Talking Optus versus sports on 1395 FIVEaa

The Optus TV Now decision continued to be “important” news throughout the week, with sports heavies trying to talk the government into a quick fix despite the Australian Law Reform Commission review already scheduled.

If you’re new to the story, well, there’s a summary and links in my post from Tuesday and my opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Last night I ended up talking about it on Adelaide radio 1395 FIVEaa. I held the slight fear that I’d be on a sports program as token representative of The Evil Internets. But as it happens, presenter Will Goodings took us through a rather balanced discussion.

As an aside, I was amused to see how an editorial in The Australian described the federal court decision.

Last week’s landmark Federal Court ruling that Optus can record and re-broadcast sporting events “near live” without breaching copyright…

The court decided no such thing. It decided that individuals could make their “private and domestic” recordings using Optus’ service rather than their own equipment. It certainly didn’t give Optus permission to “re-broadcast” anything, at least within any meaning of the word “broadcast” used by people on this planet.

Still, hats off to The Australian for a lovely bit of propaganda in support of their sporting interests. Remember who owns the National Rugby League…

The audio is ©2012 dmgRadio Australia, but here it is ‘cos it hasn’t been posted on the radio station’s website. Besides, this is a reasonable plug.

Talking major sports’ future on ABC 702 Sydney

If you’d asked me last week what I thought I’d be doing this week, the answer would not have included “writing and talking about the future of the major sporting codes as televisions events”. But I wrote this thing in the newspaper…

Last week federal court judge Justice Steven Rares ruled that Optus’ TV Now service, which allows customers to record free-to-air TV and have it streamed back to their smartphone, tablet or computer at a more convenient time, was a legal form of time-shifting under section 111 of the Copyright Act 1968.

Even if competing telco Telstra had a supposedly-exclusive deal with the Australian Football League (AFL) to stream live video coverage of matches to smartphones. Even if the delay between an Optus customer starting to record a game and playing it back was just two minutes.

Telstra is paying the AFL $153 million over five years for this now-not-so-exclusive streaming right. Optus pays the AFL nothing, because they’re just providing a technical service through which individual customers make their own “solely for private and domestic use” recordings.

Josh Taylor covered it for ZDNet Australia.

The Sydney Morning Herald commissioned me to write an opinion piece that was published this morning, Sport has to think outside the box. Do please read it. It seem to have struck a chord, because I’ve received a lot of compliments.

Then the ABC’s Linda Mottram asked me to chat about the issues on 702 Sydney. And here’s the audio, along with her subsequent chat with a talkback caller on the same topic.

The audio is of course ©2012 Australian Broadcasting Corporation. But these program items usually aren’t archived on their website so here it is. And I will of course suggest that you listen to Linda Mottram’s morning program regularly.

I’m thinking of writing up some of my thoughts on how future sporting coverage could be done technically. Meanwhile, do you feel as I do that the days of cashed-up major sporting codes are about to end?

[Update 8 February 2012, 1015: The Sydney Morning Herald has published a follow-up piece this morning by rugby legend Roy Masters. Court has gambled with codes’ futures. Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to draw me a diagram of what the fuck he’s talking about.]

Crikey: Internet filtering isnt compulsory, but…

Over at Crikey I’ve written a summary of what’s happening with Australia’s internet filter.

Australia’s mandatory internet filtering by internet service providers (ISPs) won’t happen for at least two years. But we’re getting filtering anyway. Voluntarily. By ISPs. Next month…

Telstra and Optus are expected to have their filters ready within weeks, although the situation with Primus is unclear…

The Internet Industry Association (IIA) is also about to release a voluntary industry code that would see an estimated 80% to 90% of Australian internet connections filtered by the Interpol blacklist over the next year. Attempts to access domains on the list would be redirected to an Interpol block page.

Overall, I reckon the process that’s now unfolding could well result in the gvernment’s planned mandatory ISP-level filtering disappearing off the table entirely.

As a bonus link, here’s Interpol’s explanation of their “worst-of” blacklist of child exploitation material.

Weekly Wrap 55

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. If last week was a bit thin, this week more than made up for it — and as I noted yesterday, I’m knackered.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 93, “Are we missing the bus on Gov 2.0 data?” A popular Sydney Buses app died when Sydney Transit cut off the data feed after just a few weeks, citing lack of server capacity. Developer Ben Hosken is disappointed, but he’s more concerned that developers aren’t making enough use of the government data on offer. I also speak with developers Benno Rice and Adrian Chadd.

Articles

In addition to these, I wrote a fifth piece for ABC’s The Drum, but that hasn’t been published yet. And there’s a couple of pieces I’ve been working on that I must finish and file tomorrow.

Media Appearances

I did five radio spots this week, which is a record I think. Well, except for when I worked full time in radio, obviously.

  • On Tuesday I spoke with Louise Maher on ABC 666 Canberra about the photographic project Everyday Photographs, Extraordinary Journeys, which I inspired. Well, partly inspired.
  • On Thursday morning I spoke with Adelaide radio 1395 FIVEaa about the National Broadband Network. I’ve already posted the audio.
  • A little later on Thursday morning I spoke on ABC Radio National’s Life Matters about the current state of play in information security. I’ve already posted about that.
  • While I was talking live on Radio National, ABC North Coast NSW broadcast an interview with be about Facebook and Social Media that has been pre-recorded. Alas, I don’t have a copy.
  • On Thursday afternoon I spoke with ABC 774 Melbourne about Bitcoin a digital currency. And I’ve posted that audio too.

Corporate Largesse

None. We’ll have to fix that. Dear PR Operatives, my junket calendar for July is empty. You know what to do. I prefer an aisle seat.

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.

[Photo: The afternoon sunlight can be fierce at The Grand View, an image taken in The Grand View Hotel, Wentworth Falls, yesterday.]

Weekly Wrap 40

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets. Despite succumbing to a random fever for two or three days, I got quite a bit of writing done — and then forgot to post this until Monday. Sigh.

Podcasts

  • Patch Monday episode 79, “Cybercrime convention: civil liberties risk?”. Australia intends to sign on to the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime. My guests? Cybercrime specialist Nigel Phair from the Surete Group, who’s previously been with the Australian High Tech Crime Centre. His second book has just been published, Cybercrime: The Challenge for the Legal Profession. And Electronic Frontiers Australia chair Colin Jacobs.

Articles

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

None.

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.

[Photo: Tea Tree Cottage, one of the Bunjaree Cottages at Wentworth Falls, where I’ve been living. I’ll write more about this experience very soon.]

Adam Schwab’s NBN reply

Yesterday I posted a fairly blunt attack on Adam Schwab‘s analysis of the national Broadband Network (NBN). Today he sent this response, which I publish in full.

Stilgherrian is, on most occasions, one of the leading technology writers in Australia — his coverage of the planned internet filter was first class, as was his recent reporting of the planned $400 million under-sea cable between Sydney and Los Angeles. However, Stilgherrian let his lofty standards drop and seriously damaged his journalistic credibility with his blinding support for the National Broadband Network (NBN). Sadly, it appears that Stilgherrian’s ostensible desire that other people to pay for a shiny piece of broadband infrastructure has gotten in the way of him actually considering whether the multi-billion dollar public investment is a good idea for Australian taxpayers.

Stilgherrian launched a blistering attack on an article I wrote in Crikey, alleging that it was “full of misunderstandings and straight-up mistakes”. A somewhat ironic comment given most of his criticisms were themselves quite obviously incorrect. Specifically, Stilgherrian stated that:

[Schwab] thinks the NBN is an internet service provider (ISP). He wants it to deliver short-term commercial return on investment. And he doesn’t differentiate between needs now and a decade or two or three in the future.

Perhaps Stilgherrian should have either read the original article properly or spent thirty seconds contacting me before jumping to incorrect conclusions as to my ‘thoughts’. Nowhere in the original article was it stated that the NBN would be a retail network. The NBN has always been a wholesale network. The original article referred to the speculated final retail prices which may result from the NBN, but did not specify that the NBN would be the retailer. Nor was that point even remotely relevant to the main intent of the article.

Second, the original article also never referred to a ‘short-term commercial return on investment’. Rather, the it noted that no proper cost/benefit analysis had been undertaken. It is correct that ‘return on investment’ to taxpayers is not a purely financial determination (for example, returns from a public investment will partly be in the form of higher living standards which flows from the investment). But the article was making the specific point that no analysis of the returns had been undertaken (instead, proponents of the NBN had pointed to rather unconvincing benefits, like eHealth or the ability to hold videoconferencing as justifications for the project).

It is certainly possible that if such an analysis were ever carried out the study may deem that the NBN is in the best interests of taxpayers (although critics claim that such is unlikely given the inevitable ‘waste’ and inefficiencies which would result from a public project of such a size). The point remains — no such determination was ever undertaken.

Like many proponents of the NBN, Stilgherrian falls into the trap of simply assuming “faster internet is better”, regardless of the costs. Of course, prima facie, faster internet is superior to slower internet. I, like most people, would prefer faster broadband. I, like most people, would also like the Government to buy me a Porsche. However, it is preferable that the Government does not make spending decisions based on the desires of certain individuals rather than the economy as a whole, as that would result in misallocation of capital and a terrible waste of taxpayer money. (Admittedly, there are many other terrible Government policies from both sides of the political spectrum, so the NBN is certainly not the worst Government promise, just the most expensive).

A decision on the scale of the NBN should be properly considered — the costs (which are obviously financial, and look like bring are in the range of $30-$35 billion — depending on the final result of the Telstra deal) should be weighed against all the benefits of the faster broadband infrastructure which too may be substantial but are in the most part, still unidentified.

Stilgherrian then submitted a range of reasons why the public benefit resulting from faster broadband outweighs the cost, including inserting a nice-looking graph prepared by none other than the National Broadband Network itself.

Stilgherrian also made a couple of valid, yet obvious points — wireless in itself is not a sole solution and certainly isn’t able to carry the amount of data of fibre. But that is to ignore other existing infrastructure and the fact that private companies (like iiNet, TPG, Foxtel and Telstra) are also able to roll out high speed broadband to compliment existing infrastructure. (Most CBD businesses already have high speed broadband).

There is also the option of having a broadband network which covers predominantly higher density areas at a marginally lower speed, substantially mitigating the cost but retaining many of the benefits Stilgherrian referred to.

The NBN was drastically altered at the time of the global financial crisis by a Government which was looking to stimulate the economy without proper economic analysis. The plan went from a $6 billion to a $4 billion to a $43 billion scheme at what appeared to be the whim of a now deposed Prime Minister. The original article questioned whether that remains the correct decision for Australian taxpayers. It may be, but to the decision has become so politically clouded that taxpayers can’t be confident that they are receiving a return (be it financial or otherwise) from their investment.

I haven’t properly digested this response yet, but I do think it’s nice to be able to continue the conversation. I’ll probably write something on the weekend.