Author: Stilgherrian

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Cnutly nominations open for tonight’s Stilgherrian Live

Cnut of the Week graphic

It’s Thursday. It must be Cnut Time. Yes, nominations are now open for “Cnut of the Week”!

For those new to the game, we’re honouring King Cnut the Great who, as legend would have it, attempted to hold back the tide to prove to his sycophantic courtiers that he was a mortal man. Each week we ask: Who do you think is futilely resisting the tide of change?

Nominations are open to people, organisations, nations and even abstract forces of nature — but your nomination has to reflect the news of the last week, and you have to give reasons. As usual, I’ll select the shortlist at 8.30pm Sydney time, and you can vote during tonight’s edition of Stilgherrian Live from 9.30pm Sydney time.

Who do you nominate, and why? Don’t forget the “Why?”!

[Update Friday 27 March: Due to peacocks, the program didn’t happen. I will therefore do a special catch-up edition of Stilgherrian Live tonight at 9.30pm Sydney time. Nominations for “Cnut of the week” are still open until 8.30pm.]

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Another leaked blacklist, another two Crikey stories

Crikey logo

Since Friday’s Crikey story about the leaked blacklist — which Senator Stephen Conroy denied was the actual ACMA blacklist of banned Internet content — there have been further leaks. And two more Crikey stories.

Monday’s piece was Yet another ACMA internet blacklist springs a leak. I explain how the leak unfolded, and how Wikileaks published instructions for extracting the cunningly-named file Websites_ACMA.txt from a certain brand of Internet filtering software — one of the Internet Industry Association’s Family Friendly Filters and one of those provided free to (a few) Australian families by the Howard government’s now-defunct NetAlert scheme.

I also run through Wikileak’s’s legal threats, and Senator Conroy’s latest spin — that the government never intended to block all of the ACMA blacklist, just the “Refused Classification” items. It’s a shame that doesn’t match a list of seven public statements about what’s planned to be blocked.

Tuesday’s was It certainly looks like the ACMA blacklist, eh Senator Conroy?. There’s further evidence that the most recent leaked list is, almost certainly, the actual ACMA blacklist. I also look at Senator Nick Minchin’s daft attempt to portray Conroy as Big Brother over a perfectly ordinary-looking government tender for media monitoring service.

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Pia Waugh: An interview for Ada Lovelace Day 2009

Painting of Ada Lovelace

It’s Ada Lovelace Day! 24th March has been selected by Suw Charman-Anderson as an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology. This is my contribution.

Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, known in modern times simply as Ada Lovelace, was the daughter of Lord Byron of poetry fame. A mathematician, she’s widely regarded as the world’s first computer programmer.

“Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised,” says Charman-Anderson. “We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines.”

For my contribution, I decided to interview Australian geek girl Pia Waugh, and this is the result — the first time I’ve actually edited video with my own hands. Well, with a computer. Enjoy. It runs for just under nine minutes.

If the embedded video player (above) doesn’t work, try over at Viddler.

This is is also my first attempt at building a workflow for recording video interviews. There may more in the future.

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Interview with Senator Scott Ludlam

Photograph of Greens Senator Scott Ludlam

On Friday I recorded an interview with The Greens’ Senator Scott Ludlam about the leaking of a “secret” Internet censorship blacklist. A few quotes were used in my Crikey piece. Here’s the full audio, just under 5 minutes.

Ludlam reckons Conroy should dump the filter trials and ask the industry for advice. After all, there’s 20 years of Internet expertise out there.

“Ask the question of the online community and the child protection community more generally ‘What’s the best way to protect children online?’, whether it’s from being poached in chatrooms, coming across [adult] material, or falling victim to some of the syndicates that are out there — all of the areas which net filtering won’t even go close to touching,” he said.

Senator Stephen Conroy’s office has reminded me that there is a consultative committee. Still, it does seem backwards to be trialling a specific technical solution before it’s been determined that it’s an appropriate place to be spending the money.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:03 — 5.8MB)

This is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Australia Licence. You may reproduce, distribute and remix this work, as long as it is for non-commercial purposes, you credit Stilgherrian, and you licence any derivative the same way. Please contact me for any commercial usage.

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Crikey: ACMA’s blacklist just got read all over

Crikey logo

I’m in Crikey again today with an 800-word essay about the leaking of a secret Internet censorship blacklist — exactly what I’d predicted only on Wednesday.

The article is free to read, but here’s a flavour:

Dear Government, look, I hate to say we told you so, but… we told you so. On Wednesday. The more you try to hide your controversial Internet blacklist, the bigger you make it, the bigger the incentive for someone to leak it.

For money. For political advantage. For the sheer bloody fun of sticking it to The Man. And, yes, maybe someone might even leak it because they’re one of that tiny number of sick bastards who get off on child pornography…

American bank robber “Slick” Willie Sutton was (probably apocryphally) asked why he robbed banks. “Because that’s where the money is.” ACMA compiles a virtual bank vault of nasty websites and hands the keys to the makers of filter software and from there, it’s planned, every ISP in Australia — including many low-margin businesses which, let’s face it, don’t have the security procedures of an ASIO or an MI5. As yesterday’s leak to whisteblower website Wikileaks proves.

I go on to analyse the leaked list — I judge it “a pretty shit piece of work” — and drop in a few thoughts from Greens Senator Scott Ludlam. Enjoy.

I’ll post my 5-minute interview with Senator Ludlam tomorrow morning.