Hi Aussiepedians again, also crossposting to the Public Policy group, 

TL;DR summary: Australia Fair Use campaign on Wikipedia will stop on Monday; Australians encouraged to send a letter to their MP (and bring our total over 10,000) here: https://www.faircopyright.org.au/take-action/#emailform

As we reach the end of the #FairCopyrightOz campaign (banners on en.wp in Australia raising awareness of the Productivity Commission's recommendation to introduce Fair Use to Australia) I wanted to give an update and request:

- Thanks to the diligent A/B-testing work of Seddon at the WMF, the total clickthrough rate of the banners has remained steady, even while the actual visibility of them has been decreased. They started at standard banner-size visible at 50% on day 1, then steadily decreasing to 12% with smaller banner-size, and also removing the 1 week cookie-timeout - so people would only see 5 banners and then it would stop. So, we've managed (in my opinion) to be simultaneously very visible but also non-disruptive).

- Choice Australia (a very respected consumer rights organisation - equivalent of the USA's 'Consumer Reports'), which ran an equivalent campaign several years ago (the last time Fair Use was recommended by a gov't inquiry) has now sent an email to their mailing list cross-promoting ours. They are thereby endorsing our campaign - which gives a great boost of credibility too. (Linux Australia has also cross-promoted to their members, as has the NSW education sector). 

- We are just about to reach 8,000 people who have sent an email directly to their local member of the federal parliament (and also their 12 state senators). This equals over 100,000 emails sent to elected representatives on the issue of promoting Fair Use as something that the general public cares about. On an electorate-by-electorate breakdown it is the inner-city of the State Capitals which are the most engaged by the issue. We know we've got their attention because several politicians are sending reply emails to their constituents that are written the same as each other - meaning that they've taken the time to draft a response from their party's position and distribute the same text it among their MPs (which also means they're talking about us). 

- The final day of the banners on WP will be Monday. We are hoping to break the 10,000 mark of people emailing their MPs. If you've not already: Go here, put in your postcode, adjust the template email if you wish, and send! https://www.faircopyright.org.au/take-action/#emailform 

- There have been several other media mentions and blogposts from allied groups (such as EFF, Creative Commons) which we've been compiling here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:FairCopyrightOz#Campaign_Report

- ADA / EFA have been able to book many meetings with the relevant members of parliament/senators responsible for this issue over the next week. This is where the public advocacy turns more quiet, as we talk with MPs and await the Government's overdue official reply to the Productivity Commission report. Then, depending on what they say, the other parties will make their positions known... Unsurprisingly, the Copyright industry is also lobbying but they seem to have been taken by surprise by our campaign, since all they've managed to say in reply is that we're stooges of "big tech/Google" and that Wikipedia is already free-licensed (which are pretty obvious misdirection/straw man arguments) and to repeat the claim that Fair Use will mean Aussie artists will stop getting royalties - despite not demonstrating a single example of a royalty currently being paid for which would stop; nor acknowledging that 'not harming the commercial rights of the artist' is a key test for what counts as 'fair'. 

Yours in Copyrighteousness,
-Liam  / Wittylama

p.s. Also this week in Australian copyright law, the federal parliament approved a longstanding bill which enshrines disability access in accordance with our obligation under the Marrakesh Treaty for the Blind and Vision Impaired. There's also some great stuff in there for GLAMs. You can read about this on the EFA's press statement: https://www.efa.org.au/2017/06/15/copyright-amendment-bill/ or the ADA's: http://digital.org.au/media/australia-leads-disability-access-thanks-copyright-changes
So that's pretty damn cool too!