Patch Monday: iiNet: The whys and what nows

09 February 2010 in Film, Internet, Media by Stilgherrian | No comments

ZDNet Australia logo: click for Patch Monday episode 29

The iiNet decision was clearly the biggest IT news story last week, so this week’s Patch Monday podcast includes a comprehensive explanation.

My special guest is Peter Black, who teaches internet law at the Queensland University of Technology. But before you get to listen to him, you can endure my summary of Justice Dennis Cowdroy’s full decision.

You can listen below. But it’s probably better for my stats if you listen at ZDNet Australia or subscribe to the RSS feed or subscribe in iTunes.

Please, let me know what you think. We now accept audio comments too. Either Skype to “stilgherrian” or phone Sydney 02 8011 3733.

Crikey: iiNet’s win over the movie industry

09 February 2010 in Film, Internet, Media by Stilgherrian | No comments

Crikey logo

It’s almost old news now, but last Thursday the Federal Court ruled that internet service providers (ISPs) are not responsible for the copyright infringements done by their customers.

The full decision by Justice Dennis Cowdroy is almost 200 pages long, yet I found it relatively easy to read and learned a lot.

I’ve written three stories for Crikey so far:

  1. iiTrial: ISPs not responsible for users’ copyright infringement, which was published just a few hours after the decision was handed down. It’s the basic facts of the decision.
  2. iiNet decision a slapdown for AFACT, movie industry, which focuses on Justice Cowdroy’s comprehensive criticism of the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) — not just the way they conducted themselves in court but their whole approach to dealing with copyright infringement.
  3. Conroy tells movie industry, ISPs to kiss and make up, published yesterday. AFACT looked like they expected the government to intervene, but communications minister Senator Stephen Conroy is instead asking the movie and ISP industries to negotiate a code of practice themselves, presumably via the Internet Industry Association.

I daresay I’ll be writing more soon. Meanwhile, if you have any questions…

Liberal Senator Barnett proposes abolishing fair trials

08 February 2010 in Politics by Stilgherrian | 4 comments

Tasmanian Liberal Senator Guy Barnett today called for an end to fair criminal trials. Well, effectively.

In Senate Estimates today, Senator Barnett discovered that the government had spent around $10 million on the legal defence of nine people charged with terrorism offences. They were eventually found guilty. So Senator Barnett reckons that legal defence was a waste of money.

Senator Barnett, who chairs the Scrutiny of Government Waste Committee, issued a media release earlier today headlined $10 million spent on legal aid to defend the rights of terrorists.

Apparently if someone is to be found guilty — which he must assume can be known in advance — then the cost of their legal defence is “government waste”.

Now people who are capable of joined-up thinking may see the logical problem and risk to human rights here. Like, you know, innocent until proven guilty and the right to a fair trial and all that stuff. So I’ve just sent the following email.

Read the rest of this entry »

Mark Day perpetuates Internet us-and-them

08 February 2010 in Internet, Media by Stilgherrian | 2 comments

Once upon a time Mark Day (pictured) was relevant. As publisher of The Australian from 1977 and then its Editor-in-Chief, he ran what is still Australia’s only true national newspaper and didn’t fuck it up.

But today his column Net-gen forces state-sanctioned double standard tries to perpetuate the divide between old and new media, casting it as a generation gap using last week’s kerfuffle over South Australia’s electoral laws as a hook.

(As it happens, I wrote about that kerfuffle in a ZDNet.com.au opinion piece, SA’s Govt 2.0 became mob rule. I’m rather pleased that ITjourno.com.au’s Phil Sim called it “a smart, thought-provoking column”. It generated a few good comments too. Thanks.)

Mark Day can be a bit of a fossil, says meta-journalist Margaret Simons. I agree, and in this case I reckon he’s got it wrong.

Since there’s no guarantee The Australian will post my comments, I’ve written him this open letter…

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Zombie Generation: The spreading infection

07 February 2010 in Internet by Stilgherrian | 1 comment

ZDNet Australia logo: click for the Zombie Generation article

“If you had to identify the biggest single issue confronting the security and safety and the confidence of the internet these days, particularly in the commercial space, you could only point to zombie botnets as the major concern,” says Peter Coroneos, chief executive of the Internet Industry Association (IIA).

On Wednesday, ZDNet.com.au published my feature story Zombie Generation: The spreading infection, which kicks off with a backgrounder on zombie botnets and then some worrying trends.

  • The malware used to create botnets is getting more sophisticated. Traditional stay-safe-online messages are no longer adequate — if they ever were.
  • Young people’s eagerness to share cool new things amongst their peers is natural human behaviour, but it runs counter to the “don’t share” messages.
  • It’s easy for kids to break out of the security restrictions of the laptops supplied under the Australian Government’s Digital Education Revolution program — something we also spoke about on Patch Monday.

Australian ISPs are now developing a more formal code of practice to detect and deal with their customers’ zombie computers.

I also posted a lengthy rebuttal to some fool trying to over-simplify this as “a Microsoft problem”.

Patch Monday: CCTV surveillance and Rudd laptops

02 February 2010 in Internet, Politics by Stilgherrian | No comments

ZDNet Australia logo: click for Patch Monday episode 28

A double-headed Patch Monday podcast this week. Are multitudes of video surveillance cameras value for money? And do teenagers with free Rudd government laptops represent a security risk?

Security consultant Crispin Harris is co-author of the soon-to-be-published paper Information overload: CCTV, your networks, communities and crime, and he’s been digging into the numbers.

Meanwhile, a 15-year-old Sydney lad reckons he’s broken out of the security restrictions on the Lenovo netbook he got as part of the Digital Education Revolution and could install games and browse the school’s file server.

You can listen below. But it’s probably better for my stats if you listen at ZDNet Australia or subscribe to the RSS feed or subscribe in iTunes.

Please, let me know what you think. We now accept audio comments too. Either Skype to “stilgherrian” or phone Sydney 02 8011 3733.

Yes, I wrote about iPad, but not here

01 February 2010 in Blogging, Internet, Personal by Stilgherrian | 5 comments

Not posting here for a week makes it look like I’ve vanished. But increasingly, more of my work is elsewhere. Like my Crikey piece It’s called iPad, and the Kindle is rooted. Like the 2000-word feature I’m slaving to finish today for ZDNet.com.au. Look in the sidebar under “More Stilgherrian”. My online presence is now scattered amongst so many streams of data!

There’s an essay here about the meaning of all this fragmentation. But if I write that essay, I’ll end up having to admit this is precisely why Facebook has been so successful. So much of your life can happen through Facebook and its myriad third-party data-sucking privacy-perverting applications, from organising a BBQ to marketing a business.

The ease with which Facebook can become your all-encompassing social portal means Facebook will win.

That means I’ll probably never write that essay. I don’t want to admit Facebook will win. Because it’s ugly. And because they’re cunts.

Patch Monday: Online industrial espionage

25 January 2010 in Business, Internet, Privacy by Stilgherrian | 4 comments

ZDNet Australia logo: click for Patch Monday episode 27

Following the allegedly-Chinese attacks on Google (and 33 other corporations), and following Hillary Clinton’s assertive speech on Internet Freedom, online espionage is in the news — and it’s my topic on the Patch Monday podcast this week.

My guests are Mark Goudie, who heads the forensics practice at Verizon Business in Melbourne; and Ajoy Ghosh, security executive with Logica in Sydney.

You can listen below. But it’s probably better for my stats if you listen at ZDNet Australia or subscribe to the RSS feed or subscribe in iTunes.

Please, let me know what you think. We now accept audio comments too. Either Skype to “stilgherrian” or phone Sydney 02 8011 3733.

No, Stilgherrian’s financial projections are bullshit

23 January 2010 in Business, Internet by Stilgherrian | 7 comments

OK, so I was wrong. Very wrong. And Citi was right, perhaps even conservative with their estimates of Google’s revenue turnaround.

The other day I was sceptical that Citi’s analysis showed Google suddenly reversing three years of declining revenue growth. They predicted that the revenue growth for 2009 Q4 would be 16%.

I scoffed. I figured the fat red line (right) was a more appropriate projection of the data in the graph.

Well, Google’s actual Q4 revenue growth was 17%. That’s the green dot.

Bastards.

Now Bob Bain, who actually knows how to read these numbers, has found a more detailed review. He points out that while net profit was allegedly up fivefold, Google did write off a billion dollars as “impairment of equity investments” last year. I don’t know what that means, but it sure sounds like it’d make last year look a bit wobbly.

Now, check this chart of Google’s share price for the last two years.

Broadly speaking, it shows the share price dropping as the global financial crisis kicked in, and then recovering. Apart from that tiny little downturn in the last week or two, Google’s share price is back up to where it was two years ago.

Lessons?

  1. The stock market is a long term investment, unless you really want to immerse yourself in the crazy world of the day traders.
  2. When it comes to the stock market, I haven’t the faintest fucking idea what I’m talking about, and you should ignore me.

Any questions?

Stopping the junk mail flood 4

23 January 2010 in Marketing, Personal by Stilgherrian | 2 comments

Since my last post on this subject two months ago I’ve seen a substantial drop in advertising material in my letterbox. While I haven’t complained to the perpetrators who continued to ignore the “no advertising material” sign, let’s list them for posterity.

The new guilty parties are: 3 Mangoes Thai; Arthur, a builder; Australia Wide Tax Solutions; Bus Stop Espresso; Caldo Pizza; Domino’s Pizza (yet again, twice); Chadwick Plumbing; Civic Video; Essence of India restaurant; Green Ecovations: Hot’n'Spicy Thai; James Wilson Pest Management; Just Screw It (carpenters!); L J Hooker (the real estate agent, again); Lat-Dior African Eatery; Moon Koon Chinese Restaurant; Notes Live Music Restaurant and Bar; Patrick Coughlan, electrician; Pavarotti Gourmet Pizza; Ray White Real Estate; S & W Building Services; San Remo Pizza; Smiles (a dental clinic); Stanmore Natural Health; Steve’s Budget Gutter Cleaning; Thingk Baby [sic]; Urbane Inner West (another real estate agent); Yoga To Go.

I still want to know why real estate agents figure so prominently. And I still want to know why Domino’s customer service people never reply to their emails.

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