Last week federal court judge Justice Steven Rares ruled that Optus’ TV Now service, which allows customers to record free-to-air TV and have it streamed back to their smartphone, tablet or computer at a more convenient time, was a legal form of time-shifting under section 111 of the Copyright Act 1968.

Even if competing telco Telstra had a supposedly-exclusive deal with the Australian Football League (AFL) to stream live video coverage of matches to smartphones. Even if the delay between an Optus customer starting to record a game and playing it back was just two minutes.

Telstra is paying the AFL $153 million over five years for this now-not-so-exclusive streaming right. Optus pays the AFL nothing, because they’re just providing a technical service through which individual customers make their own “solely for private and domestic use” recordings.

Josh Taylor covered it for ZDNet Australia.

The Sydney Morning Herald commissioned me to write an opinion piece that was published this morning, Sport has to think outside the box. Do please read it. It seem to have struck a chord, because I’ve received a lot of compliments.

Then the ABC’s Linda Mottram asked me to chat about the issues on 702 Sydney. And here’s the audio, along with her subsequent chat with a talkback caller on the same topic.

The audio is of course ©2012 Australian Broadcasting Corporation. But these program items usually aren’t archived on their website so here it is. And I will of course suggest that you listen to Linda Mottram’s morning program regularly.

I’m thinking of writing up some of my thoughts on how future sporting coverage could be done technically. Meanwhile, do you feel as I do that the days of cashed-up major sporting codes are about to end?

[Update 8 February 2012, 1015: The Sydney Morning Herald has published a follow-up piece this morning by rugby legend Roy Masters. Court has gambled with codes' futures. Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to draw me a diagram of what the fuck he's talking about.]

Over at Crikey I’ve written a summary of what’s happening with Australia’s internet filter.

Australia’s mandatory internet filtering by internet service providers (ISPs) won’t happen for at least two years. But we’re getting filtering anyway. Voluntarily. By ISPs. Next month…

Telstra and Optus are expected to have their filters ready within weeks, although the situation with Primus is unclear…

The Internet Industry Association (IIA) is also about to release a voluntary industry code that would see an estimated 80% to 90% of Australian internet connections filtered by the Interpol blacklist over the next year. Attempts to access domains on the list would be redirected to an Interpol block page.

Overall, I reckon the process that’s now unfolding could well result in the gvernment’s planned mandatory ISP-level filtering disappearing off the table entirely.

As a bonus link, here’s Interpol’s explanation of their “worst-of” blacklist of child exploitation material.

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. If last week was a bit thin, this week more than made up for it — and as I noted yesterday, I’m knackered.

Podcasts

• Patch Monday episode 93, “Are we missing the bus on Gov 2.0 data?” A popular Sydney Buses app died when Sydney Transit cut off the data feed after just a few weeks, citing lack of server capacity. Developer Ben Hosken is disappointed, but he’s more concerned that developers aren’t making enough use of the government data on offer. I also speak with developers Benno Rice and Adrian Chadd.

Articles

• The exploits of Freelancer.com, for Technology Spectator, in which I have yet another go at the immorality that is crowdsourcing.
• AVG urges mandatory cybercrime reporting, for ZDNet Australia.
• Forget Anonymous, LulzSec, the real bad guys are in your bank accounts, for Crikey.
• Telstra backs the NBN, but the devil’s in the detail, for Crikey. This is essentially a straight news piece about the deal struck between Telstra, NBN Co and the government.

In addition to these, I wrote a fifth piece for ABC’s The Drum, but that hasn’t been published yet. And there’s a couple of pieces I’ve been working on that I must finish and file tomorrow.

Media Appearances

I did five radio spots this week, which is a record I think. Well, except for when I worked full time in radio, obviously.

• On Tuesday I spoke with Louise Maher on ABC 666 Canberra about the photographic project Everyday Photographs, Extraordinary Journeys, which I inspired. Well, partly inspired.
• On Thursday morning I spoke with Adelaide radio 1395 FIVEaa about the National Broadband Network. I’ve already posted the audio.
• A little later on Thursday morning I spoke on ABC Radio National’s Life Matters about the current state of play in information security. I’ve already posted about that.
• While I was talking live on Radio National, ABC North Coast NSW broadcast an interview with be about Facebook and Social Media that has been pre-recorded. Alas, I don’t have a copy.
• On Thursday afternoon I spoke with ABC 774 Melbourne about Bitcoin a digital currency. And I’ve posted that audio too.

Corporate Largesse

None. We’ll have to fix that. Dear PR Operatives, my junket calendar for July is empty. You know what to do. I prefer an aisle seat.

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: The afternoon sunlight can be fierce at The Grand View, an image taken in The Grand View Hotel, Wentworth Falls, yesterday.]

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. Despite succumbing to a random fever for two or three days, I got quite a bit of writing done — and then forgot to post this until Monday. Sigh.

Podcasts

• Patch Monday episode 79, “Cybercrime convention: civil liberties risk?”. Australia intends to sign on to the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime. My guests? Cybercrime specialist Nigel Phair from the Surete Group, who’s previously been with the Australian High Tech Crime Centre. His second book has just been published, Cybercrime: The Challenge for the Legal Profession. And Electronic Frontiers Australia chair Colin Jacobs.

Articles

• How Al Jazeera leads the world in social media for news reporting, for Crikey, based on comments made by their head of social media Riyaad Minty at Digital Directions 2011.
• Apple: saving old media, or just making them its bitch?, for Crikey. This was based on material presented at Digital Directions 2011 and elsewhere. I simply don’t get this idea that Apple’s iPad will be the saviour of the media factories.
• Digital fingerprints the next privacy invasion?, for ABC Unleashed, a more personal opinion on the plans to sign on to the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime.
• Two chefs, Next G and the ‘wireless’ confusion, for CRN Australia. My first article for this masthead is about the communication gap between IT vendors and their small business customers.

Media Appearances

• I was a guest on this week’s edition of The Fourth Estate, the community radio program and podcast, talking about Australia’s new journalist shield law.

Corporate Largesse

None.

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: Tea Tree Cottage, one of the Bunjaree Cottages at Wentworth Falls, where I've been living. I'll write more about this experience very soon.]

Stilgherrian is, on most occasions, one of the leading technology writers in Australia — his coverage of the planned internet filter was first class, as was his recent reporting of the planned $400 million under-sea cable between Sydney and Los Angeles. However, Stilgherrian let his lofty standards drop and seriously damaged his journalistic credibility with his blinding support for the National Broadband Network (NBN). Sadly, it appears that Stilgherrian’s ostensible desire that other people to pay for a shiny piece of broadband infrastructure has gotten in the way of him actually considering whether the multi-billion dollar public investment is a good idea for Australian taxpayers.

Stilgherrian launched a blistering attack on an article I wrote in Crikey, alleging that it was “full of misunderstandings and straight-up mistakes”. A somewhat ironic comment given most of his criticisms were themselves quite obviously incorrect. Specifically, Stilgherrian stated that:

[Schwab] thinks the NBN is an internet service provider (ISP). He wants it to deliver short-term commercial return on investment. And he doesn’t differentiate between needs now and a decade or two or three in the future.

Perhaps Stilgherrian should have either read the original article properly or spent thirty seconds contacting me before jumping to incorrect conclusions as to my ‘thoughts’. Nowhere in the original article was it stated that the NBN would be a retail network. The NBN has always been a wholesale network. The original article referred to the speculated final retail prices which may result from the NBN, but did not specify that the NBN would be the retailer. Nor was that point even remotely relevant to the main intent of the article.

Second, the original article also never referred to a ‘short-term commercial return on investment’. Rather, the it noted that no proper cost/benefit analysis had been undertaken. It is correct that ‘return on investment’ to taxpayers is not a purely financial determination (for example, returns from a public investment will partly be in the form of higher living standards which flows from the investment). But the article was making the specific point that no analysis of the returns had been undertaken (instead, proponents of the NBN had pointed to rather unconvincing benefits, like eHealth or the ability to hold videoconferencing as justifications for the project).

It is certainly possible that if such an analysis were ever carried out the study may deem that the NBN is in the best interests of taxpayers (although critics claim that such is unlikely given the inevitable ‘waste’ and inefficiencies which would result from a public project of such a size). The point remains — no such determination was ever undertaken.

Like many proponents of the NBN, Stilgherrian falls into the trap of simply assuming “faster internet is better”, regardless of the costs. Of course, prima facie, faster internet is superior to slower internet. I, like most people, would prefer faster broadband. I, like most people, would also like the Government to buy me a Porsche. However, it is preferable that the Government does not make spending decisions based on the desires of certain individuals rather than the economy as a whole, as that would result in misallocation of capital and a terrible waste of taxpayer money. (Admittedly, there are many other terrible Government policies from both sides of the political spectrum, so the NBN is certainly not the worst Government promise, just the most expensive).

A decision on the scale of the NBN should be properly considered — the costs (which are obviously financial, and look like bring are in the range of $30-$35 billion — depending on the final result of the Telstra deal) should be weighed against all the benefits of the faster broadband infrastructure which too may be substantial but are in the most part, still unidentified.

Stilgherrian then submitted a range of reasons why the public benefit resulting from faster broadband outweighs the cost, including inserting a nice-looking graph prepared by none other than the National Broadband Network itself.

Stilgherrian also made a couple of valid, yet obvious points — wireless in itself is not a sole solution and certainly isn’t able to carry the amount of data of fibre. But that is to ignore other existing infrastructure and the fact that private companies (like iiNet, TPG, Foxtel and Telstra) are also able to roll out high speed broadband to compliment existing infrastructure. (Most CBD businesses already have high speed broadband).

There is also the option of having a broadband network which covers predominantly higher density areas at a marginally lower speed, substantially mitigating the cost but retaining many of the benefits Stilgherrian referred to.

The NBN was drastically altered at the time of the global financial crisis by a Government which was looking to stimulate the economy without proper economic analysis. The plan went from a $6 billion to a $4 billion to a $43 billion scheme at what appeared to be the whim of a now deposed Prime Minister. The original article questioned whether that remains the correct decision for Australian taxpayers. It may be, but to the decision has become so politically clouded that taxpayers can’t be confident that they are receiving a return (be it financial or otherwise) from their investment.

I haven’t properly digested this response yet, but I do think it’s nice to be able to continue the conversation. I’ll probably write something on the weekend.

Two weeks ago in Crikey, Adam Schwab dismissed the National Broadband Network (NBN) as “a poll-driven economic disaster”. His “analysis” is so full of misunderstandings and straight-up mistakes that it’s hard to know whether he’s pushing a pre-election agenda, deliberately trolling or is just an ignorant arsehat.

In a recent piece for ABC Unleased I proposed three tests for the credibility of NBN analysis. Schwab fails all three. He thinks the NBN is an internet service provider (ISP). He wants it to deliver short-term commercial return on investment. And he doesn’t differentiate between needs now and a decade or two or three in the future.

The NBN replaces an ageing copper network with a new one based on optical fibre. Internet access is an obvious application, but it’s also about services from pay TV to security monitoring to health — and, indeed, to good old voice telephone if that’s all you want. An analysis that only considers internet access is missing a lot of potential revenue.

The whole point of public infrastructure is that it generates benefits for all, not just short-term commercial return for investors. Think interstate highways, schools, armies, hospitals, police. It’s what governments do. As Crikey reported last year, OECD modelling shows that savings of 0.5% to 1.5% in just four sectors —  electricity, health, transport and education – would indirectly pay for a fibre-to-the-premises network in ten years.

Arguing that current internet speeds are fine for what people currently do is a tautology. If speeds weren’t OK for current activities, they wouldn’t be activities at all.

This graph shows the exponential growth in our typical demand for fixed-line internet speed since we first got dial-up modems in the 1980s. By 2015 the NBN’s initial 100Mb per second speed won’t be that stupid phrase “super-fast” any more, but merely average. Just twelve years from now we’ll want ten times that much, 1Gb per second.

Schwab is proposing that suddenly, today, this growth in demand will take the orange path and stop. Forever. Why would that happen?

All this is enough to dismiss Schwab’s nay-saying as irrelevant. But wait. There’s more…

Countering the argument “there may not be many uses for high speed broadband now, but like electricity or the phone, we need to build the infrastructure first”, Schwab claims “you either have electricity or you don’t, so the benefits of being connected to a power grid, even if unknown, had substantially more scope than the benefits of a faster internet service”. Rubbish.

It’s all about capacity. If you’ve only got 200 watts of power, you’ve got lighting and a radio but not heating, cooking, plentiful hot water or a plasma TV — and certainly not all those things at once. Similarly, a faster internet means more activities in parallel, not just one thing faster.

Schwab keeps repeating the cost of $43 billion, even though he knows “that was before the government was able to reach agreement with Telstra”. Even if it was still valid, that’s the total project cost. Some of it starts coming in as revenue from the NBN’s wholesale customers as the network rolls out. Misleading.

Rejecting potential benefits for eHealth, Schwab asserts without justification that “the main users of eHealth will be in rural areas” and reckons Rudd should’ve hired rural doctors instead. “You could probably get a few for $43 billion.” There’s that wrong number again, and he muddles a part of the equation (just health, and just rural health at that) with the whole shebang. Ignorant mistake, or deliberately disingenuous? And apparently our ageing urban population won’t benefit from being able to avoid traipsing across town, x-rays in hand, to see three different specialists.

Rejecting potential benefits for business such as videoconferencing, Schwab can’t think beyond “meetings”. “Meetings generate minimal economic benefits anyway,” he asserts. He clearly doesn’t understand the benefits of being able to throw together a work team to collaborate regardless of location globally, without time lost for travel. Carbon savings, anyone? Or of taking advantage of cloud computing.

“To achieve 100Mb the cost [to end users] is expected to [be] at least $120 per month,” asserts Schwab. Somebody had better tell the ISPs. Internode has 100Mb NBN plans starting from $59.95. Exetel’s 100Mb plan is $50 per month plus $0.75 per gigabyte download. They and others offer 25Mb or 50Mb speeds at even cheaper prices. Today.

Why is Schwab citing figures that anyone following this story knows are out of date?

And he repeats that old trope about not needing fibre because we’ll soon have magic 4G wireless broadband. Conveniently or ignorantly, he forgets that thanks to the Shannon-Hartley theorem wireless bandwidth is shared with everyone using the same cell tower, and that wireless suffers from interference and dead spots. It simply isn’t suitable for many applications.

I could go on.

But given all those errors, I’m guessing that Schwab’s real problem with the NBN isn’t technical but political. It’s a Labor project. Phrases like “testament to big government” and “remnants of the Rudd era” and “poll-driven economic disaster” are political rhetoric, not rational analysis. If he’s not trying to score political points, why mention Rudd at all? Why not just look at the project itself?

The clincher for that theory would be if he’d quoted an Opposition MP in support of his… oh hang on. He did.

[This article was originally written for Crikey on 15 July 2010, but was spiked when the federal election started to dominate the news, flooding it out. I've published it here on the day Schwab's original article emerged from Crikey's paywall.]

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets.

Articles

• NBN not over the line yet for Crikey, which outlines last weekend’s agreement between Telstra and the National Broadband Network Company (NBN Co). If this non-binding Heads of Agreement makes it all the way to a final deal, NBN Co pays an estimated $9 billion over coming years in exchange for access to Telstra’s “passive network assets” such as cable pits and ducts and exchanges, and to compensate Telstra for losing customers from its copper network to NBN fibre.
• No wonder the cyber criminals are winning for ABC Unleashed, my commentary on the House of Representatives report on cyber crime, Hackers, Fraudsters and Botnets: Tackling the Problem of Cyber Crime.

Podcasts

• Patch Monday episode 45 is about the future, near and far. The near future of business priorities for the coming financial year — cloud computing, collaboration and mobility — and the further future of the Telstra / NBN Co agreement.

Media Appearances

• Last week’s episode of Radio 2SER’s The Fourth Estate, where I was interviewed in a follow-up to my Crikey article on hacktivism, is now available as a podcast [MP3].

[Photo: "Samsung Space", taken at the launch of Samsung's Galaxy S Android-based smartphone at the Royal Hall of Industries, The Entertainment Quarter, Sydney on 23 June 2010. Click to embiggen. As we entered this UV-lit space, Mike Oldfield's "Tubular Bells" played. Of course.]

I can’t wait until the weekend. I simply must mention that my article about yesterday’s agreement between Telstra and the NBN Co over Australia’s National Broadband Network is Crikey‘s lead story today. Enjoy. I also cover it briefly in today’s Patch Monday podcast. Enjoy that too.

Here’s how to connect your HTC Desire (or perhaps any Android phone) to a Mac via a USB cable so that your computer can use the phone’s mobile broadband connection.

In my opinion, this sort of functionality should be built into the operating system, but I’ll save that rant for another day.

This uses the PdaNet for Android app, which costs USD 23.95 (currently on special at USD 18.95 for a limited time). However there’s a free trial which will suit my fellow reviewers in the Telstra HTC Desire Social Review. You can still use the app after the free trial is over, with the limitation that you can’t connect to secure sites.

Step 1: Install PdaNet Desktop for Mac on your computer

Just download and install the package. You will need to reboot your Mac after the installation. The installation will:

1. Create a new Ethernet interface associated with your USB port, probably called “en2″ or “en3″. When it does this, make sure the interface is set to use DHCP. It should do this automatically, but it pays to check.
2. Install a new drop-down menu in your menu bar.

Step 2: Install the PdaNet for Android app on your phone

On your phone:

1. Go to the Market, search for “pdanet”, download and install the app.
2. Go to Settings -> Applications -> Development and turn on “USB debugging”.

You’ve now got the software installed at both ends, so you’re ready to go.

Step 3: Connect to the internet

1. Launch the PdaNet app on your phone and select “Enable USB Tether”.
2. Plug the phone into your Mac’s USB port.
3. When the phone pops up the “Connect to PC” dialog, choose either “Charge only” or “Disk drive”. Do not choose “Internet sharing” as this start a fight over who’s controlling the internet link.
4. On the Mac, from your new PadNet drop-down menu, choose “Connect” and wait for the icon to stop flashing.
5. Done!

Remember that your mobile data usage is expensive. Telstra’s Next G network is fast. It’s easy to download more than you intended. And uploads count against your usage too — so careful with that streaming video!

This procedure was tested using PdaNet version 2.41 on an HTC Desire running Android 2.1-update1, and a MacBook Pro running Snow Leopard version 10.6.3. Your mileage may vary.

[Disclosure: I have been given a HTC Desire handset by Telstra free of charge to review. The comments expressed by me reflect my user experience and personal opinion.]

I’m reviewing the HTC Desire smartphone as part of the Telstra HTC Desire Social Review program.

Telstra has given 25 people, including me, a free HTC Desire handset as well as a bunch of credit on their Next G mobile network to provide “a mix of opinions and perspectives” on this so-called “superphone”.

Before we received our phones, we were asked to explain our expectations of the Desire. “We will be interested to compare this to your thoughts after the review,” said Telstra.

Here’s what I said:

HTC Desire is a “superphone”, eh? It should therefore integrate quickly and reliably into my workflows, and have the grunt to last a long working day. I reckon it could replace my laptop for staying in touch, coordinating my business and gathering media when I’m away from my desk. Android‘s meant to be “open”, so it should let me do things the way I want. I should beat my current Nokia N96 in every way.

Us reviewers will be using the hashtag #telstradesire so you can find our tweets, and Telstra will lead our discussions through a series of posts at Ben Bevins’ blog starting on Wednesday.

I’ve only just started to use the Desire. But here’s my initial impressions, along with a bit more information about what I hope to be able to do.

First up, despite the annoying hype about the Desire being an “iPhone killer” — why does everything have to be expressed in terms of mortal combat? — I won’t be comparing it with the iPhone. Mostly because I don’t have an iPhone. I also figure there’ll be other reviewers doing that particular comparison.

What I will be doing is seeing how much day-to-day work and play can be done on the Desire, leaving my MacBook Pro untouched.

Obviously there’s plenty the Desire won’t be suitable for, such as writing long articles and editing podcasts. But I’m guessing it’ll be fine for my extensive use of Twitter, quickly checking email and some routine web browsing. It’ll be interesting to see whether it can be used for lengthy reading sessions, managing my business through Basecamp, Kayako SupportSuite, Saasu for accounting, and WordPress and cPanel for the various websites I maintain.

I’ll also be seeing how good the camera is, for both stills and video.

I fired up the Desire, so to speak, on Friday and used it randomly for two days. My impressions?

1. The industrial design is good. The Desire sits neatly in the hand. The only annoyance is that I keep hitting the volume control with my left thumb. Maybe I’m holding it wrong.
2. There is no HTC synchronisation software for Mac, only Windows. Grrr. Have they just assumed that Mac owners will automatically get an iPhone and thrown in the towel?
3. The 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor is nominally four time as fast as the Dual ARM 9 264MHz in my N96, but the Desire feels much faster than that. Scrolling is fast, smooth and responsive, as is zooming in and out of web pages.
4. The built-in Twitter client, HTC Peep, didn’t seem capable of managing my heavy Twitter usage. I’ve installed the official Twitter for Android client and I’m much happier.
5. I’m so pleased to be back on the fast, reliable Next G network, rather than the shoddy Optus network through my current provider Virgin Mobile. Using the two networks side by side while on the train on Friday, Next G was there — even through some tunnels — while Optus dropped back back to 2G or even no connectivity at all in some railway cuttings.
6. I’m worried about battery life. Even with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and GPS turned off, it took just five hours for the battery level to drop to 50% when out and about yesterday. That’s a bunch of Twitter and occasional web browsing over drinks. Maybe I can manage the power better.
7. Browsing the Android Market is clear and simple, as is downloading and installing apps. Google Maps was the second download after Twitter for Android, and again the software is fast and responsive.
8. I’ve set up one email account to use IMAP to synchronise back to my own server at Prussia.Net. It only synchronises the Inbox, not the Sent mail. I moved an email to Trash, but it disappeared entirely. This doesn’t inspire confidence.

I’m about to travel across town for dinner, and I’ll play along the way. And tomorrow will be my first workday with the Desire. So to speak. That name is just so lame. I’m not sure whether I’ll migrate the rest of mye email just yet, but we’ll see how I go with everything else.

[Disclosure: I have been given a HTC Desire handset by Telstra free of charge to review. The comments expressed by me reflect my user experience and personal opinion.]

See what happens when you don’t curate your links for ten days, during which time there’s a conference which generates a bazillion things to link to? Sigh.

This is such a huge batch of links that I’ll start them over the fold. They’re not all about Media140 Sydney, trust me.

• “I have never used Twitter” — Are Politicians ill-advised to let their Advisors do the Tweeting? | media140.org: Paul Farrell looks at politicians and their tweets following Malcolm Turnbull’s revelation at Media Sydney that his staffer Thomas Tudehope sometimes tweeted on his behalf, and Barack Obama’s admission that he’s never used Twitter at all.
• Samasource: How African refugees are scoring Silicon Valley Internet jobs | Boing Boing: If you have working knowledge of English, basic computer skills and an Internet connection, then you can get a job anywhere in the world.
• cufón — fonts for the people: A JavaScript-based tool for using any typeface you like in web pages. I haven’t explored it myself, but I do know Crikey‘s website uses it.
• The Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted Because Only 0.027% of Iranians Are on Twitter | Gawker: Some reality-check commentary on the “Twitter revolutionised Iran” meme.
• Sources of subsidy in the production of news: a list | Quote and Comment: How can we pay for journalism? Here’s Jay Rosen’s list of possibilities, assembled for the conference “Journalism & The New Media Ecology: Who Will Pay The Messenger?”
• Someday You’ll Remember I Said This | Daily Patricia: Entrepreneur Patricia Handschiegel says Twitter isn’t microblogging. She differentiates between “publishing” and “person-to-person communications” and reckons Twitter’s in the second category, not the first. That, she reckons, is leading people to over-value Twitter monetarily.
• How to play piano like Philip Glass | YouTube: Torley explains in just 10 minutes how to compose and play music like Philip Glass.
• The Naked Truth About Social v Broadcast Media | newmatilda.com: Jason Wilson, lecturer in Digital Communications at the University of Wollongong, looks at the #PwnedNudieRun interaction between ABC TV’s Media Watch and folks on Twitter. I particularly like his “lesson for the low-rent McLuhans who see social media succeeding broadcast media in some simple transition”. Many insights.
• Declassified Blog | Newsweek.com: A new blog by investigative correspondents Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball with contributions from other Newsweek journalists. It will focus on national security, intelligence and law enforcement issues.
• Judge Bans Twitter From Court | CBS News: While in some jurisdictions journalists have been permitted to tweet form courtrooms, US District Judge Clay Land in Georgia has ruled that Rule 53 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure prohibit “broadcasting” and that Twitter is a broadcast medium. This decision will doubtless annoy som of the social media evangelists who see “broadcast” as a swear word.
• Journalists are the audience formerly known as the media | bronwen clune: Bronwen Clune’s presentation from Media140 Sydney.
• The Future Of Journalism Needs Journalists | newmatilda.com: Marni Cordell, editor of newmatilda.com, expresses some concerns about the ABC’s vision of community-based media, as outlined by managing director Mark Scott at Media140 Sydney.
• Media140 Sydney: Future Of Journalism In The Social Media Age | jjprojects: John Johnston’s take on Media140 Sydney.
• Twitter as a Journalistic Tool: Drilling Beneath the Rhetoric | J-scribe: The second half of Julie Posetti’s presentation to Media140 Sydney.
• It’s a Revolution, Not a War | J-scribe: The first half of Julie Posetti’s presentation to Media140 Sydney.
• Al Jazeera Creative Commons Repository: Al Jazeera has put all their raw camera footage from the War on Gaza online under a Creative Commons license, “Attribution”, which allows for commercial and non-commercial use. “This means that news outlets, filmmakers and bloggers will be able to easily share, remix, subtitle or reuse our footage.” They so get it.
• Sky News – Interview with Rupert Murdoch | YouTube: The full 37-minute interview with Rupert Murdoch, in which he suggests he’ll block Google from indexing News Corporation news sites.
• Media140 Sydney | Public Opinion: Gary Sauer-Thompson’s take on Media140 Sydney.
• No Strings Attached: Public Broadcaster Seeks Relationships for Collaboration, Conversation and New Ideas: The Media140 Sydney keynote speech from ABC managing director Mark Scott. This is the PDF of his slides with his speaking notes. It includes a look at some of the ABC’s plans for pro-am media creation.
• Claiming to be unbiased is a patronising fairytale, so let’s just own up to our agendas | mUmBRELLA: In this guest post about Media140 Sydney, Cathie McGinn argues there’s no such thing as total objectivity, so better to disclose your agenda.
• My Two Francs Worth: Media 140 | LinenSuave: A parable of sorts about Media140 Sydney, and the pointlessness of the whole bloggers versus journalists debate.
• Journalism and blogging at Media140 | Barry Saunders: “Investigative journalism — while a very valuable form of journalism, and one we need more of — is a very minor part of journalism as it exists, and an over-focus on investigative journalism as the dominant form of journalism obscures vast bodies of journalistic output.”
• Media140 handouts | Claire’s posterous: The BBC’s Claire Wardle presents a beginners guide to using Twitter (including links to other good introductions to Twitter sites), and a general basic handout which covers some of the other social media tools she discussed in her Media140 Sydney workshop.
• Media140 | Flickr: Wolf Cocklin’s photos from Media140 Sydney.
• Call Recorder for Skype | Ecamm Network: This is the OS X tool I mentioned at Media140 Sydney for recording your Skype conversations, both audio and video. Cheap and extremely useful.
• Too tired to tweet | ABC News: ABC political correspondent Lyndal Curtis has been following Media140 Sydney but doesn’t know where people get the time to participate. I really should write a response to this, as I reckon there’s a very clear counter-argument.
• Journalists on Twitter need to ‘be human’ | Renai LeMay: The Media140 Sydney presentation from Renai LeMay, News Editor at ZDNet Australia.
• Congratulations to the ABC | Telstra Exchange: A post on Telstra’s new Exchange corporate blog about the ABC’s new social media policy from Telstra’s Group Managing Director, Public Policy & Communications, David Quilty. Includes links to Telstra’s own social media policies.
• The ABC of social media use | ABC News: The ABC News story that includes the announcement of the ABC’s new social media policy for staff, presented at Media140 Sydney by Managing Director Mark Scott.
• Alex Hawke Liberal Party Downfall | YouTube: The video which supposedly caused Thomas Tudehope to resign from Malcolm Turnbull’s staff.
• YouTube video sinks Turnbull minder | ABC News: Malcolm Turnbull’s staffer Thomas Tudehope has been forced to resign after reports of his involvement in the distribution of a satirical video about the Liberal Party’s factional battles.
• “How would history have recorded the holocaust if there had been I-phones in the concentration camps?” | Paul Farrell: SBS’s head of news and current affairs Paul Cutler asked this provocative question at Media140 Sydney, pointing out that despite the supposed breakthroughs of social media, the genocide in Sri Lanka is failing to get much media coverage.
• Riyaad Minty: Sydney’s Speaker Pash (International Social Media Case Studies) | Media140: Paul Farrell’s commentary on the Media140 Sydney presentation by Al Jazeera’s head of social media, Riyaad Minty. Minty was one of the event’s highlights, in my opinion.
• Malcolm Turnbull | Twitter: The tweet when Australia’s opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull announced that he’d start identifying whether it was he tweeting personally, or a staffer. This came less than three hours after he was asked at Media140 whether there wasn’t an ethical issue with lack of disclosure, especially since Prime MInister Kevin Rudd made the distinction clear in his own tweets.
• The Spin Fails Here: Day One At #Media140 Sydney | The Inquisitr: The Inquisitor‘s editor Duncan Riley wasn’t happy with what he heard at Media140 Sydney, especially that Problogger creator Darren Rowse is the only Australian making money online. There is much bitterness here.
• Initial Thoughts on Media140: Memories of blogging | Woolly Days: Thoughts on Media140 Sydney from Brisbane-based journalist, blogger and QUT researcher Derek Barry.
• Why the future of African journalism lies in mobile social networks | Slideshare: More solid support for the idea that the future of the African internet is mobile. Plenty of stats and some important observations from Jude Mathurine, who heads up the New Media lab at South Africa’s Rhodes University.
• Apparently editors nurture their journalists by telling them it’s okay to get stuff wrong | mUmBRELLA: One section of Laurel Papworth’s presentation at Media140 Sydney didn’t go down so well at mUmBRELLA…
• Media140 today | Visible Procrastinations: A collection of links to commentary about Media140 Sydney’s first day. I have yet to go though them, but when I do I’ll add the relevant ones to my own Delicious feed.
• Media140 Sydney: Social Media Twitter & Journalism | Laurel Papworth: Laurel Papworth’s presentation to Media140 Sydney, in which she positions social media as the people taking back control and ownership of their stories. Word and video available.
• Media140 Sydney 2009 | Flickr: Neerav Bhatt’s photos of Media140 Sydney. He seems to have captured every speaker.
• Malcolm Turnbull on the (social) media. With Fran Kelly | SlowTV: Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull is interviews by the ABC’s Fran Kelly about his use of social media in the political context, including a little bit of point-scoring.
• How social media is changing political reporting | SlowTV: The full Media140 Sydney session “How Social Media is Changing Political Reporting” with Annabel Crabb, Bernard Keane (Crikey), Chris Uhlmann (ABC), John Kerrison (Nine) and Caroline Overington (The Australian).
• Caroline Overington takes on Mark Scott and the free digital news proponents | YouTube: A 4-minute extract from Overington’s presentation to Media140 Sydney, which turned into a massive anti-ABC pro-Murdoch rant.
• Conceptual Confusion and Journalistic Process — My Highlights and Lowlights of Media 140 | The Content Makers: “The low lights came from conceptual confusions, it seemed to me. Namely the several highly respected and competent journalists who, quite apart from being clearly terrified by the arrival of the audience in the news making process, also can’t tell the difference between… a platform, and a process… [and] objectivity and integrity.”
• So what’s the “cool new toy”? | The Content Makers: Speculation about News Corporation’s plans for some digital news device. Is Apple involved? An iRupert? A RuPod? The SunKindle?
• Caroline Overington Gives Some Hints on Rupert’s Plans (and tangles with Annabel Crabb) | The Content Makers: Margaret Simons’ original report on the rather strange Media140 Sydney presentation by News Limited journalist Caroline Overington and her stoush with Annabel Crabb, who’s moving from Fairfax to the ABC.
• The ABC Springs Leaks in the Porous Digital Age. Mark Scott AGAIN. | The Content Makers: Meta-journalist Margaret Simons covers some of the announcements made my Mark Scott, Managing Director of the ABC, at Media140 Sydney.
• Can Social Media Save Iran? | newmatilda.com: A Media140 presentation by Dr Jason Wilson, lecturer in Digital Communications at the University of Wollongong. A nice debunking of some of the social media over-hype.
• John Bergin’s Media 140 Speech | The Content Makers: John runs “digital online stuff” for Sky News Australia, on the pay TV networks. This is his presentation from Media140 Sydney. Some good points about listening as well as speaking.
• Off Air: Iran, Twitter and the new media world. | Off Air: The presentation to Media140 Sydney by the highly-respected journalist Mark Colvin, presenter of ABC Radio National’s PM program.
• Rebooting the News System in the Age of Social Media | Quote and Comment: Jay Rosen’s presentation at Media140 covered 10 key sound-bites and what they mean for the future of journalism. Here are those ten points, with links to further material on each one.
• freesound: “The Freesound Project is a collaborative database of Creative Commons licensed sounds. Freesound focusses only on sound, not songs.” I’ve used this to source sound effects myself, and it’s wonderful.
• “I Can’t Believe We Still Have to Protest This Crap.” | Flickr: A photo taken in Washington, DC during the 27 January 2007 anti-war march. This was used by Barry Saunders in his Media140 presentation.
• Journalism — a defence | Corporate Engagement: Trevor Cook took exception to my Media140 presentation and spend a few hundred words saying so. I added a little to the discussion, and will add more later when I get time.
• Ushahidi :: Crowdsourcing Crisis Information (FOSS): This is the software which Al Jazeera and friends developed for that “War on Gaza” experiment in crowdsourced crisis information mapping. Yes, it’s free open-source software.
• War on Gaza – Experimental Beta | Al Jazeera Labs: An intriguing experiment from Al Jazeera. Anyone can post reports such as casualty counts directly to the site. all of them are then mapped categorised.
• Media140: I am the bastard child of old & new media…| The Digital Wing: The Media140 presentation from Valerio Veo, who’s been in charge of SBS News& Current Affairs Online since 2006.
• Bleating innocents or matted satans: the goat in art | guardian.co.uk: “Jonathan Jones shepherds us through goat art,” it says. Maybe that should be “goatherds us”.
• Sunday Thoughts about Journalism | Stilgherrian: Another long essay from me in September 2008 which is perhaps a prelude to my Media140 Sydney presentation.
• “Trouble at t’paper” | Stilgherrian: My essay from September 2008 which formed some of the background to my Media140 Sydney presentation.
• Changing spaces in media | Aide-Memoire: Kate Carruthers’ observations form Media140 Sydney. “The first thing that struck me was the level of fear and fear-mongering by some of the print journalists on day one… There seemed to be little idea amongst these panellists that changing media platforms might reinvigorate media and create new revenue or career opportunities.”
• Get with the times, Jay Rosen tells journos | ABC News: A report on Jay Rosen’s keynote from Media140 Sydney. “He says journalists should stop expecting ‘open’ platforms like blogging and Twitter to behave like traditional production systems. Instead, he emphasised the value of listening to the public and being transparent about journalistic processes.”
• Sydney Media140 sessions: The program for Media140 Sydney, held 5 to 6 November 2009, with brief speaker bios, photos and links to their Twitter profiles.

My world was dominated by Telstra last week. Apart from my writing and a radio spot about the government’s plans to split the telco, I also spoke on ABC Radio National’s Future Tense on Thursday about the sudden closure of their nowwearetalking blog.

I’d already written about that shutdown here and over at Crikey. However the Radio National conversation was in the more general context of how social media is affecting corporate transparency.

You can listen to the program (at least for now) and read the full transcript over at the ABC’s website. The other guests were Shel Holtz, co-author of Tactical Transparency; Mark Hannah, a New York-based communications consultant; Mike Hickinbotham, Telstra’s Social Media Senior Advisor; and ABC economic correspondent Stephen Long. well worth checking out.

Here’s the full text of my section.

Antony Funnell (ABC): Now one of Australia’s prominent bloggers on communications trends and politics is Stilgherrian. So what did he make of the Telstra decision to close nowwearetalking?

Stilgherrian: I’m not surprised, but I think it was a false step. They really had started to turn it round from being the propaganda piece it was, to something that was much more conversational with their customers and with the people who were interested in what they were doing. But the problem is, all of that four years of previous negativity was still online, and I can understand that a big corporation just wants to obliterate the memory of that, for two reasons.

One, to stop people finding it and hitting them over the head with it, but also for the new management team really to mark their territory. There’s a lot of that, shall we say, weeing on the tree happening I think, and this is just the corporate equivalent.

Antony Funnell: So you do think though that in the latter stages of that website’s life, that they were genuine in their attempt to be more transparent with their customer base?

Stilgherrian: Genuine as much as they could within the kind of corporate culture that Telstra has. They are still very much a control-the-message, top-down PR kind of organisation. It will take a long time to turn that around.

Antony Funnell: Now leaving Telstra to the side, this whole notion of transparency in business, where companies use social media tools, use the Internet to try and give across a message that they’re being transparent, that they’re being more open, how real do you think that actually is?

Stilgherrian: There are some companies who really are trying to do it, and I can think of 37signals who, well they’re sort of based in Chicago, but they have people all over the place. They go to the extent of really discussing in public how they’re making their design decisions about their product. They discuss quite openly when they have any service difficulties and so on. For other companies, it’s pretending to be transparent, they’re trying to look as if they’re transparent, but they’re still really trying to control it, so when they have a situation that’s not perfect, that’s going wrong, they still don’t want to talk to you about that, they only want to be transparent when it’s a happy message.

It is going to be hard for them to deal with that. It’s going to take perhaps a generational change before we accept, or before the corporations and their senior executives accept that you can admit to the occasional failure, and people will not crucify you for that, in fact they might be happier if you’re honest and say ‘Look, we stuffed up there, and this is what we’ve done to fix it’, and that magic word, ‘Sorry’.

Antony Funnell: You mentioned generational change there; do you believe that as that generation that is very familiar with social media, as they grow up, as they get older and start moving into management, is there a hope that they will be more willing to engage, more willing to be transparent?

Stilgherrian: My own feeling is that if you talk to any 15-year-old now, they’re already (or even a 20-year-old) they’re already making so much more of their life public than you or I would have ever thought of, and don’t think anything of it. I’m almost tempted to say that all of the ‘keep your dirty washing behind closed doors’ is very much Victorian-era prudery.

Before people separated out into their lovely middle-class terrace homes in London or Manchester or wherever, then people were all bundled together, they did see each other’s lives, both good points and bad points. And I think they were much more judged on how they were as a person than on the image they projected as a worthy citizen.

Perhaps we’re going back more to that time. In terms of how those younger people will move through organisations, I think that gradually they’ll be turned off from organisations that don’t accept them for the actual human beings that they are, with warts and all.

They will soon talk amongst themselves about whether someone was sacked from a job because they had an inappropriate photograph on Facebook, and gradually those organisations will find it harder and harder to hire talented, creative people, the kind of people they need to create the future, and instead they will be stuck with the dull conformists that just don’t have anything interesting on Facebook because they don’t have anything interesting in their life.

[Disclaimer: This transcript was typed from a recording of the program. The ABC cannot guarantee its complete accuracy because of the possibility of mishearing and occasional difficulty in identifying speakers. I have made some minor corrections.]

I’ve read so much about the Telstra break-up this week, and written and spoken about it so much, that my brain’s still fizzing. But here’s one thing: I predicted this more than a year ago!

On 2 January 2008 I wrote, as part of my Predictions for 2008:

Telstra will be forced to separate its wholesale and retail businesses. Meanwhile the Sol Trujillo-led management team will continue to play nasty with the government, causing them to be increasingly sidelined — especially over the Rudd government’s new broadband rollout.

OK, I got the timing wrong. But it does seem that I was reading the signs correctly.

Looking back at those predictions, I’m saddened to see that former defence minister Brendan Nelson hasn’t been investigated for his role in that deal to buy $6 billion worth of Super Hornet fighter aircraft — even if someone has since pointed me to their potential use in an electronic warfare role — but has instead been made ambassador to the EC, NATO, Belgium and Luxembourg, and special representative to the World Health Organisation.

Not quite the outcome I was after, unless some Eurospook’s going to give the good Dr Nelson a thorough probing in Brussels.

If that happens, I don’t want pictures.

So, I’m updating my 2008 predictions score to 56.25%, which is now a pass instead of a fail. That’s fair, right?

[Photo: Former Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo, courtesy Wikipedia. I'm so thoroughly confused by the implications of the licensing on that image and a recent Creative Commons report on how people define "non-commercial" that I'll just say this post is licensed by whatever Creative Commons license it needs to be to shut everyone up. FFS write in Plain English, people!]

Bonus links: This week’s writing about Telstra

• Telstra has to morph into a different kind of beast
• Great for competition? Or one true NBN?
• Crikey Clarifier: What caused Sydney CBD’s Telstra outage?

• Steak House or Gay Bar?: Can you pick the steakhouses from the gay bars, just by their names? It’s harder than you might thing!
• Greenpeace frees ocean life from Pacific longliner | Greenpeace Australia Pacific: Greenpeace’s report on their ship Esperanza “freeing tuna, sharks, marlin and an endangered sea turtle from a Taiwanese longliner”, the Ho Tsai Fa 18. Or, as I prefer to label it, Greenpeace committing piracy and endangering the lives of mariners going about their business.
• Fish Now, Pay Later | Greenpeace Australia Pacific: Darren Smith told me the article on dolphin-safe tuna wasn’t right, that Greenpeace didn’t support any kind of industrialised fishing. Here’s what Greenpeace is currently doing in the Pacific.
• The ecological disaster that is dolphin safe tuna | Southern Fried Science: By promoting “dolphin-safe tuna” — I prefer to spell it with a hyphen thusly — we’ve ended up with a system that’s unsafe for pretty much everything else.
• Meet my hot new stripper wife / Turns out the mid-life crisis is a cruel global phenomenon. Can it be stopped? | Mark Morford: Mark Morford is rapidly becoming one of my favourite writers. In this piece from February 2008 he explains a man’s mid-life crisis rather too well. And entertainingly. I’ll never be able to listen to Justin Timberlake in the same way again.
• The Lost Seasons | ABC: More details of the Australian Aboriginal six-season cycle, including a nice explanation of the system used by the Sydney basin’s D’harawal people.
• War 2.0: Political Violence & New Media | ANU Department of International Relations: I’ve been invited to attend this 2-day symposium in Canberra on 7-8 October. Now, to figure out who’s paying for it, which will be the key factor in deciding whether I can go.
• Jimmy Carter says that tea baggers hate President Obama because he's black | The Root: The former president points out a truth so self-evident you wonder how it could possibly be controversial. But controversial it is. Has modern journalism become so timid that it can’t handle the truth?
• Understanding the Telstra d-i-v-o-r-c-e | SearchNetworking.com.au: Richard Chirgwin’s backgrounder explains just how difficult it will be to separate Telstra into separate wholesale and retail divisions.
• The next generation bends over | 37signals: The makers of Basecamp, something I use every day, reckon the sale of online accounting software Mint to Intuit, the makers of Quicken and Quickbooks, is “indicative of a VC-induced cancer that’s infecting our industry and killing off the next generation”.
• Kid Cannabis | Rolling Stone: “How a chubby pizza-delivery boy from Idaho became a drug kingpin.” It’s just another product distribution business, just illegal.
• Rudd & Conroy Gambling On Mandatory Internet Censorship Working | broowery.com: An odd statistical analysis of the likelihood of stumbling across banned material online.
• ACMA Blacklists Iran Protest Video & Boing Boing: Another example of why the ACMA blacklist process is seemingly out of step with what the community might want. That’s not ACMA’s fault, they’re just implementing a dodgy policy.
• Why Sol Trujillo should be sued for stuffing up Telstra: Kohler | SmartCompany: There’s so many historical analyses of Telstra coming out this week, what with the government announcing its break-up and n’all. This one is marvellous.
• 2009 Menzies Lecture by John Howard (full text) | The Australian: “In the Australian context the adoption of a Charter or Bill of rights would represent the final triumph of elitism in Australian politics,” reckons our former Prime Minister. A fascinating read if only for its disingenuous use of political rhetoric and coded messages rather than rational argument.
• Oil Rocks | BLDGBLOG: Imagine a city of 5000 people built on stilts and causeways some 45km out into a lake. Well, it exists, and it’s called Oil Rocks, in the Caspian Sea in Azerbaijan.
• The Mushroom Tunnel of Mittagong | BLDGBLOG: A fascinating look, with photos, of a mushroom farm inside a disused railway tunnel. The tunnel itself is still government property, with the farm existing on a 5-year lease.
• Death by Information Overload | HBR.org: “New research and novel techniques offer a lifeline to you and your organization,” it says.
• The Economics of Sex Work | Core Economics: Good to see an update of knowledge since I did a little research on the sex industry for ABC Radio all those years ago.
• CHART OF THE DAY: Primetime On Facebook Is Monday To Wednesday | Silicon Valley Insider: “Social media marketers, take note. The best days to spam, erm, publish wall posts on Facebook that you want your ‘fans’ to pay attention to are Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays.”