copyright – Page 11 – Stilgherrian

31 March 200931 March 2009

Is Conroy really this ignorant of his own portfolio?

If this report about Senator Stephen Conroy’s comments this morning is right, then he’s either completely out of touch with what actually happens in an ISP, or thoroughly disingenuous.

In what was at times a heated morning at the CommsDay Summit in Sydney, Conroy told an overflowing room that the idea that iiNet “have no idea if any customers are illegally downloading music” on their network is a “stunning defence”.

“The capacity to be able to ignore what your customers are doing on your network is being fought out in the Courts but I thought the defence of â€˜we have no idea what anyone is downloading over our network’ was a classic,” Conroy said.

Is Senator Conroy aware that it’s completely unethical — if not downright illegal — to monitor or otherwise intercept the contents of someone else’s communications?

As a “common carrier”, iiNet or any other ISP does not and indeed can not monitor the content of communications flowing through their network any more than Telstra or another telco can listen in to our telephone conversations, or Australia Post can open our mail and read it. At least not without a warrant or other due legal process.

Anyway, how can an ISP tell whether a particular data stream is an “illegal” copy or not? A music file looks just the same whether it’s being used legally under the terms of its license or under fair dealing, or not. Does Senator Conroy imagine illegally-made copies are stamped “pirate” or something?

It looks like the report is true, because ZDNet just posted their version.

If Conroy is still saying such daft stuff even after last week’s episode of Q&A, then tonight’s edition of Insight should be a laugh too.

28 March 200929 March 2009

Links for 19 March 2009 through 28 March 2009

Stilgherrian’s links for 19 March 2009 through 29 March 2009, posted not-quite-automatically in a great lump for your weekend reading pleasure:

I really must think of a better way of doing this…

The World As Seen From Chang’an Street | Strange Maps: A nice piece of work from The Economist, in the style of Saul Steinberg’s ironic as well as iconic The World As Seen From New York’s 9th Avenue.
A battle rages for control of the internet in China | PM: ABC Radio’s current affairs program PM covered the Grass Mud Horse phenomenon on Thursday.
Conroy’s Blacklist Responses | TinyPic: A satirical take on who Senator Stephen Conroy planned for his appearance on Q&A.
“conroy fail” T-Shirt Design by disgruntled [2807035-3] – RedBubble: Available in 15 colours, and only AUS$30.
Song of the Grass Mud Horse (Cao Ni Ma) | YouTube: One version of the song, with handy subtitles showing both the respectable words and the anti-censorship subtext.
Blocking the Net | SBS Insight: Senator Stephen Conroy has a chance to make up for his stumbling performance on Q&A with a guest spot on SBS TV’s Insight this coming Tuesday 31 March at 7.30pm (plus repeats).
Podcast of The Tangled Web: Beyond an Internet Filter | Peter Black’s Freedom to Differ: The audio recording of New Matilda‘s public forum on Internet censorship, with Greens Senator Scott Ludlam, Irene Graham of Libertus.net fame, and Nic Suzor from Electronic Frontiers Australia. The panel was chaired by the infamous QUT law lecturer, Peter Black.
Right To Know Free Speech Conference | Alliance Online: The record of a liveblog of Tuesday’s “Right To Know” Free Speech Conference, run by the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance.
60-foot penis painted on roof | BBC News: An 18-year-old has secretly painted a 60ft drawing of a phallus on the roof of his parents’ £1million mansion in Berkshire. It was there for a year before his parents found out. They say he’ll have to scrub it off when he gets back from travelling.
How do you get others onboard with using 37signals tools? | 37signals: I love 37signals’ tool Basecamp for managing communications on client projects. One perennial problem, though, is getting people to actually use it, rather than just replying to random emails.The comment stream for this blog post has some useful thoughts.
DBCDE wouldn’t agree to blind filter trial: iiNet | iTnews Australia: iiNet’s chief regulatory officer, Steve Dalby, said the ISP had told the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (DBCDE) that if customers knew they were being filtered, they were more likely to attribute any problems to the filters. This would likely skew the results of the trials. Several customers calling into iiNet’s call centre already to complain the filters were slowing their connection speeds, even though the ISP isn’t part of the trials.
David Weinberger: 4.5 lessons from Twitter| The Huffington Post: Amongst the flood of articles about Twitter, here’s one which offers some genuinely new observations, well expressed.
The Tangled Web | newmatilda.com: On Tuesday night, newmatilda.com hosted the first in a series of public forums about internet regulation in Australia. If you’ve managed to miss the raging “clean feed” debate, here’s Rachel Maher’s overview to get the conversation started. Obviously nowhere near as good as mine.
iiNet quits Conroy’s filter trial | ZDNet Australia: “It became increasingly clear that the trial was not simply about restricting child pornography or other such illegal material, but a much wider range of issues including what the government simply describes as ‘unwanted material’ without an explanation of what that includes,” [iiNet CEO Michael] Malone said in a statement.
Google submission hammers section 92A | New Zealand PC World Magazine: In its submission regarding the controversial new s92 of New Zealand’s copyright law, Google notes that more than half (57%) of the takedown notices it has received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act 1998, were sent by business targeting competitors and over one third (37%) of notices were not valid copyright claims.
Stilgherrian on Lateline | TwitPic: I look rather scary when appearing later than life on someone’s 42-inch TV.
Mandatory internet filtering. It’s not a debate. | Wazzapedia: In summary: The pro-filter lobby are offering a solution to the “problem”. It’s not enough for the anti-censorship campaign to demolish their argument — if we don’t start offering an alternative workable solution as part of our strategy, we will ultimately fail.
Govts website black list leaked on internet | Lateline: I appeared on last Thursday night’s ABC TV program Lateline as part of a report on the leaking of a secret blacklist of naughty websites.
Blog, Podcast, Vodcast and Wiki Copyright Guide for Australia | CCI: I think the title explains it all. A handy reference for everyone, it’d seem!
Social Collider: Whatever this visualisation is visualising about my Twitterstrean, it’s pretty. I’ll come back to this later.
World War II: If Maps Could Fight | Strange Maps: A cartoon and cartographic interpretation of World War II by artist Angus McLeod.
Metropolitan Skin | Out to Space: Some of ’Pong’s photos are in this this exhibition on the video displays at Sydney’s World Square (George Street) through to 25 March. Also featured are images by Robert McGrath and Vitek Skonieczny .

22 March 2009

Links for 16 March 2009 through 22 March 2009

Here are the web links I’ve found for 16 March 1009 through 22 March 2009, posted automatically.

Web of secrecy | ABC Unleashed: Mark Pesce’s essay on the leaking of the Internet censorship blacklist this week.
Chinese fight internet censors with “Grass Mud Horse”; cuddly toy | Times Online: Chinese Internet users have been fighting back at the censors with a children’s character, Grass Mud Horse, whose name in Chinese sounds just like a curse, but with a different tone. He’s fighting the evil River Crabs, who sound almost like the forces of “Harmony”, the Chinese euphemism for censorship. The result has been the ludicrous concept trying to ban a children’s character and stuffed toy for being subversive.
Unlocking IP 2009 Conference: “National and International Dimensions of the Commons” | UNSW: The Conference will explore the national and global dimensions of the copyright public domain, drawing on the Project’s research to provide a structure for further discussion. It will bring together a range of eminent local and international scholars from the field, as well as showcasing notable Australian achievements in the copyright public domain. The Conference will be structured to some extent around key themes in the 2008 Submission by project researchers Unlocking IP to Stimulate Australian Innovation — An Issues Paper, made to the Australian government’s Review of the National Innovation System.
Stilgherrian on Lateline | TwitPic: I look rather scary when appearing later than life on someone’s 42-inch TV.
Mandatory internet filtering. It’s not a debate. | Wazzapedia: In summary: The pro-filter lobby are offering a solution to the “problem”. It’s not enough for the anti-censorship campaign to demolish their argument — if we don’t start offering an alternative workable solution as part of our strategy, we will ultimately fail.
Govts website black list leaked on internet | Lateline: I appeared on Thursday night’s ABC TV program Lateline as part of a report on the leaking of a secret blacklist of naughty websites.
Blog, Podcast, Vodcast and Wiki Copyright Guide for Australia | CCI: I think the title explains it all. A handy reference for everyone, it’d seem!
Social Collider: Whatever this visualisation is visualising about my Twitterstrean, it’s pretty. I’ll come back to this later.
World War II: If Maps Could Fight | Strange Maps: A cartoon and cartographic interpretation of World War II by artist Angus McLeod.
Metropolitan Skin | Out to Space: Some of ’Pong’s photos are in this this exhibition on the video displays at Sydney’s World Square (George Street) through to 25 March. Also featured are images by Robert McGrath and Vitek Skonieczny .

18 March 2009

Links for 11 March 2009 through 18 March 2009

Stilgherrian’s links for 11 March 2009 through 18 March 2009, posted after considerable delay in some cases:

Conroy’s clean feed | Background Briefing: ABC Radio’s 45-minute exploration. “In the name of protecting children, the government will decree we’ll be forbidden to see ‘unwanted’ and ‘inappropriate’ things on the web. But exactly what that means is a secret, and the thin end of the censorship wedge. Reporter, Wendy Carlisle.”
The Top 500 Worst Passwords of All Time | What’s My Pass?: Humans are remarkably predictable. Even when they think they’re being obscure.
One Laptop per Child trial | Centre for Learning Innovation: ’Pong’s video about the first Australian trial of the OLPC, showing kids using the XOs in a primary school in rural New South Wales. Interviews with Pia Waugh and the educators involved. For soem reason, DET have cut the credits off the end, which seems a bit rude.
The real facts about Telstra and the Fake Stephen Conroy | nowwearetalking: Telstra’s first official response comes via their blog.
Telstra man behind Fake Stephen Conroy | smh.com.au: Leslia Nassar has revealed himself as the man behind Fake Stephen Conroy. And now the shitfight begins…
Social networking & social norms | Aide-Memoire: My friend Kate Carruthers links to some interesting discussions about how we’re creating and negotiating new social norms for online social networks. A good a starting point as any.
File Sharing Has Become the “New Normal” for Most Online Canadians | Daily Exchange: New Canadian research on attitudes to “file sharing”. 45% say people who use peer-to-peer file sharing services to download music and movies are regular Internet users doing what people should be able to do on the Internet. Only 3% believe file-sharers are criminals who should be punished by law.
Banned hyperlinks could cost you $11,000 a day | smh.com.au: Websites linking to Wikipedia and an anti-abortion website have been threatened with fines.
ABC Mobile Web Site Failed Accessibility Test | Link: “Currently I am teaching mobile and accessible web design to second year and postgraduate students at The Australian National University in the course ‘Networked Information Systems’ (COMP2410). The ABC
[Mobile] home page would not be of an acceptable standard for student work on this course.”
You can’t spell Lowest Common Denominator without “ABC Mobile” | Department of Internets: A less-than-complimentary review of the ABC Mobile website.
ABC Mobile: The new supposedly-mobile-friendly website from Australia’s ABC. But…
We Have Lasers!!!!!!!!!!: Just like “Sexy People” but… with lasers! Lasers improve everything, right?
Sexy People: Billed as “a celebration of the perfect portrait”, this collection of over-produced and overly-sentimental portrait photography reminds us just how bad the 1970s and 1980s really were.
A gentle introduction to video encoding | dive into mark: A set of six articles providing an orientation to to issues involved in video encoding, written with a suitably cynical tone given the dog’s breakfast of formats available.
Happy 20th Birthday WWW | Link: 13 March 2009 marked the 20th anniversary of the CERN paper outlining what would become the World Wide Web.
Law Enforcement (Powers and Responsibilities) Amendment (Search Powers) Bill 2009 | NSW Parliament: This Bill proposes giving far more extensive search powers to NSW Police, including the ability to secretly enter premises next to the suspect without notifying the owner or tenant, and to secretly install monitoring software on third-party computers.
Unicorns and Cupcakes: Two of the worst styles of kitsch collide in an explosion of… kitsch.
An interview with an anonymous blog commenter | Joanna Geary: A regular commenter on the Birmingham Post‘s website, “Clifford” chats about his experience.
australian screen: Australia’s audiovisual heritage online. “Explore over 1,000 Australian film and television titles produced over the last 100 years, with clips, curator notes and other information.”
Gary Hayes Emerging Media Diagrams | Flickr: “A range of charts created by Gary Hayes across games, social networks, cross-media, broadband services, virtual worlds. Used in various presentations already and all marked as creative commons – attribution, non-derivative, non-commercial.”

13 March 200916 June 2009

More Twitter on the Tubes

On this week’s A Series of Tubes podcast with Richard Chirgwin, you can hear me talking about Telstra’s HFC upgrades, copyright, and (yeah, I know) still more Twitter.

16 February 2009

Links for 15 February 2009 through 16 February 2009

Stilgherrian’s links for 15 February 2009 through 16 February 2009, gathered with fresh rainwater and love:

What is the biggest problem in your life? | GOP Problem Solver: “Utilizing the latest and greatest of Republican economic thought to improve your life.” Ahem.
Phone call to Minister Conroy’s Office | NOCENSORSHIP.INFO: Steve Johnson has posted his fruitless attempt to get Senator Conroy’s office to answer his question about Internet “filtering”.
Internet filtering and censorship forum | Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre: The first of these workshops at UNSW on 27 November 2008 was excellent. The second will be on Wednesday 4 March 2009 and I’ll definitely be liveblogging it.
Five barriers to journalists using Twitter | Sarah Hartley: What’s stopping journalists using Twitter? Here’s five excuses journalists use, and the rebuttals.
The Prisoner 1960s | AMC: The entire 1967-1968 TV series The Prisoner is available for free streaming viewing here — if you happen to be in the United States or can appear to be so.
Vic Govt limited Google’s bushfire map: News | ZDNet Australia: Google produced a brilliant live map of the tragic Victorian bushfires. However Crown Copyright provisions, which assign copyright over all government-produced information to the government and prevent its use without explicit consent, meant the couldn’t use data from the Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE). Crown copyright is well established in Commonwealth law, but runs contrary to data protection provisions in countries like the US, where data produced by government agencies is held to be in the public domain.
Citizen-journalism’s rulebook | guardian.co.uk: It’s nearly a year old, but it’s still an interesting discussion about the “rules” of [cough] Citizen Journalism.