Don’t newspapers fact-check any more? In the Sydney Morning Herald, Jason Koutsoukis reckons most broadband users currently receive only 256 kilobits per second. And yet, as Richard Chirgwin points out, last year’s ABS figures were that 22% of subscribers had up to 256kbps and 45% had more than 256kbps. “Since when is around 1/3 of the broadband population equal to ‘most’ users?”
An open letter to Senator the Hon David Johnston
Watching the Senate Estimates today, I’ve been amused by the antics. Lining up all the Senators, the Minister, public servants and parliamentary staff must cost a bomb per hour, so you’d hope the time was spent wisely. Sadly, no.
My observations — in between other work, so this isn’t representative:
- Senator Stephen Conroy’s little joke of re-reading the PM’s statement about pay restraint whenever anyone asked about executive salaries wore thin. Please, just have the spine to say, “No, I won’t be making a separate statement.”
- Senator Simon Birmingham wasted time asking the head of SBS questions whose answers could have easily been found on their website or in their annual report. Maybe you should organise a coffee with him or a staff member to catch up on these basics.
- Senator Eric Abetz had a detailed list of quite specific questions for Australia Post. It’s precisely this kind of forensic examination which gives Senate Estimates such importance to our democracy.
- Senator David Johnstone was… no, he gets more than a bullet point!
Senator Johnstone was angry that when the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) awarded two new community radio licenses in Perth last month, one long-running “aspirant” (license applicant) called Western Sports Media wasn’t a winner.
Apparently some cricket fans were upset. However Senator Johnstone tackled the ACMA representatives with what I thought was inappropriate aggression — particularly as he obviously wasn’t across the details. I therefore fired off an email…
Continue reading “An open letter to Senator the Hon David Johnston”
BitTorrent vs the Supreme Court of Victoria
Last night Channel Nine screened the crime drama Underbelly everywhere across Australia — except Victoria, where it was banned following a Supreme Court order. But thanks to the joys of BitTorrent, thousands of people have already downloaded it from the Internet. The law cannot cope in this new era.
As the screenshot shows, Underbelly was online within two hours of broadcast. By mid-morning today, 6500+ people had downloaded it from Mininova alone.
As with the Corey Delaney episode before it, this highlights the stupidity of the law in the bold new age of the Internet. I have no complaint with Justice Betty King’s decision. She’s just upholding the law as it stands. The law, alas, is hopelessly inadequate.
Who, I wonder, has this kind of law reform on their agenda. Anyone?
Bonus links:
- My article for Crikey today: A torrent of interest in downloading Underbelly
- Mark Pesce’s presentation Unevenly Distributed: Production Models for the 21st Century, which includes a detailed discussion of how new distribution models like BitTorrent will change TV forever.
Topic 9 to discuss Australia 2020 Summit’s government topic
I’ve just registered the Internet domain topic9.com.au, where I’ll set up a blog to discuss topic number 9 of the Australia 2020 Summit: “The future of Australian governance: renewed democracy, a more open government (including the role of the media), the structure of the Federation and the rights and responsibilities of citizens.”
I won’t have time to do anything with it until (probably) tomorrow evening. Meanwhile, can you suggest people who might be interesting contributors?
More intelligent TV please!
It’s that magic time of year again: Logies voting! You don’t need to buy TV Week to vote, just use the website. I’ve just done my democratic duty for Australian television. Though it was a bit odd to be told that the nominees for Most Popular Australian Drama “must be narrative and include characters”. Um, yes, it’s a drama…
Live video streaming — from your phone!
I just saw a very cool thing: a demo of a new service called Qik which lets you stream video from your phone and “broadcast” it on the Internet. Here’s what it looked like as Lachlan Hardy chatted with us on his Nokia N95 while walking through Leichhardt.
Qik automatically records what happens, so you can watch the replay. We could type in questions, he’d see them on-screen and reply. The lag was only a few seconds.
OK, it’s still in alpha mode, so dunno when this will be ready for real life. But it’s certainly going to be one of those things which changes everything. Again.
[Update 22 March 2014: Technologies come, and technologies go. Qik is no more. Its video messaging functions have been absorbed into Skype, and Qik will cease to exist on 30 April 2014 — although videos embedded in websites are replaced with the message “video unavailable”.]