OLO earning interest on that principal over the upcoming nine or ten months, provided it was invested with absolutely rock solid institutions.

The NAB, for example, presently offer 6.00% on a seven month term deposit, and 3.15% on a 60 day term deposit. OLO could ostensibly earn $402.50 in interest on my $10,000 trust account over the nine months of the interest-free Gold card balance transfer offer.

Just prior to 1 January 2012 I recover my $10,000 principal from OLO and pay out the balance on my NAB Gold card. End of exercise.




Between March and December 2011, ANZ would have been deprived of earnings by way of interest and/or penalties that might have in the interim accrued to my ANZ Visa card, and that would only be just.

If 100 persons were similarly prepared to exploit unused credit limits available to them of like extent, then OLO could seemingly raise $40,000 over nine months. If 1000 could see their way clear to do it to the tune of $10,000 each, then around $400,000 could be raised. And so on, and so forth ....

The interest earned would, I presume be a gift, rather than income, in OLO's hands, and thus non-taxable.




The solidarity of the banks, expressed in the condition whereby card balances borrowed from the issuing bank are normally excluded from any interest-free balance transfer offer, would have been seen to have been broken in a manner about which little or nothing could be done, and the sector's credit used to make OLO immune to this type of standover tactic.

Surely OLO and The Domain between them could set up with due probity such an arrangement, advertise it, and report much as in a prospectus that enough supporters had pledged to make the exercise worthwhile before anyone has to deposit?

Jennifer as a hetrosexual person as you often state, you would not be aware of the stigmatisation Gay people experience daily. To be called publically and on OLO a Pervert, Abomination, Paedohile, and Disease carrier, plus other hate comments.
You being a hetrosexul would have no experience of these negative and hate comments, therefore you are really in no postion to comment on why Greg Storer took the action he did.
Your right to comment is respected,though live five minutes in the life of a gay person, before you dictate to us.

Kipp,

Jennifer appears not to have been passing judgment on the degree of offence taken, she was merely suggesting that the antidote to it might have been found in pursuing an alternative avenue of complaint.