The SMH on Satuday carried an editorial (second part) titled Conroy tilts at a web windmill. It was better than most because it didn't misrepresent the intended scope of the web page blocking regime.
What it did do was open a new, novel reason for why the internet is different. In responding to Conroy's oft stated question of why Refused Classification content on the internet should be treated differently to other media the author offered;
He asks: what's so special about the internet? The answer is: nothing. But Conroy compares the internet with means of publishing - books, films - and assumes it should be subject to the same classification controls as they are. In fact it should be compared with free means of communication - speech, telephones, newspapers - which it more closely resembles, and in which governments intervene less because intervention is less likely to be effective.
This is either a more nuanced version of "why bother it won't be effective" or is really trying to argue the proposition that content published on a web page is really more like a conversation. Unfortunately, the author fails on the latter by asserting that newspapers are in there with speech and telephones rather than books and films. I have news for them - they would be committing an offence were they to attempt to publish refused classification material (indeed I suspect they would commit an offence were they to publish material that would be classified as R18+ or M18+). The fact is that newspapers, like television, run their own classification exercise rather than submitting it to the censor.
And that ultimately is all that is proposed for the internet. Not all sites will be rated by the "censor", only those referred. Just as the SMH would be referred if it published an instruction on euthanasia in its pages.
So ultimately the editorial rests on the assertion that it will not work. They cleverly then extend this to the "thin end of the wedge" argument that because it hasn't worked there will be pressure to extend it.
But here is another logical slip. The extension they argue will be needed will be to other ways of distributing the content. But the extension they fear will be the extension to more political content. How can it be that we should fear the extension to other content if the justification is that it failed in the first place.
If the SMH wants to join a campaign for free speech let them campaign against any RC list. But save us from this kind of second rate thoughts
Monday, April 26, 2010
Monday, April 19, 2010
The Pirate Party
Computerworls has published the Pirate Party presentation to Exit International on how to bypass the Government's web-page blocking proposal. It gave us the chance to see that they are peddling the misinformation that equates the existing ACMA blacklisting process to the new one - despite Conroy's consultation on transparency and accountability for the new process.
How useful though is it to lecture these folks on how to bypass rather than doing the hard political yards to get information on how to take your own life taken off the Refused Classification list for all media. Surely that would be more useful to the audience.
Even more useful would be to be more than a single issue party and actually campaign to legalise euthanasia. That's the position the Democrats and its predecessor the Australia Party has had for at least forty years. The Democrats answer on the censorship issue is also saner - an end to Refused Classification in any media.
The Pirate Party - what a joke - just GetUp! in geeks T-shirts.
How useful though is it to lecture these folks on how to bypass rather than doing the hard political yards to get information on how to take your own life taken off the Refused Classification list for all media. Surely that would be more useful to the audience.
Even more useful would be to be more than a single issue party and actually campaign to legalise euthanasia. That's the position the Democrats and its predecessor the Australia Party has had for at least forty years. The Democrats answer on the censorship issue is also saner - an end to Refused Classification in any media.
The Pirate Party - what a joke - just GetUp! in geeks T-shirts.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Openness and Transparency Submissions Released
The quality of the discussion on the Government's policy in relation to controlling content available on the internet became apparent with the release of submissions on the framework for opennness and transparency.
Writing in the Punch Eliza Cussen (who is described as a GetUp campaigner) has identified what she called the top ten internet filter lies. I provided a comment online which is paraphrased here.
I only focus on what was called lie number 5. The point is conceded that the content designated by the policy cannot be lawfully sold or distributed in other forms. A distinction is then drawn between the distribution in those forms and the "filter" impeding "one-to-one" communication.
In reality the policy is not for a filter - it is more technically a policy of "web page blocking". That significantly changes both what it is and how it operates.
As an example the Government has satisfied itself that the high volume sites referred to have their own content management regimes that actually can be relied upon and provide an exemption from the blocking regime. Unfortunately the media beat up over Facebook the other day allowed this to be converted into a Conroy assertion that he would order it to be taken down and it would.
In fact the major high volume sites are promoting a voluntary campaign to achieve the same objectives.
One of the more terrifying submissions to the DBCDE inquiry on transparency was one from an academic who argued that the RC rules were too restrictive because they would block a Japanese cartoon form of child pornography, which is supposedly OK because it is legal in Japan. Thankfully this week's The Economist notes that the Japanese themselves are reviewing their own approach.
Most of the accusations of "lies" rely upon a misrepresentation of the policy.
Writing in the Punch Eliza Cussen (who is described as a GetUp campaigner) has identified what she called the top ten internet filter lies. I provided a comment online which is paraphrased here.
I only focus on what was called lie number 5. The point is conceded that the content designated by the policy cannot be lawfully sold or distributed in other forms. A distinction is then drawn between the distribution in those forms and the "filter" impeding "one-to-one" communication.
In reality the policy is not for a filter - it is more technically a policy of "web page blocking". That significantly changes both what it is and how it operates.
As an example the Government has satisfied itself that the high volume sites referred to have their own content management regimes that actually can be relied upon and provide an exemption from the blocking regime. Unfortunately the media beat up over Facebook the other day allowed this to be converted into a Conroy assertion that he would order it to be taken down and it would.
In fact the major high volume sites are promoting a voluntary campaign to achieve the same objectives.
One of the more terrifying submissions to the DBCDE inquiry on transparency was one from an academic who argued that the RC rules were too restrictive because they would block a Japanese cartoon form of child pornography, which is supposedly OK because it is legal in Japan. Thankfully this week's The Economist notes that the Japanese themselves are reviewing their own approach.
Most of the accusations of "lies" rely upon a misrepresentation of the policy.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
The assault on Free to Air television
The Murdoch press has come out with all guns blazing on the issue of licence fee rebates for the FTA networks.
ichael Stutchbury writing in the Oz labels it "corrupt" because it is a supposedly "scret" deal. The sin being that;
Neither the Prime Minister nor Conroy have revealed what the commercial broadcasters agreed to provide in return for paying less to use their publicly owned spectrum.
It really is a piece of nonsense framed like that. The broadcasters clearly made the point that they needed either a reduction in licence fees or a reduction in ocal content quotas. The Government chose the former. The fact there has been no writte commitment about local content related to the rebate could well be due to it being prohibited under the US-Australia Free Trade Agreement (the other FTA).
Meanwhile Terry McCrann has written a diatribe that shows he is more a tool of Murdoch propaganda than serious business journalists. He tries to claim that the only reason Rupert Murdoch doesn't own a Free to Air network is because he wasn't a media mogul whe the licences were handed out in the 1950s.
He forgets to mention that the only asset still held by its original owners is Nine Sydney and Melbourne, both of which were sold then bought back. He doesn't mention that Rupert used to own TV stations but had to dispose of them under the media cross ownership laws when he acquired HWT. He doesn't mention that News and Telstra each bought 15% staks in Seven when it was re-floated after receivership.
That party ended when Seven decided to join Optus and Nine in Pay TV anyway.
And Kerry Stokes is an even more recent media mogul than Rupert. He bought his entire stake in Seven on the open market. CanWest has been a ready seller over at TEN for some time. Rupert can't buy it for a whole host of reasons, but mostly because he doesn't really want to.
Meanwhile at Crikey, Bernard Keane repeats the line that the free to air networks were "given" 7 MHz of spectrum for the purposes of digital conversion. He qualifies this by saying they didn't have to "bid for it". The vast bulk of users of spectrum pay for it by administratively determined licence fees, not by auction.
The FTA networks pay for their spectrum in licence fees that are a progressive scale on revenue up to a rate of 9%. It might have been reasonable to think of the additional channels as additional licences - but they weren't. That actually means the networks pay more because they are paying 9% of the small revenues they get from the multi-channels rather than the lower rate the revenues would qualify for o their own. Issuing an additional licence would have raised less money not more.
The main users who have acquired spectrum through auctions ("bidding for it") are the mobile networks. Not all their spectrum was acquired that way - they pay a flat licence fee for the 900 MHz spectrum originally used for GSM. If you project mobile industry revenues forward at the same growth rate as today a licence fee of less than 3% of revenue would have raised the same amount as the fees raised by auction.
So let's just get the facts straight. The FTAs are paying for their (temporary) digital allocation and they are paying more for it than those people who did buy spectrum at auction.
Meanwhile Telstra and News pay nothing for their use of the airspace through which the Cable TV signal is distributed despite the attempts of some local councils to charge rates for it.
ichael Stutchbury writing in the Oz labels it "corrupt" because it is a supposedly "scret" deal. The sin being that;
Neither the Prime Minister nor Conroy have revealed what the commercial broadcasters agreed to provide in return for paying less to use their publicly owned spectrum.
It really is a piece of nonsense framed like that. The broadcasters clearly made the point that they needed either a reduction in licence fees or a reduction in ocal content quotas. The Government chose the former. The fact there has been no writte commitment about local content related to the rebate could well be due to it being prohibited under the US-Australia Free Trade Agreement (the other FTA).
Meanwhile Terry McCrann has written a diatribe that shows he is more a tool of Murdoch propaganda than serious business journalists. He tries to claim that the only reason Rupert Murdoch doesn't own a Free to Air network is because he wasn't a media mogul whe the licences were handed out in the 1950s.
He forgets to mention that the only asset still held by its original owners is Nine Sydney and Melbourne, both of which were sold then bought back. He doesn't mention that Rupert used to own TV stations but had to dispose of them under the media cross ownership laws when he acquired HWT. He doesn't mention that News and Telstra each bought 15% staks in Seven when it was re-floated after receivership.
That party ended when Seven decided to join Optus and Nine in Pay TV anyway.
And Kerry Stokes is an even more recent media mogul than Rupert. He bought his entire stake in Seven on the open market. CanWest has been a ready seller over at TEN for some time. Rupert can't buy it for a whole host of reasons, but mostly because he doesn't really want to.
Meanwhile at Crikey, Bernard Keane repeats the line that the free to air networks were "given" 7 MHz of spectrum for the purposes of digital conversion. He qualifies this by saying they didn't have to "bid for it". The vast bulk of users of spectrum pay for it by administratively determined licence fees, not by auction.
The FTA networks pay for their spectrum in licence fees that are a progressive scale on revenue up to a rate of 9%. It might have been reasonable to think of the additional channels as additional licences - but they weren't. That actually means the networks pay more because they are paying 9% of the small revenues they get from the multi-channels rather than the lower rate the revenues would qualify for o their own. Issuing an additional licence would have raised less money not more.
The main users who have acquired spectrum through auctions ("bidding for it") are the mobile networks. Not all their spectrum was acquired that way - they pay a flat licence fee for the 900 MHz spectrum originally used for GSM. If you project mobile industry revenues forward at the same growth rate as today a licence fee of less than 3% of revenue would have raised the same amount as the fees raised by auction.
So let's just get the facts straight. The FTAs are paying for their (temporary) digital allocation and they are paying more for it than those people who did buy spectrum at auction.
Meanwhile Telstra and News pay nothing for their use of the airspace through which the Cable TV signal is distributed despite the attempts of some local councils to charge rates for it.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Intelligence Squared
There is a suggestion that Intelligence Squared can't find speakers for the filter for their forthcoming debate on the incorrectly named internet filter. (Actually its against - cause the topic is Governments should not censor the internet.
Maybe they should invite Verity.
Maybe they should invite Verity.
Regulation and the planned economy
A very intemperate post from me on a very stupid article in New Zealand on competition and regulation.
This is a guy whose belief in "freedom" runs to his freedom to be exploited by monopolists.
I wrote in part;
When New Zealand was the global darling of economic turn around it wasn't from abandoning the law or regulation as such, but from introducing competition. New Zealand is allowing itself to "go soft" by listening to the bleating of its large firms.
There is no part of improving one's global competitiveness by reducing competition at home that can ever be justified. New Zealand might just be still getting away with it in dairy.
But riddle me this, if just one or two large firms, or even a cartel of firms provides global competitiveness, then a centrally planned economy is the way to go. With no local market competition you aren't getting the price system to do anything.
Letting domestic firms get fat dumb and happy on monopoly rents is no incentive to go compete.
This is a guy whose belief in "freedom" runs to his freedom to be exploited by monopolists.
I wrote in part;
When New Zealand was the global darling of economic turn around it wasn't from abandoning the law or regulation as such, but from introducing competition. New Zealand is allowing itself to "go soft" by listening to the bleating of its large firms.
There is no part of improving one's global competitiveness by reducing competition at home that can ever be justified. New Zealand might just be still getting away with it in dairy.
But riddle me this, if just one or two large firms, or even a cartel of firms provides global competitiveness, then a centrally planned economy is the way to go. With no local market competition you aren't getting the price system to do anything.
Letting domestic firms get fat dumb and happy on monopoly rents is no incentive to go compete.
Anonymous comments
Verity is always thrilled to see her name in print, even if it is a very short comment on Crikey's website.
The comment was on the discussion about South Australian law that attempted to outlaw anonymous blog comments as part of political commentary. The new age internet types were horrified. However, there are two things we should look at. The first is how existing law works, and the second is about how anonymous comment can play out.
The first thing to note is that it is standard law across Australia that electoral comment has to be authorised by someone. We are used to the authorisation line on electronic and printed ads. We might forget though the additional line that appears to cover editorial content in newspapers as required by s328 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act. The Act also covers ads on the internet and misleading or deceptive publications.
Newspapers will normally include a line as to who is taken to be publisher of the paper for these purposes. That means that if the newspaper chooses to publish material that falls foul of the law the publisher is at fault. I find it fascinating that people on the web don't realise that the same rules apply, that ultimately the person who owns a domain name and thus authorises all the content that is available on their site is the "publisher".
How the anonymous content thing can play out is also interesting, mostly because it is open to manipulation. I think I started this blog soon after reading Ender's Game in which part of the plot is a brother and sister who created two fictional characters who get involved in debate on (I think) the interweb. The point is that they create an artificial conflict between themselves which they then resolve and bring both lots of supporters along with them.
The risk factor is that the speed of network formation and expansion using online media rather than the printed word or radio is that the "swarm" can develop before there is any nterrogation of its source.
Ultimately though the correct legislative solution is not a ban on anonymous content, just a recognition that the publisher (domain owner or as otherwise delegated) remains responsibl for the content.
The comment was on the discussion about South Australian law that attempted to outlaw anonymous blog comments as part of political commentary. The new age internet types were horrified. However, there are two things we should look at. The first is how existing law works, and the second is about how anonymous comment can play out.
The first thing to note is that it is standard law across Australia that electoral comment has to be authorised by someone. We are used to the authorisation line on electronic and printed ads. We might forget though the additional line that appears to cover editorial content in newspapers as required by s328 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act. The Act also covers ads on the internet and misleading or deceptive publications.
Newspapers will normally include a line as to who is taken to be publisher of the paper for these purposes. That means that if the newspaper chooses to publish material that falls foul of the law the publisher is at fault. I find it fascinating that people on the web don't realise that the same rules apply, that ultimately the person who owns a domain name and thus authorises all the content that is available on their site is the "publisher".
How the anonymous content thing can play out is also interesting, mostly because it is open to manipulation. I think I started this blog soon after reading Ender's Game in which part of the plot is a brother and sister who created two fictional characters who get involved in debate on (I think) the interweb. The point is that they create an artificial conflict between themselves which they then resolve and bring both lots of supporters along with them.
The risk factor is that the speed of network formation and expansion using online media rather than the printed word or radio is that the "swarm" can develop before there is any nterrogation of its source.
Ultimately though the correct legislative solution is not a ban on anonymous content, just a recognition that the publisher (domain owner or as otherwise delegated) remains responsibl for the content.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Lundy and the filter
Senator Lundy has blogged about her concerns with the "internet filtering" policy announced by her colleague Senator Conroy. She has followed up indicating (despite comments suggesting she wouldn't) that she has carefully reviewed the comments.
I can understand why Senator Lundy remains concerned by the policy, but the fact that it has been kept very tightly constrained to the RC content and to identified page addresses (i.e. it is not a filter it is a page blocker) means that it shouldn't be thought of as imposing a limit on the "freedom of the Internet".
More importantly though, if the Senator believes RC content should be available through the easy online navigation that is a webpage for adults who choose to "opt-in", why should the same content be denied to adults in other media.
The policy of refusing access to RC content is a child protection policy not because it aims to help prevent children (or others) from SEEING it, but to help protect children (and others) from being subject to the ACTIONS portrayed in the content.
Senator Lundy has resorted to concerns about the effect the page blocker will have on Internet speeds, and has picked up thoughts from contributors on limits of the technical trials. Be that as it may, it is still hard to argue that the Australian Government should take no action to prohibit distribution of material that it prohibits being distributed in other ways.
One thing I am being convinced of is that the current dividing line between X18+ and RC is set too low. That needs to be addressed, perhaps with another category above X18+ (dare I say XXX18+). But it needs to be addressed for ALL MEDIA.
Finally I was alerted to the Crikey story on the Lundy blog by a blogpost on a site that calls itself "Freedom to Differ".
Iwas alerted to it by my Google Alert on my name, because there is a comment there from a Verity Pravda that is not me. How awesome if there is now a "Not the real Verity Pravda" out there. More interestingly Freedom to Differ seems to thnk that it is OK on a blogpost to cut and paste an ENTIRE Crikey story. Freedom to steal as well perhaps?
I can understand why Senator Lundy remains concerned by the policy, but the fact that it has been kept very tightly constrained to the RC content and to identified page addresses (i.e. it is not a filter it is a page blocker) means that it shouldn't be thought of as imposing a limit on the "freedom of the Internet".
More importantly though, if the Senator believes RC content should be available through the easy online navigation that is a webpage for adults who choose to "opt-in", why should the same content be denied to adults in other media.
The policy of refusing access to RC content is a child protection policy not because it aims to help prevent children (or others) from SEEING it, but to help protect children (and others) from being subject to the ACTIONS portrayed in the content.
Senator Lundy has resorted to concerns about the effect the page blocker will have on Internet speeds, and has picked up thoughts from contributors on limits of the technical trials. Be that as it may, it is still hard to argue that the Australian Government should take no action to prohibit distribution of material that it prohibits being distributed in other ways.
One thing I am being convinced of is that the current dividing line between X18+ and RC is set too low. That needs to be addressed, perhaps with another category above X18+ (dare I say XXX18+). But it needs to be addressed for ALL MEDIA.
Finally I was alerted to the Crikey story on the Lundy blog by a blogpost on a site that calls itself "Freedom to Differ".
Iwas alerted to it by my Google Alert on my name, because there is a comment there from a Verity Pravda that is not me. How awesome if there is now a "Not the real Verity Pravda" out there. More interestingly Freedom to Differ seems to thnk that it is OK on a blogpost to cut and paste an ENTIRE Crikey story. Freedom to steal as well perhaps?
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