Category: Politics

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Wrapping up the johnhowardpm.org takedown

Melbourne IT now admits its takedown of satirical website johnhowardpm.org was “badly handled”. In an interview on ABC Radio National, Bruce Tonkin, CTO of Melbourne IT, also indicated that it may have been a mistake to take the Prime Minister’s office at their word.

As I write this, johnhowardpm.org is back online, redirected to Richard Neville’s main website.

Tim Longhurst has already written an excellent factual summary, including links to source material. So I’ll just look at three questions…

1. What crime, exactly?

The PM’s office involved the Australian High Tech Crime Centre (AHTCC). Their website describes “high tech crimes” as including:

  • computer intrusions (e.g. malicious hacking)
  • unauthorised modification of data, including destruction of data
  • denial-of-service (DoS) attacks
  • and the creation and distribution of malicious software (e.g. viruses, worms, trojans)

I don’t see how Richard Neville’s spoof fits any of those.

2. Isn’t it “Fair Usage”?

Neville’s one error may have been using elements from the real John Howard website. Despite what many people believe, Australian law does not recognise copying for satirical purposes as “fair dealing” — only for serious criticism and review.

The most recent case was TCN Channel 9 Pty Ltd sueing Ten network program The Panel over their use of Nine footage. The Melbourne University Law Review has written a detailed analysis of The Panel case, calling it “a real pea souper”. [Thanks to Jan Whitaker for the pointer.]

3. Were “favours owed”?

After all, ABC TV’s Four Corners questioned the allocation of shares in Melbourne IT’s lucrative float. Given that Melbourne IT was spun out of the University of Melbourne, a Liberal stronghold that’s not too long a stretch.

Was some Liberal conspiracy at play?

I doubt it. This was the first time Melbourne IT had shut down a satirical website in ten years of operations. They probably didn’t have a procedure, and were spooked by the call from the AHTCC.

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Swedish Foreign Minister resigns over web censorship

In stark contrast to John Howard’s closure of johnhowardpm.org and Melbourne IT’s subsequent silence, Sweden’s Foreign Minister Lalla Freivalds has resigned over allegations that she pressured a private Internet hosting company to close a website — something which is illegal in Sweden.

She becomes the fourth government minister around the world to lose a job over the anti-Muslin cartoons which originated in Denmark.

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Yes, it looks like tabloid meth

So did Four Corners go all tabloid over methamphetamine last night? I don’t know yet, I’m catching the repeat on Wednesday. But a friend certainly found it “really disappointing”.

“The Ice Age was ‘the usual deal’,” he says, showing the extreme cases and linking it with heroin. It left his questions unanswered.

I was really hoping for an investigation of the weekend recreational culture, which so many people seem to be able to sustain…

I don’t know many that can afford 3 grams a day…

Well, no, given that 3 grams would cost about $2000. [OK, that’s retail, but even as a low-end dealer buying wholesale that’s still a very expensive habit.]

If there are 73,000 addicts as claimed, a lot caused by no heroin, how many recreational users are there? What is the damage? How do people juggle it and what [do you] do if you’re falling?

Predictable Response

The ABC program guestbook is mostly predictable.

There’s the usual bleating from the talkback radio herd who can’t stand their hard-earned tax dollars supporting these blah blah blah kill them like Singapore why when I was a lad my dad used to whack sense into me by golly jingo. Yeah, them.

There’s the usual stream of “shocked” and “horrified” townsfolk, for whom the freak show achieved its shock-horror aim.

But occasionally, though, there is clarity.

Linthi: There is an underbelly of society that exists to which we only pay cursory attention. If these advanced addicts were offered a choice of immediately going clean or a lifetime supply of Ice, I know which they would choose. As mad as it sounds, some people like this life, it’s a culture in which they are comfortable.

This “underbelly” has always been with us, of course, and always will be. There will never be a Utopia. Some will never fit in — because they’ve slipped and fallen, or were pushed, or were defective or were damaged.

Drug Porn Exploitation

Barbara Farrelly was “disturbed” by the program’s approach.

Barbara Farrelly: struck me that you offered no hope to addicts. The rooms of Narcotics Anonymous are full of people who have overcome addictions.

I feel you also exploited people who could hardly give informed consent to being exposed in their degradation. They seemed happy enough to clown for the cameras on their highway to hell. Touting this as “rare footage” is ingenuous. Taking pictures of these guys was like taking candy from a baby…

I felt like I’d been subject to drug porn…

And while you are talking up ice as a major problem, it is estimated that every year 70,000 Australians die as a result of alcohol abuse and a further 20,000 from the effect of smoking.

You failed to present both sides of the story: Addiction isn’t pretty but recovery is beautiful.

Billing the program as showing us how the drug is affecting Australian society, but only showing those enduring the worst addictions, is like promising us a documentary on the wine industry and only talking to sherry-soaked derelicts. For shame.

That said, the special broadband edition of the program has an excellent timeline documenting the drug’s heritage and what apppear to be longer versions of the interviews. Why wait until the repeat?

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PM shuts down satirical website

In another triumph of tolerance and freedom of expression, the Prime Minister’s office ordered the shutdown of a spoof John Howard website which featured an “apology” speech for the Iraq war.

Australian futurist and social commentator Richard Neville created johnhowardpm.org on Monday and received 10,500 visits within 24 hours. It was closed down by domain registrar Melbourne IT on Tuesday, but Neville was only told yesterday that this was “on the advice from the Australian Government”.

Mr Neville says the parody was an act of satire, and now has a PDF copy of the speech on his website.

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Fed Police chief proposes “Reprogramming”

You probably missed it, but last week Australian Federal Police commissioner Mick Keelty actually proposed forcibly “reprogramming” people’s political beliefs.

Speaking on ABC TV’s Lateline on 8 March, Keelty says we should look at techniques which have been used “successfully” in such bastions of human rights as Indonesia, Singapore and Pakistan — even referring to it as “best practice”.

Keelty equates reprogramming people to convincing an informer to give evidence, and says this is the next step… to re-program somebody who has a belief or holds a belief. It has already been discussed with the government in the context of anti-terrorism control orders.

Commissioner Keelty, just in case you’ve forgotten Articles 18 and 19 of the UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, here’s a refresher…

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