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.]

Interestingly, they chose to focus on the “liberation” of the credit card numbers and how it affected the Australian victims.

They didn’t use any of the material we recorded on who the various victims might be, what the still-to-come publication of some 2.7 million of Stratfor’s internal emails might reveal, and the effect that could have on both Stratfor and the individuals who’ve been feeding them information.

Indeed, this article by Barrett Brown makes it clear that those emails and other internal documents were the real target, not the credit card numbers. Anonymous is trying to give the impression that there’s some powerful stuff in there, but we’ll see.

I guess when you’ve only got six minutes and have to start with “Who is Anonymous?” and “Who is Stratfor?” then there’s not really enough time to get to “This is really a follow-up to Anonymous’ hack of HBGary Federal earlier in the year.”

Careful viewers will notice that reporter Sara Everingham described me as someone who “goes by the name Stilgherrian”, which is a bit of an oops but something that seemed to cause more distress to my Twitter followers than me.

Since some people have asked, I might as well tell you that the interview was shot in a spare office at the ABC’s Ultimo headquarters — rather different from the outdoor shot the last time I was on 7.30.

And despite the story being written and voiced by Sara Everingham, I was actually interviewed by Sarah Dingle. Ah, the Magic of Television!

The video in the story is Flash, so it won’t work on your iDevice. But there’s also an MP4 version of the video.

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets — leaving out all of the most important bits.

I can’t tell you about the highly personal things that happened last week, except to say that something which had been gnawing at the very core of my being has… changed. And my mind is still adjusting. As is my shoulder, which continues to misbehave. But codeine is dealing with that. Again.

The tooth situation is being resolved, though. Stage one of the root canal work has been performed.

I can also tell you about the nauseatingly young-and-in-love hipsters, pictured above, with their matching skateboards and matching sneakers. Well, that’s all I want to tell you about them, or I’ll get cranky.

So with the linkage…

Podcasts

• Patch Monday episode 108, “Adobe’s long battle with security flaws”. A conversation with Brad Arkin, Adobe’s head of product security and privacy.

Articles

• Flash Player 11: Adobe’s great security hope, CSO, 4 October 2011.
• iPhone release: no bunch of fives to the fore, but it’s OK, Crikey, 5 October 2011.
• Steve Jobs deserved his cult — you don’t even know how he influenced you, Crikey, 6 October 2011.
• Gillard and others honour Jobs’ memory (contributor only), ZDNet Australia, 6 October 2011.
• Global time zone database closed following legal threat, CSO, 7 October 2011.

Media Appearances

Every single media spot I did this week related to Apple and/or the death of Steve Jobs.

• On Wednesday I spoke with Adelaide radio 1395 FIVEaa about the iPhone 4S. But interest in the iPhone subsided when…
• … on Thursday the media spots about the death of Steve Jobs began. The first was with ABC Gold Coast.
• The second spot was with Triple J’s Hack.
• The third spot on Thursday was with ABC News24′s discussion program The Drum.
• And on Friday evening I spoke about the death of Steve Jobs on ABC 666 Canberra.
• On the weekend, I also provided some comments on Steve Jobs to the TECHGEEK Weekly podcast.

Corporate Largesse

• On Thursday lunch, snacks and coffee were provided to me as an attendee at the Digital Culture Public Sphere event in Sydney.

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: Matching skateboards and sneakers, a rather nauseating expression of young love spotted on King Street, Newtown, on Saturday night.]

It was my first time on the program. I think I did OK.

If you can’t see the embedded video, try watching it directly on YouTube.

This material is ©2011 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, but as usual I’m posting it here because you never know how long these things are going to stay online. Broadcast 6 October 2011.

That’s in addition to the pieces I did for Crikey:

• iPhone release: no bunch of fives to the fore, but it’s OK
• Steve Jobs deserved his cult — you don’t even know how he influenced you

Normal service, on a wider range of topics, will doubtless resume tomorrow. Or Monday. Or… somewhen.

I am so many different kinds of expert these days. On Friday I was on SBS TV’s World News talking about the UK’s High Court decision to order the country’s largest internet service provider BT to block access to a website that provides links to pirated movies.

The video of the news story is embedded in the website article.

SBS has also posted the complete 7-minute video of the interview they recorded.

Yes, I’m wearing a hoodie on national television. At least it was a clean hoodie. I’d taken a cab to SBS straight from the airport. It’s actually a small miracle I had any clean clothes with me at all. Besides, the cameraman chose the hoodie over my black shirt because he wanted to “break things up a bit”. The TV news has too many men in suits and business shirts for his liking, it seems.

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. Most of it seemed to be about Google+.

Podcasts

• Patch Monday episode 96, “Can Google+ kill Facebook? Twitter?” My guests were social computing and business futures consultant Kate Carruthers, Digital Citizens founder James Fridley, and freelance journalist and blogger Neerav Bhatt.

Articles

• There’s no way I’m handing over data to Google+, for Crikey.
• Online crime under-reported, under-researched, for CSO.
• Amazon AWS algorithms watch for cloud-based hacks, for CSO, which includes material from my interview with Amazon’s chief technology officer Dr Werner Vogels.
• Why rush? Let others find the Google+ privacy landmines, for ABC Drum Opinion.
• Quintet nations agree on cybercrime action plan, for CSO. It seems the same five Anglosphere nations that have been sharing intelligence since WWII still consider themselves a unit.

Media Appearances

• On Tuesday I was interviewed by ABC TV’s 7.30 for their story on voicemail hacking at News of the World. I wrote about that already.
• On Friday I was interviewed on the same topic by Adelaide radio 1395 FIVEaa.

Corporate Largesse

• While attending the AWS Cloud Tour 2011 on Thursday, I received ample food and drink at Amazon’s expense.
• On Friday I met with analyst Arun Chandrasekaran from Frost & Sullivan. He paid for the coffee and juice.
• On Friday I had another extremely long lunch with those unnamed people about that unnamed media project, but this time I managed to find my way back to where I was meant to be spending the night.

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: Kent Street, Sydney, photographed on Friday 15 July 2011.]

[Update 7pm: I didn't think that last article for CSO would be posted today, but it was, so I've added it to the "Articles" list.]

Amongst all the strange things that happened yesterday, one has stuck strangely in my mind even after sleeping and waking up strangely. A question. Could Stilgherrian Live return?

It’s almost two years since the last episode of my curious little live video webcast when, curiously enough given this week’s curious news about News, James Murdoch was voted “Cnut of the Week”. No, that’s not a typo, that’s what the segment was called.

Yesterday, within an hour of the moment of Full Moon, several different people suggested or even called for the program’s return — including two completely unrelated people who recently discovered the program archives, one who used to watch it every week back in 2008 and 2009, and one who thought… um, suggested… um, no… I can’t say any more. Bloody television.

So what do you think? Should the program remain a thing of its time, with the shows that were made sitting in the archive? Should Stilgherrian Live return? If it did return, which components should be continued? And when should it be produced?

My own thoughts are quite jumbled on this which is why I am asking you, Dear Reader…

Interestingly, most of the soundbites we recorded were about how easy it is to access someone’s voicemail, but the resulting story was more about whether something like the News of the World scandal could already be happening in Australia.

Recording this piece was a pleasant reminder of working in daily live radio. The pace is kinda fun. The ABC called me at 2.15pm, and arranged for the crew to meet me at 3.15pm. We drove to a nearby park and recorded the main interview as well as the cutaways in a total of 45 minutes. And that was in between the noise of aircraft taking off, motor cycles, and pedestrians and cyclists walking between me and the camera.

I’m shown using both laptop and phone. Does that put me into the category of mouse-using TV expert?

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. Last week I said something’s gotta give. This week it gave.

Stress and exhaustion and a much lower productivity level than the previous two weeks has led to this post being two days late.

Podcasts

• Patch Monday episode 95, “Malware? It’s just business!” Malware, these days, is so good that it simply has to be produced by professional development teams. As Yuval Ben-Itzhak, chief technology officer of AVG, explains, malware is distributed automatically, and runs on millions of target computers without causing any visible signs that something bad is happening.

Articles

• Air-gap security an “enduring fairy tale”: Byres, for CSO. Further commentary on the security of industrial control systems from Eric Byres, essentially a follow-up to my Son of Stuxnet within a year: expert for ZDNet Australia.
• Cyber threats the focus for Quintet of Attorneys-General, for CSO.

Media Appearances

None.

Corporate Largesse

• On Monday 4 July I had an extremely long lunch with people who are continuing their interest in having me work with them on a forthcoming media project. I still can’t say much, except I will drop in one word: Television.

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 Wilds of Lilyfield, the view eastwards towards the Sydney CBD from the corner of Lilyfield and Balmain Roads.]

What a week! I’ve written five articles. Another two are due for Monday. I’ve done my usual Patch Monday podcast. I’ve done five radio appearances on five different topics. I’ve been interviewed for Phil Dobbie’s BTalk podcast, and that’ll appear next week.

I’ve even been interviewed by an anthropologist for his PhD project. I’m talking to a new editor about more writing. And even — this is weird — to a television production company about a TV project.

That all comes after a month or, really, six weeks or more of travel, intense work, intense and deeply personal events and the tightly-tangled ball of stress, depression and anxiety that can trigger. Which it did.

I’m knackered.

And there’s still plenty of work to do and decisions to make over the next couple of weeks.

I mention all this for a variety of reasons…

• While I do have Weekly Wrap posts, I’ll also do individual posts linking to things like major articles and radio spots. This should make it easier for people to find things they’re interested in, and quite frankly it’s better Google juice. It also gives me more of an opportunity to reflect on each item — like adding a quick personal view to supplement a story that was a straight-news piece.
• There’s about to be a flurry of small posts as I process the week’s radio spots. Consider that a warning.
• I wanted to post at least part of the background before more reflective posts started appearing. I haven’t written much from a deeply personal perspective lately — certainly not like the essays that I was doing a couple years back. This is part of the head-clearing process before I return to that.

I write in so many places these days — ZDNet Australia, Crikey, Technology Spectator, ABC’s The Drum, even occasionally at places like CRN Australia. And, as I mentioned, there’s probably more to come. That’s all writing for other people.

This here is my place, and it’ll be about writing for me.

No, I’m not sure what form that’ll take.

I’m not sure what it even means.

Do those bullet points flow from the intro? No, not really. But that’s where my head is this morning. I’m sure things will become clearer as the day unfolds.

[Photo: That's me (embiggen) photographed with my webcam just now at Rosella Cottage, the somewhat bigger house that's the "family home" of the owners of Bunjaree Cottages. It isn't normally rented out to punters. I've been here at the cottages alone for a week, and I haven't bothered shaving. I'm staring to look like I did before ’Pong and I shot that short film The Shave back in 2008. It's not a good look.]

Hey Livestream, your This Week On Livestream email depresses me. Every time it arrives it looks like you still reckon the most worthy thing to aspire to is being an old-fashioned broadcast TV network. Stars, celebrities, musicians, TV chefs, sportspeople, American Idol contestants, and this week — yay! — a royal wedding.

In other words, you’re promoting Livestream as being a wonderful new source of video, so very different from TV, by pointing to the exactly the kinds of people and things we can already see on TV. Gosh, there’s a unique selling proposition!

Now I get that you need to attract the attention of the great unwashed masses. Even though the royal wedding will probably be available on free-to-air and pay TV everywhere on the goddam planet, you still feel the need to wrap your lips around that revenue tit just like every other media business. You can’t help yourself. It’s in your blood.

But how about each week you highlight one, just one, innovative use of online video that simply wouldn’t have been possible before we had services like Livestream? Something made by and featuring no-one we’ve ever heard of before. Something that might only have an audience of a hundred people, maybe even only ten.

One.

Just one.

Please.

Because that might demonstrate how the ability for simply anyone to stream live video to a global audience will radically transform the media and, as a result, society itself. I’m assuming you do actually get that, right? And it’ll show people how Livestream can be a part of that.

Oh, and a few more things that aren’t white middle-class Americans speaking English wouldn’t go astray either. President Obama doesn’t count: see “celebrity”, above.

The 1960s were the Space Age. And since I was a bright male child of that decade, my thoughts were dominated by the events, images and themes of space exploration.

It doesn’t look much now, but this photo was the very pinnacle of all that. Or perhaps the apogee. Neil Armstrong stepping onto the surface of the Moon. One small step etc, taken from the original TV footage.

I was mesmerised — even though half the time my nine-year-old self couldn’t figure out what was going on. I’d been following the story as it unfolded in the newspapers, reading every word and memorising every diagram. It was front page news every day. But the TV images were just crap.

Of course the reason they were crap was the circuitous journey they took from the Apollo mission’s slow-scan TV cameras. The signal was compressed from arsehole to breakfast time and bounced from the Moon to the Parkes Radiothermal Telescope in rural New South Wales, then somehow to NASA Mission Control in Houston where the audio was mixed in, then back to Australia to the TV stations, and finally out through the normal broadcast chain.

It’s a miracle they arrived at all, as the film The Dish portrayed — along with its historical inaccuracies.

But historians and popular culture tell us that the world stopped to watch these blurry images, and we all remember where we were. And it’s true.

Scheduled to happen in prime TV viewing hours in the US, that first step was broadcast early afternoon Australian time. We got a day off school to watch it. Myponga Primary School only had one television, wheeled on its trolley from classroom to classroom as required. That wasn’t going to work for the whole school.

So my family watched the moonwalk at the home our of friends the Lorenzetti family. They had a better TV, ‘cos they were richer than us. I remember sitting on the carpeted floor in front of a TV in a wooden cabinet. I remember being frustrated because it was all supposed to be so important to watch, and I wanted it to be exciting, but it started off as a high-contrast blur and everything happened so slowly.

The Apollo 11 mission was, as I say, the apogee of the Space Age. But space — or should I say Space, capitalised — dominated my childhood in so many other ways.

I kinda knew I has a “strong interest” in space, but the recent comment by schoolmate Michael Mignanelli really hit me.

One thing that amazed [us] was the fascination you had for space ships. On the bus and at school, you were always drawing space ships, they were drawn very neat and also to scale, for some one your age at the time, it was amazing. We were convinced that later in life you would probably finish up in America working on some space mission.

He’s right. I was fascinated. Perhaps even obsessed? What do you make of all this?

• I could identify by sight all of the manned space vehicles, US and Soviet. I could talk you through their mission profiles. I could explain escape towers and transfer orbits and ablative heat shielding. And much more. By the time I was eight years old. Well, not the mathematics of the transfer orbits.
• I named the farm’s cats after spacecraft. My favourite cats were named after Soviet space vehicles because they simply looked so much cooler. I seem to recall that I got to name the cats because my mother hates the critters and my father couldn’t give a shit.
• An old film projection booth on wheels became my imaginary spacecraft, as explained previously.
• An antique steam locomotive in the Victor Harbor playground was also re-imagined as a spacecraft, much to the annoyance of the other kids playing there. Until I realised that the “control room” was in the middle rather than at the front, so it obviously worked better as a submarine. Those other kids were all just stupid and unimaginative. And I told them so.

Back when I was a kid, Space was exciting. Today it’s just a routine place you stash satellites and, as I’ve written before, somehow NASA has made it boring.

Given that I didn’t get around to writing any sort of general round-up of 2010, you might as well enjoy Charlie Brooker’s 2010 Wipe, broadcast on the BBC earlier this week.

It’s not anywhere “official” that I can discover yet, but of course it’s already on YouTube in four parts: 1, 2, 3, 4.

It doesn’t hold a candle to His Benevolence Stilgherrian’s Christmas Message from 2008, but it’ll do.

• ABC iView Downloader | Whirlpool Forums: Tools and tips for downloading the Flash videos from ABC TV’s iView and SBS Australia. Handy if you don’t have the bandwidth for live streaming, and for timeshifting beyond the limited time ABC and SBS offer.
• 85 wordpress plugins for blogging journalists | Online Journalism Blog: Not a bad list for trimming down the number of choices out there.
• Mob Rule! How Users Took Over Twitter | Wired: A good summary of Twitter’s history and potential for the future — especially if it’s still new to you.
• What price the pace of modern life? | guardian.co.uk: Michael White describes his 14-hour day as a journalist, comparing it with the equally-busy if not even busier politicians, and wondered whether this pace is the right thing.