“Will the latest wave of digital disruptors liberate consumers from monopolies or shackle them to new ones?” asked the Australian Communications Consumers Action Network (ACCAN) in the program notes for the somewhat amusing debate which ended their annual conference back on 2 September.
I was on one of the debate teams. Guess which side.
Well, the affirmative team was Daniel Duggan, head of mobile for Yatango; Brad Kitsche, Uber’s director of public policy for the Oceania region; and Brendan Coady from Maddocks Lawyers.
So yeah, I was the final speaker on the negative team, following David Vaile, executive director of the Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre at the University of NSW; and Katina Michael, associate professor in the Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences at the University of Wollongong.
And we won.
The video over the fold has the entire thing, except for the first few words by our moderator, Delia Rickard, dDeputy chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).
If the video doesn’t work for you, you can watch it on YouTube. Or you could just read the transcript (PDF).
The negative team won, with about 55% of the audience votes — which just goes to show that negativity wins.
[Photo: Stilgherrian speaks during the ACCAN conference debate, photo courtesy ACCAN.]