We spoke about the conference atmosphere itself, cybercrime, cyberwar, the risk of Cybergeddon (yes, I know), and the claim by Eugene Kaspersky that Apple is ten years behind Microsoft when it comes to security.

Not that Mr Kaspersky would ever, like, troll the entire planet.

What we didn’t talk about, really, was the two stories that have been published so far:

• Russian crims evade transaction profiling, which details a trans-national organised crime operation profiled by Mikko Hypponen.
• DNS poisoning the thin end of a wedge’, in which domain name system pioneer Dr Paul Vixie supports my argument that fiddling with the internet’s fundamental navigation systems probably isn’t such a great idea.

The audio is of course ©2012 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, but as usual I’m posting it here as an archive.

The numbers in the story don’t surprise me. Typically a Facebook user’s posts are only seen by around 12% of their followers, depending on whether Facebook’s secret-sauce algorithm decides whether you’re a sufficiently close friend or the topic is of sufficient interest to the viewer.

Why not let people pay money to change that?

I could tell from the tone of his voice that ABC 702 Sydney host Richard Glover did not approve.

The audio is of course ©2012 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, but as usual I’m posting it here as an archive.

That’s Perth in the photo, with the Swan River just visible between the apartment buildings of East Perth. The photo was taken with my bashed-up HTC Desire phone and processed through Instagram.

Heck, if Zuckerberg reckons it’s worth a billion dollars I might as well have a look, right?

I’ll comment on Instagram itself later, and figure out a better way to integrate the photos into this website. Meanwhile, here’s a gallery of my Instagram photos, updated automatically.

And now on with the show…

Podcasts

• Patch Monday episode 135, “iiNet wards off AFACT, but what next?” A summary of the High Court’s decision in Roadshow Films and others versus iiNet Limited, the initial reactions, and a wide-ranging discussion with Dr Rebecca Giblin, a copyright academic and geek from Monash University’s law school, who literally wrote the book on this subject: Code Wars: 10 Years of P2P Software Litigation. Keywords for the other things we mention are SOPA/PIPA, peer-to-peer production,

Articles

• Blockbuster trial for a movie and TV industry in decline, ABC Drum Opinion, 23 April 2012.
• Security concerns over Australia’s e-health records, CSO Online, 23 April 2012.

Media Appearances

• On Wednesday I was interviewed about the cash for tweets demi-scandal by Adelaide newspaper The Advertiser and their website AdelaideNow. The cash for what? Well, ABC TV’s Media Watch covered it on Monday night. Basically the South Australian Department of Tourism paid “celebrities” $750 to tweet about Kangaroo Island — but the tweets weren’t disclosed as advertising.
• On Thursday I was interviewed by SBS News for the story Wi-Fi networks ‘too hackable’. Quotes from this article appeared in Your WiFi Used In Their Crimes at smarthouse.com.au, where I was billed as a “tech blogger”.
• On Friday I presented at the DigitalMe event in Perth. I’ll link to the video as soon as that’s posted. Meanwhile here’s Sara Culverhouse’s summary.
• Also on Friday I was interviewed on ABC 720 Perth about that DigitalMe presentation. Thanks to Perth’s endemic taxi shortage I ended up walking briskly to the ABC studios — but not briskly enough. I did the interview via phone from the street. That meant I couldn’t record it.
• And still on Friday I spoke about the Optus TV Now appeal on ABC Local Radio sort-of-nationally with Dom Knight, as well as some of the stuff I covered at DigitalMe.

Corporate Largesse

• I wasn’t paid to present at DigitalMe, they did cover travel from Sydney to Perth and one night’s accommodation at Aarons Hotel including breakfast. Wine by Brad provided booze for the welcome drinks, as well as a bottle to take home. Food was supplied by Sorrento Restaurant, Northbridge.

The Week Ahead

A busy week of writing lies ahead, including a story for CSO Online and my presentation for the Saasu Cloud Conference the following week. I’ll also continue work on the feature story I’m writing for ZDNet Australia

I believe I’ll be back in Wentworth Falls for most of the week, but this could change at short notice. The Dopplr widget on the left-hand side of every page of my website is usually updated within an hour of plans changing, so always check there first — but bear in mind it has odd ideas of what day it is.

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream (or they used to before my phone camera got a bit too scratched up). The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.

This case has interesting implications. Originally, Justice Steve Rares said, effectively, that someone using a recorder-in-the cloud was still making a personal copy for domestic purposes. The fact that they’re using a recording device that’s provided as a service rather than sitting on the shelf under their television is irrelevant. The Full Court is saying, effectively, that the cloud provider is complicity in the action, which means it’s no longer personal, and in some cases may even be the sole actor.

This interpretation could have massive implications for providers of other cloud services. Could they be found to be copying data that they’re not entitled to? I’m no lawyer, so don’t ask me. But I can at least see that the law is having to deal with situations that are very different from the circumstances imagined when it was written.

Paragraph 100 of the Full Court’s decisions does say:

We should emphasise that our concerns here have been limited to the particular service provider-subscriber relationship of Optus and its subscribers to the TV Now Service and to the nature and operation of the particular technology used to provide the service in question. We accept that different relationships and differing technologies may well yield different conclusions to the “who makes the copy” question.

Will this decision be appealed? You bet.

Last night I spoke about the decision and its implications with Dom Knight on ABC Local Radio nationally — well, except for the analog transmitters that were broadcasting the cricket. I also spoke about the material I presented yesterday at DigitalMe in Perth.

[Update: I just noticed that there's a couple of little audio gaps. I was recording off the stream, y'see. I'll fix them later.]

Personally, I stand by what I said in the opinion piece I wrote for the Sydney Morning Herald in February: Sport has to think outside the box.

If you’re in Perth today, the DigitalFamily event starts at 1000 local time at Northbridge Piazza. It’s free.

The audio is of course ©2012 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, but as usual I’m posting it here as an archive.

The High Court decided, as outlined in its summary [PDF], that internet service provider iiNet was not responsible for the copyright-infringing acts of its customers. But as explained in their full decision, that decision was based on “all the facts of the case”. That is, things might have turned out differently had the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) or iiNet handled things differently. We’ll never know.

Since I wrote for Crikey, my ZDNet Australia colleague Josh Taylor has been tracking the reactions. I daresay there’ll be more to come across the weekend.

Now when I spoke to the ABC’s Richard Glover just after the 4pm news this afternoon — that’s the audio you’ll hear here — the scene was set first by Glover’s slightly-misleading introduction involving pubs and then AFACT’s managing director Neil Gane. So I was working within that framing. I’m not sure how well I did.

Obviously time was limited. Had I had more time to speak, I would have said:

• We do keep talking about the experience of the music industry, but that’s because they’re further down the path of replacing traditional distribution mechanisms with the internet. It might be worth the film and TV industries having a look at that and seeing what they can learn, rather than just being in denial.
• Yes, the economics of making a big blockbuster movie are very different from making a music album. But the film industry decided to take the blockbuster path with all the expensive hangers-on that that business model entails. No-one is forcing them to do it that way.
• With distribution costs tending to zero, those who run the traditional distribution models need one heck of a lot better argument to justify the amount of money they charge than “Oh no, it’s all different now”.
• They talk about the industry being in decline, but that’s because they only count themselves. As a totality, people probably spend more on entertainment than they ever have done. It’s like the Myer and David Jones and Harvey Norman stores whinging about the decline of retail. No, retail overall is doing just fine. The bit that’s failing is them — the people doing things the same old way and not adapting to the change.
• No business model has a right to exist. Maybe the age of big movies and big TV productions is over. It wouldn’t be the first time a form of entertainment had died because it was no longer viable, and it wouldn’t be the last.

The audio is of course ©2012 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, but as usual I’m posting it here as an archive.

There’s no photo this week because I lost my camera — though it has since been found in the Blue Mountains taxi where I dropped it. I’ll be collecting it on Sunday, probably.

There was also quite a bit of disruption thanks to the need to perform some emergency geekery. I may or may not write about that another time.

Podcasts

• Patch Monday episode 133, “OS X botnet: disaster or speed bump?”. A chat about the Flashback botnet with Chris Gatford, director of penetration testing firm Hacklabs, and applications architect Benno Rice.

Articles

• Facebook buys Instagram’s buzz in lead-up to share float, Crikey, 10 April 2012.

Media Appearances

• On Friday I talked about Instagram and Facebook on ABC Radio National’s Media Report.

Corporate Largesse

None.

The Week Ahead

I’m in Sydney all this week too, before returning to Wentworth Falls on Sunday afternoon. My main task is to complete a feature story for ZDNet Australia and an opinion piece for CSO Online. I’m also attending two launch events for new “smart TVs”, one for Samsung and one for LG. And apart from that I’ll be attempting to avoid the seasonal affective disorder that usually strikes at this time of the year.

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream (or they used to before my phone camera got a bit too scratched up). The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.

The audio is of course ©2012 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and there’s a version at the ABC website.

Not so much media output this week, ‘cos I was dealing with a web development matter for a long-standing client, I researched one story that turned out to be a fizzer, and yesterday I got caught up in a cleaning the hackers out of a website. Plus I recorded tomorrow’s Patch Monday podcast early. Plus it hit the end of the month and I reckon my editors’ freelancer budgets had run out.

Podcasts

• Patch Monday episode 131, “Your word is your log-in, literally”. Dr Clive Summerfield, chief executive of Australian company Auraya, talks about the state of the art in voice biometric authentication. Fascinating stuff from a great explainer.

Articles

• Apple in court: ACCC iPad fight tests dodgy 4G claims, Crikey, 28 March 2012.

Media Appearances

• On Thursday night I spoke about the National Broadband Network rollout on ABC 702 Sydney and ABC Local Radio around NSW.

Corporate Largesse

None.

The Week Ahead

I won’t be able to lock in the week ahead until I talk to some people on Monday morning. However there’s a technical briefing on the NBN rollout in Sydney on Monday that might be useful to attend, and I’m thinking of sitting in with a team participating in the Cyber Defence University Challenge and turning that into a podcast. But, as I say, I’ll work that out tomorrow.

Friday, of course, is Good Friday, and I’ll be moving down to Sydney for a couple weeks while Bunjaree Cottages enjoys the busy time of school holidays.

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream (or they used to before my phone camera got a bit too scratched up). The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.

[Photo: Chirgwin with Chainsaw: Bunjaree Cottages proprietor Richard Chirgwin observes all safety precautions — although technically this photograph, actually a frame grab from a video, belongs to last week as it was taken on 25 March.]

So far there’s really only just been time for straight reportage from the launch and set-piece criticism from the opposition. It’ll take a few days at least, perhaps even a week, before analysts have done real analysis on who’s getting the network when and whether that’s been decided by politics rather than practicalities.

(Of course one way around that would have been far greater transparency from NBNCo, including putting their raw data and the software they used online for all to see and cross-check. But like that’ll ever happen.)

I daresay I’ll end up writing more about this over coming weeks. Meanwhile here’s an interview I just did on ABC 702 Sydney and ABC Regional Radio around NSW with Dom Knight.

The audio is ©2012 Australian Broadcasting Corporation. But these program items usually aren’t archived on their website so here it is.

In this episode of the Edict, you’ll hear how Harmony Day is just made up by the Australian government — and you can check out the material at the official website. I’ll introduce you to the joys of 3 Word Quotes. The ABC TV broadcast of Last Night of the Proms inspires me to quote Bill Bailey from British TV program TV Heaven Telly Hell. And I reflect upon Tony Abbott’s lame tribute to Margaret Whitlam.

You can listen to the podcast below. But if you want all of the episodes, now and in the future, subscribe to the podcast feed, or even subscribe automatically in iTunes.

If you’d like to comment on this episode, please add your comment below, or Skype to stilgherrian or phone Sydney +61 2 8011 3733. Not that anyone ever does.

[Update 22 March 2012: While I did mention it in the podcast, I forgot to mention here that because this is episode 20 it brings us to the end of series 1 of The 9pm Edict. It's time for a rethink. That rethink also includes a bit of a think about Stilgherrian Live, the live video program I used to do. Some people want the Edict to continue. Some want Live to return. I'll write more about this soon.]

[Credits: Margaret Whitlam tributes by Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott from ABC News. Last Night of the Proms from ABC TV. TV Heaven Telly Hell via YouTube. Beep sound by junggle via Freesound.org, used under a Creative Commons Attribution license. The 9pm Edict theme by mansardian, Edict fanfare by neonaeon, all from The Freesound Project. Photograph of Stilgherrian taken 29 March 2009 by misswired, used by permission.]

I managed to include a mention of the voice biometric work by Australian company Auraya that’s based on technology used by Centrelink, and the concept of two-factor authentication.

The audio is of course ©2012 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, but since they don’t usually post it online here it is.

A funny thing happened on Twitter the other night. Someone unfollowed me for being offensive. That’s not so unusual. The unusual bit is who unfollowed and what offended them.

Around 10pm I received two emails.

“The two government media releases I just received, when combined, indicate a rather distasteful piece of opportunism behind the scenes,” I tweeted.

“1. HMAS Maryborough intercepts a SIEV off Ashmore Reef, 34 passengers and 3 crew aboard. 2. ‘Another boat as Coalition “turn back” policy continues to unravel’, timestamped minutes apart,” I said — and I’ll run the tweets into continuous prose to make your reading easier. I am nothing if not considerate, dear readers.

The first media release was from home affairs minister Jason Clare, the second jointly from him and minister for immigration and citizenship Chris Bowen.

I was outraged by the combination.

“Dear Ministers Bowen and Clare, YOU are the government, so YOU set policy. And the boats’ arrival is determined by the passengers’ need. Dear Ministers Bowen and Clare, any fool who can read a chart of numbers properly knows policy our end is irrelevant. Fuckwits. Dear Ministers Bowen and Clare, we’re the richest fucking country in the world. Show a bit of fucking compassion.”

Having vented my spleen, I moved on to congratulate Russia for trolling Eurovision 2012 and ponder whether, hypothetically speaking, Vaseline conducts electricity. Don’t ask.

A short time later, someone with the handle @ashmidalia tweeted, “@stilgherrian And this is where I click ‘unfollow’. For the offensiveness more than the inaccuracy. But there’s plenty of each.”

“Bye,” I replied and then, to no-one in particular, “I wasn’t aware I was obliged to provide ‘suitable entertainment’ for random arsehats who hadn’t even bothered to say hello.”

And then I noticed that @ashmidalia was Ashley Midalia. The name rang a bell.

LinkedIn soon told me that Midalia is Chris Bowen’s deputy chief of staff. A staffer from one of the offices responsible for my anger! Maybe he was even the strategist in question.

Fuck me dead! This cunt of a political staffer — an ALP staffer no less! — was offended by my language! The poor delicate little petal!

“Well if I’m wrong I’m happy to be corrected,” I tweeted to the world.

“But I still think it’s disgusting that the richest nation in the world continues with this outrageous treatment of desperate people. And I still think it’s disgusting that politicians use their arrival as a trigger to attempt to score party political points. I reserve the right as an Australian to express the true strength of the emotions behind that by using equally strong language,” I said.

“Besides, over my three decades in media Ministers and their staffers have used that sort of language and worse about me so it’s hypocrisy [to complain about my language].”

“My genuine understanding is that the level of boat arrivals tracks the level of refugee movements globally. Happy to see counter evidence.”

Having exhausted my combination of anger and bemusement, I calmed my shattered nerves with a gentle episode of “The Thick of It”.

Now I won’t get into the whole boat people thing today, but this whole “offended by swearing” arsehattery got me thinking.

Australians swear.

Swearing what we do. It’s as normal as breathing.

Our reputation for swearing is recognised around the world.

When I called American internet entrepreneur Jason Calacanis a “prick” back in 2008, it caused a minor outrage in the blogosphere. But Calacanis himself understood.

Coming from anyone else but an Australian, he told me, he would’ve been offended. But he knew that being called a prick by an Australian was just foreplay.

Indeed, only a few weeks ago no less a personage than a Minister of the Crown (do we still say that?) told me, “Mate, you need to get a fucking life!”

As a conversation-starter, after offering coffee and a comfortable chair.

Sometimes a few f-bombs and c-bombs are precisely the precision munitions needed to deliver a powerful message.

When I headlined my expletive-laden rant about the Google+ social network Right, Google, you stupid cunts, this is simply not on! that blog post ended up being read by more than 100,000 people, triggering plenty of thoughtful discussion and even an anonymous message of support from deep within Google’s bowels.

I was criticised for it, but the reality is that without those expletives the article would have been just another ho-hum whinging blog post read by a couple hundred people, if that.

A cunt or two cuts through.

And sometimes well-crafted profanity can be sheer poetry.

Besides, Mr Science tells us that swearing is good for you.

No-one has the right not to be offended. And it takes two people anyway, one to give offence and one to choose to take it.

Swearing is honest, healthy and thoroughly Australian.

Offended by swearing? Fuck off!

[Image: Twitter bird drawing by Hugh McLeod.]

I never did get around to writing that more reflective blog post, but you’ll cope. There’s enough here for you to be reading and listening to.

Podcasts

• Patch Monday episode 125, “Blackhole: cybercrime toolkit of choice”. Jason Pearse, M86 Security Labs’ sales engineering director for the Asia-Pacific region, explains why Blackhole is so “good” and debunks some information security myths.
• The 9pm Edict episode 18, which covers the NSW police lecturing parents and things.
• The 9pm Edict episode 19, which covers idiot reportage of the Kevin Rudd swearing video and proposes a fix for the Canberra press gallery.

Articles

• Blocking all .info domains is “censorship”: The Greens, CSO Online, 14 February 2012.
• Mobile security a “game-changer” for Aussie telcos: Analyst, CSO Online, 17 February 2012.

Media Appearances

• On Tuesday I was quoted in Harrison Polites’ Technology Spectator piece Five critical hacking myths.
• On Wednesday night I spoke about copyright vs the internet on ABC Local Radio nationally.
• On Saturday afternoon I spoke about Apple’s iMessage and Path’s privacy outrage on Sydney radio 2UE.

Corporate Largesse

• On Thursday I attended analyst firm Frost & Sullivan’s “ICT Outlook Press Lunch” at the InterContinental Hotel in Sydney. Sandwiches and salads and cheese and cake were served. However the waiter never did bring the proffered coffee and had to get my own at the end of the event.

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.

[Photo: Fleeting mists. I know I linked to the picture last week, but I do love it. Such magnificent sights make up for the hassle of the storms.]

[Update 26 February 2012: Added an entry for the Harrison Polites story to Media Appearances section.]

Yes, less than two days since I posted episode 18, today’s bullshit reportage on a video in which former prime minister Kevin Rudd swears a few times — shock horror! — and a bunch of unsubstantiated rumours from Canberra have triggered this episode.

Just look at this crap, from ninemsn. Even the ABC, which is supposed to be a credible, non-sensationalist news outlet, covers the swearing but then has two “related stories” about the speculation about a leadership challenge, that the cabinet is supposed repeatedly testing support for Julia Gillard and that attorney-general Nicola Roxon had declared her support for her.

The Australian has at least six stories linked from its home page, including some irrelevant commentary from opposition leader Tony Abbott and even Rudd saying he’d do it differently now.

Seven is reporting that independent MP Andrew Wilkie reckons Rudd will launch a challenge, describing the video as “explosive”.

This entire episode is an embarrassment. It’s this sort of Canberra pseudo-insider bullshit that’s precisely the reason I don’t read newspapers or their websites and don’t watch TV news. It’s all a sideshow, the so-called journalists who perpetuate this bullshit know it, and yet they continue to do it.

Why?

Well I think I know why this fucktardery happens, and I have a modest proposal for fixing it.

You can listen to the podcast below. But if you want all of the episodes, now and in the future, subscribe to the podcast feed, or even subscribe automatically in iTunes.

Um, except… no… oh fuck no, not this!

News has just come through — well, Dennis Shanahan says — that Rudd’s leadership challenge is on. Really. May God have mercy upon our souls.

If you’d like to comment on this episode, please add your comment below, or Skype to stilgherrian or phone Sydney +61 2 8011 3733. Not that anyone ever does.

[Credits: Audio grabs from ABC News24 and, of course, the video in question. The 9pm Edict theme by mansardian, Edict fanfare by neonaeon, all from The Freesound Project. Photograph of Stilgherrian taken 29 March 2009 by misswired, used by permission.]

Also on the program was Fiona Phillips, acting CEO of the Australian Copyright Council, so we had me as the technologist and her as the lawyer.

I think Mr Delroy was surprised to find that we were in broad agreement on most issues. We covered quite a bit of territory, including SOPA, Optus versus sport, new business models and the inevitable mention of Nine Inch Nails.

Here’s the recording of the whole thing, including the talkback calls.

I’d also like to thank everyone on Twitter who suggested other creatives who were successfully bypassing the middlemen and publishing straight to their audiences: musicians Radiohead, Amanda Hocking, Amanda Palmer, Jonathan Coulton and OK Go; writers Stephen King and Cory Doctorow; comedian Louis CK; and even the movie Red State by Kevin Smith. Have I missed any?

The audio is ©2012 Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The program is also available as an MP3 from the ABC website.