The following slightly ridiculous post was something I threw up to Facebook a while ago. I wrote the following as an individual only. I work professionally in IT, I’m not a journo or blogger, however I do take an interest in politics. Particularly the politics around broadband and eHealth, the latter of which I was intimately involved.
Anyway see below, revised letter to Minister and personal vent.
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I’m not a writer to politicians generally. However, I do have a decade in enterprise IT under my belt, most of those with government and I was a functionary in one of the former government’s more successful broadband initiatives (Broadband for Health - $35 million subsidy program and nobody got electrocuted). I’m not a Liberal supporter and working for Abbott was one of the dirtier professional feelings I have ever encountered. At the time I consoled myself by being an apolitical civil servant, implementing good public policy and trying not to notice that Abbott has more rows of teeth than your average white pointer, seriously next time he smiles on TV you watch. If he bit your leg while surfing it would be hard work to convince him you weren’t a seal. That they allow him in the water at all to compete in triathlons amazes me... But I digress, sorry...
I am now working in the private sector so feel I can speak more freely about matters of public policy. I am writing this in my capacity as an individual. The business I work for would not be effected by policy decisions made in respect to content rights holders, ISPs and their responsibilities or really anything in that debate going on at the moment. I am not a paid up member of any political party.
For what it’s worth I’m offering my commentary on the position in which you the Minister find yourself regarding the ‘great firewall’ and suggesting a possible alternate path. I’m not going to scream, rail against big business, or your political alignment.
The firewall debate is in need of a reboot, it has been derailed by political interests, presumably ALP factional interests and is leading you towards a dead end. Any scheme you suggest will be framed by the debate as it is now presented, such a firewall set up is likely to fall over at a level of detail which your Department cannot control and most Australian’s may fail to fully understand. This is what happened to Garrett, the insulation and solar programs were not that much of a cock up, it is just that it was relying on Australian tradies not to be dodgy. Now you have a situation where people just smile when they see the bald one on TV and quietly hum the lyrics from ‘the Beds are Burning’ and wonder where he got politics so wrong... Wait, digressing again.
I (and I would like to think most) will support a national firewall when one can be demonstrated that is difficult or impossible to circumvent, transparent in terms of its administration and not subject to political interference. At the moment what is proposed is none of these. Folk are rightly comparing the current proposal to China’s solution, so in short you are stuffed. What is proposed is bad public policy, badly packaged and will win you nothing in the senate (as in votes of the religious right). It’s impact on the ALP vote at the federal election is something you can guess.
It seems to me that the firewall is less about protecting society than it is about protecting established media interests and information delivery mechanisms, while being a sop to the religious views of a minority. The issue of content that supports or depicts illegal activity should not be confused with issues of copyright unless you intend to address both problems.
As I see it there are three sets of issues linked by one enabling technology, the internet.
Namely:
1. A bloody big darknet exists (in the form of the torrenting/sharing community) that contains everything from the episode of the Simpsons I may have missed the other night, a legal Linux distribution that I need to get in a hurry, terrorist guides to being an asshole, nutter manifestos and (frankly) a disturbing amount of pornography. It is also near indestructible.
2. Rights holders are struggling to control the distribution mechanisms for content which once upon a time generated the bulk of their profits. The oft cited ‘old business models that are failing’.
3. The darknet of P2P contains an amount of material that is illegal or poses a risk to societal values. The exact amount is really anyone's guess.
If filtering is the solution to any of the above problems, I really don’t see how. It will leave an agency – private or public – jumping at shadows forever. Even if fully implemented the firewall cannot succeed against the challenges above.
P2P infrastructure is fluid and driven at scale by a demand for free media and pirated software which is so large that attempts to shut it down just causes it to morph into another technology and pop back up. The people who write it are pretty bright, numerous and willing to work for the pleasure of annoying you. These people cannot be reasoned with in the traditional sense. Incidentally, I do not include myself in this bucket, I am neither bright nor numerous and I'd rather be paid for the majority of my work. The unpaid minority of what I do goes into writing poorly worded and misspelt treaties to your good self, written for the pleasure of annoying you J... Sorry digressing again.
Solution
Be bold... Change the debate.
I am now working in the private sector so feel I can speak more freely about matters of public policy. I am writing this in my capacity as an individual. The business I work for would not be effected by policy decisions made in respect to content rights holders, ISPs and their responsibilities or really anything in that debate going on at the moment. I am not a paid up member of any political party.
For what it’s worth I’m offering my commentary on the position in which you the Minister find yourself regarding the ‘great firewall’ and suggesting a possible alternate path. I’m not going to scream, rail against big business, or your political alignment.
The firewall debate is in need of a reboot, it has been derailed by political interests, presumably ALP factional interests and is leading you towards a dead end. Any scheme you suggest will be framed by the debate as it is now presented, such a firewall set up is likely to fall over at a level of detail which your Department cannot control and most Australian’s may fail to fully understand. This is what happened to Garrett, the insulation and solar programs were not that much of a cock up, it is just that it was relying on Australian tradies not to be dodgy. Now you have a situation where people just smile when they see the bald one on TV and quietly hum the lyrics from ‘the Beds are Burning’ and wonder where he got politics so wrong... Wait, digressing again.
I (and I would like to think most) will support a national firewall when one can be demonstrated that is difficult or impossible to circumvent, transparent in terms of its administration and not subject to political interference. At the moment what is proposed is none of these. Folk are rightly comparing the current proposal to China’s solution, so in short you are stuffed. What is proposed is bad public policy, badly packaged and will win you nothing in the senate (as in votes of the religious right). It’s impact on the ALP vote at the federal election is something you can guess.
It seems to me that the firewall is less about protecting society than it is about protecting established media interests and information delivery mechanisms, while being a sop to the religious views of a minority. The issue of content that supports or depicts illegal activity should not be confused with issues of copyright unless you intend to address both problems.
As I see it there are three sets of issues linked by one enabling technology, the internet.
Namely:
1. A bloody big darknet exists (in the form of the torrenting/sharing community) that contains everything from the episode of the Simpsons I may have missed the other night, a legal Linux distribution that I need to get in a hurry, terrorist guides to being an asshole, nutter manifestos and (frankly) a disturbing amount of pornography. It is also near indestructible.
2. Rights holders are struggling to control the distribution mechanisms for content which once upon a time generated the bulk of their profits. The oft cited ‘old business models that are failing’.
3. The darknet of P2P contains an amount of material that is illegal or poses a risk to societal values. The exact amount is really anyone's guess.
If filtering is the solution to any of the above problems, I really don’t see how. It will leave an agency – private or public – jumping at shadows forever. Even if fully implemented the firewall cannot succeed against the challenges above.
P2P infrastructure is fluid and driven at scale by a demand for free media and pirated software which is so large that attempts to shut it down just causes it to morph into another technology and pop back up. The people who write it are pretty bright, numerous and willing to work for the pleasure of annoying you. These people cannot be reasoned with in the traditional sense. Incidentally, I do not include myself in this bucket, I am neither bright nor numerous and I'd rather be paid for the majority of my work. The unpaid minority of what I do goes into writing poorly worded and misspelt treaties to your good self, written for the pleasure of annoying you J... Sorry digressing again.
Solution
Be bold... Change the debate.
Firstly, show some faith in people by educating them about what is out there and how to navigate safely. Then let them use the internet in an informed way and monitor their families internet use in an informed way, if that is their thing. There are a lot of new school halls and well skilled IT teachers that I’m sure could enable such a policy. Want to get folk in to such courses, make a family tax bonus dependant on either a) attending such a course or b) presenting one.
Secondly, it is time to show the media companies that their old business models are stuffed (or at least dated). Don’t tell them. Don’t encourage them. SHOW THEM. The idea of any broadcast being worth something substantial when the preferred distribution channel (be it illegal or legit) is paid for by the consumer is absurd. This is what is driving P2P on the internet. These days content is valuable on first run only, after that all you have is merchandise. The merchandise may have a DVD in it, but it is still merchandise.
Maybe while you are educating folk, educate them on ethics. I baulk at paying anything for crap TV full of ads, yet I will make a point of buying the DVDs of shows that I like, regardless of where I saw them first. Is it unethical to use Youtube, p2p, whatever to watch new things and make an assessment as to whether it is worth paying for? Perhaps.
So it’s late and I’m failing to get to the point. Allow me to stream of consciousness an idea for you. Forgive the odd typo.
Take, say a $600pa license fee per internet subscriber. Earmark half the revenue for registered content distributors. If say Sony BMG registers, then all their content (otherwise available in Aus) must be made available free of charge and DRM to the ISPs. The other half of the generated funds is a quasi-lottery based on submissions (say a 3 minute youtube) to generate content by the artists themselves. Some are selected by panels, some by popular vote/number of previews, some at random. This fund can support artists and be tuned to cater to the whim of whatever minority vote Government is after. You can also assign quotas based on classification. If you want to gear society towards the 50s conservative fantasy that some have well it will be G, PG and educational classifications that get the bulk of the generated funds. If you want to gear society towards the last days of Sodom well it had better be R and X. Changing such quotas is also a promise that is easily kept and implemented at election time. ‘We are family friendly, no more French erotica funded via SBS, it is open university from here on out’. If the government of the day is concerned that their children are being raised by Homer Simpson well turn the policy dial around to favour locally produced content.
Focusing the content through such a mechanism to attract funding, also forces corporations/artists hoping to receiving money through one point. This allows you to apply classification to content without needing to control the technology.
In my model all big media content must go up DRM free on the ISP servers. What people download, watch and how they rate it drives the slice of the license fee pie the media companies get to take away. Look at it as a kind of opensource BBC. The market force becomes one of quality and popular media content driving revenue, rather than say dominant players in an oligopoly pedaling shit.
Ads are still allowed in the DRM free content. An automatic balancing force if a media supplier puts too many ads in their media is that someone will re-edit the content and redistribute it P2P with no ads. In such a scenario, companies will get nothing if they inject too many ads because content will go viral with them edited out attracting no recorded views and consequently no more votes.
Allow first run TV to be seen on Freeview or PayTV say one week in front of the content being distributed to the ISPs. That allows adverts to retain some mindshare and retains viewers and value in Freeview.
Results
Multiple streams of praise if you put this in and the posturing you are going to have no matter what you do.
In my model all big media content must go up DRM free on the ISP servers. What people download, watch and how they rate it drives the slice of the license fee pie the media companies get to take away. Look at it as a kind of opensource BBC. The market force becomes one of quality and popular media content driving revenue, rather than say dominant players in an oligopoly pedaling shit.
Ads are still allowed in the DRM free content. An automatic balancing force if a media supplier puts too many ads in their media is that someone will re-edit the content and redistribute it P2P with no ads. In such a scenario, companies will get nothing if they inject too many ads because content will go viral with them edited out attracting no recorded views and consequently no more votes.
Allow first run TV to be seen on Freeview or PayTV say one week in front of the content being distributed to the ISPs. That allows adverts to retain some mindshare and retains viewers and value in Freeview.
Results
Multiple streams of praise if you put this in and the posturing you are going to have no matter what you do.
The ISPs love you because expensive P2P traffic goes through the floor, this is a cost to them now as little Jimmy is getting his dodgy copy of Lost from Portugal, Canada, USA, etc. The people love you because the content that should be cheap and democratic becomes so. The live music venues rejoice because talent has to tour again. Genuine artists love you because they have an artistic merit based system to help them become and remain established. The police love you because P2P traffic dropping away leaving only the truly dodgy must make it an easier environment to enforce law. And Steve Fielding can be fobbed off (ahem have his concerns addressed) by assuring him 40% of the quota for the next 3 years will be Religious Adventures in the Barossa. And of course the mainstream will revolt come election time and sweep him away.
Don't think it is economic? Well most economists didn't see the GFC which puts lie to their quasi-science anyway. Youtube is an economic weopon, yes it makes losses but it's point is Google is resetting the media market and playing a long game. And at the end of the day you are the government and should get to dictate certain aspect of the market, not Google. Besides what do you think will be going over the much vaunted National Broadband Network? The NBN is in need of a killer app otherwise it is going to look really bad for Labor.
Implementation plan.
No feasibility study, start modular, build organically and be flexible.
Or
Better described as ‘lead all the horses to water, the one's that won't drink will be trampled to death by the hordes that will’.
Facilitate the changes to the law, tell big media it is a trial which they can take or leave . Nobody forces them to make their media available.
Indicate that any internet subscriber signing up to the yearly license model will not be prosecuted for possessing or distributing unlicensed media otherwise legal for broadcast in Australia. This can be achieved without changing the Act.
If big media doesn't get on board straight away fine, the program will potter along being an artist support program and the amount of license funding earmarked for big media will just accrue. Eventually it will become too tempting and someone in big media will break ranks and release content onto the network to try and claim some funds. They may even find it profitable!
Such a move would redefine the media market place in a way that would evolve with time and technology. It would allow matters of censorship to be addressed with transparency of process. -Added Later: it would not require a wholesale rewrite of copyright legislation
Moving the debate to one where the inequities in the present system are addressed while encouraging ethical behaviour by content providers and consumers alike is a better way. The approach proposed picks up the current trends in media consumption and pricing and gives big media some hope of transitioning to new business models, as opposed to failing and having to be reinvented.
Don't think it is economic? Well most economists didn't see the GFC which puts lie to their quasi-science anyway. Youtube is an economic weopon, yes it makes losses but it's point is Google is resetting the media market and playing a long game. And at the end of the day you are the government and should get to dictate certain aspect of the market, not Google. Besides what do you think will be going over the much vaunted National Broadband Network? The NBN is in need of a killer app otherwise it is going to look really bad for Labor.
Implementation plan.
No feasibility study, start modular, build organically and be flexible.
Or
Better described as ‘lead all the horses to water, the one's that won't drink will be trampled to death by the hordes that will’.
Facilitate the changes to the law, tell big media it is a trial which they can take or leave . Nobody forces them to make their media available.
Indicate that any internet subscriber signing up to the yearly license model will not be prosecuted for possessing or distributing unlicensed media otherwise legal for broadcast in Australia. This can be achieved without changing the Act.
If big media doesn't get on board straight away fine, the program will potter along being an artist support program and the amount of license funding earmarked for big media will just accrue. Eventually it will become too tempting and someone in big media will break ranks and release content onto the network to try and claim some funds. They may even find it profitable!
Such a move would redefine the media market place in a way that would evolve with time and technology. It would allow matters of censorship to be addressed with transparency of process. -Added Later: it would not require a wholesale rewrite of copyright legislation
Moving the debate to one where the inequities in the present system are addressed while encouraging ethical behaviour by content providers and consumers alike is a better way. The approach proposed picks up the current trends in media consumption and pricing and gives big media some hope of transitioning to new business models, as opposed to failing and having to be reinvented.
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