Australians don't have the first amendment, which is becoming clearer everyday.
As Labour have done quite a bit of lately, they’re trying to get more sweeping changes through whilst everyone is looking away. This time, whilst the world is watching Copenhagen, Senator Conroy has suddenly decided that the Australian internet filter trial completed in September was a resounding success and will now become mandatory.
There’s an unending list of reasons why it won’t – or shouldn’t – work, but what concerns me more is the arrogant attitude with which Labour is approaching more and more legislation. They do not have the mandate of the public (nor those who are considered ‘professionals’ in the area) which voted them in not so long ago and should stop behaving as such. It only takes a quick search of Twitter to spot just how many people are baffled by what’s taking place. And once the Government takes control of website blacklisting (claims of an ‘independent board’ are dubious at best), it surely won’t be long before policy dissidents are quietly removed from public view.
So with this kind of attitude coming from those in power, it often feels as though people can’t make a change. And to be honest, it’s unclear whether Conroy will rethink his position. However, we can make as much noise as possible, to let the government know we not only have a voice, but are prepared to speak out against abuse of power. Using the internet against him, fill up Conroy’s inbox with sharp words at the excellent GetUp!, or get involved with those behind No Clean Feed. We may have to use our voices to keep them.
Update 18/12/2009: Bernard Keane has posted an article outlining the best way to ensure your letters to Conroy get noticed. Good advice that I’m betting will annoy a few public servants.
Whilst I’m not about to condone their action on my blog, I see it as vital that the discussion around this topic is kept alive. The Rudd Government continues with a string of conservative, right-wing policy decisions around social liberties in this country and expects to proceed without community consultation.
Whether you agree with Anonymous’ (at least at this time) publicity stunt or not, we should all be questioning the path we are now heading down when it comes to freely accessible information.
Note: Whilst I do not agree with Government preventing Internet users from viewing any websites, I don’t suggest you view many of those on the blacklist. It’s not for those with a weak constitution. Seriously. (Viewing the blacklist is safe – the web addresses generally speak for themselves.)
Update 10/09/2009: The results are in. Anonymous successfully brought www.pm.gov.au to a grinding halt. I wonder what the repercussions of this will be?
“Wow,” I hear you say, “I have no idea what that means.” Well, you should probably take a look at the link then – it explains the license in surprisingly clear terms. This is one of the wonderful points about Creative Commons licensing: it doesn’t hide behind difficult to understand terminology. Your rights as a creator of material, as well as your rights as a consumer of material, couldn’t really be presented more effectively. In the case of the license I have chosen for this site:
You are free:
to Share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work
to Remix – to adapt the work
Under the following conditions:
Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
Share Alike — If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.
There are also some other points with Creative Commons licensing, which still uphold ideas like fair use and moral rights.
For all the romantic notions of being a kid and running home to watch cartoons on the ABC after school, it’s not often that these shows really live up to the memories. There is of course the exception of Sesame Street, but those guys are on crack – I’m sure of it.
Whenever I see those old shows again, I’m often more than a little disappointed and wish they had’ve stayed with my other rose-coloured childhood memories. And don’t get me started on modern kids television – that stuff is so off the wall, I don’t even know where to begin.
Thankfully, there are exceptions, and Misseri Studio is definitely one. They have graciously put some of my old favourites up on YouTube, including A.E.I.O.U. and The Red And The Blue. Check it out…
I always thought it was the duty of a journalist to report on the news, not to invent it. I understand that with the editorial slant that each media organisation puts on their own paper/television channel/radio broadcast, that the details can be spun, muddied, embellished, or in the case of tabloids – totally twisted. I didn’t realise the pressure that journalists must be under to get the story out as quickly as possible. This is where I think journalism becomes something more akin to… creative writing.
I can’t say I followed much of the Channel 10 series, Masterchef, over the past few months. Apparently I’m in the minority. I did catch the final episode however. Something that Erin McWhirter may not have done. Which is surprising, considering that she wrote a story for the Daily Telegraph’s website about that very subject.
For a long time, Murdoch’s News Limited hasn’t been associated with high quality, investigative journalism, but are they actually encouraging their staff to create stories before the fact, so that they can get them out immediately, into their ever-hungry, highly-comsumptive internet audience? Last night, I was pointed toward this post suggesting that they’re doing just that…
…if you’re not up on the latest Masterchef news, Poh actually lost the final to fellow contestant, Julie. Oops.
It wasn’t long before Twitter and Facebook messages alerted news.com.au to the fact that they’d screwed up, and the content of the post was replaced with what must have been the ‘back up’ story. However, the address structure of their CMS managed to out-smart even their brilliance and the page address remained the same. It wasn’t until today that this page was removed altogether.
It was only a few weeks ago that I watched News Limited CEO, John Hartigan, wax lyrical about the pride he had in his organisation’s journalism on the National Press Club. He also went on to say that every journalist that moves through their ranks has the very highest News Limited standards impressed upon them. Is this really the best that the Telegraph has to offer? If Hartigan truly believes that the way forward is to create a new, subscriptive model for delivering news content on the internet, I think most people would like to see them lift their game. Until then, I guess we’re just getting what we pay for.
Edit: mUmBRELLA also spotted this Telegraph slip-up. The comments to their post make for some interesting reading.
There are precious few free Internet video ‘channels’ that offer anything outside lolcats and porn. TED is one that springs to mind as breaking the mould of user-generated rubbish and actually offers something worthwhile. I understand the value of breaking down the barriers of content creation and with YouTube being an outlet available to everyone, great things have indeed happened. The images still making their way from Iran are a case in point.
But sometimes I really feel the need to escape the noise of ‘related’ content, context-sensitive advertising and lolcats and instead watch something a little more… confined. SlowTV is a channel I came across when reading The Monthly. In fact, it’s a spin-off of the magazine itself and pretty much follows the same premise: politics, society and culture, mostly delivered by academics. It sounds dry, but often isn’t. Just like TED, the videos are sometimes surprisingly entertaining and inspiring. And also like The Monthly, I find that the selection of speakers is quite good.
It’s great to see that the Internet is allowing the presentation of current affairs, without an editorial, but still retaining a level of direction and research. SlowTV certainly isn’t alone in doing this, but just the latest site I’ve added to the list.
I’m also interested to know how projects like SlowTV are funded and what The Monthly gains by providing the service. I don’t doubt that there is potentially a viable model of quality current affairs issues being presented in this way. Maybe some of the old guard members, like John Hartigan need to rethink their view of how a population will be willing to subscribe to their media and in fact, what is considered ‘newsworthy content’ by the increasingly tabloid media.
To avoid any complaints about a ’serious’ post, here’s a lolcat…
This marks the very final part of Semester 1, 2009 for me. We were given the option of completing our documentation for Multimedia Authoring 1 with either a video or website, which were due today. I chose the latter because of the non-action required for my project. It wouldn’t make for a particularly exciting video experience: “Wow, look at that guy, not doing anything!” Exciting stuff.
So as my projects have a tendency to do, this one got a bit out of hand. So I turned it into a minisite. This is the first of a couple that I have in the works for the mid-year break (the second is a far more exciting return of Concrète. More on that soon) and doing this prevents me from making any more bloody WordPress databases – it’s like they’ve begun breeding on the angryPixel server.
For anyone who’s read past posts about my Multimedia Authoring 1 process, there’s not a lot new here, but I’m hoping that it’s helpful to someone out there at some point, maybe coming across Processing for the very first time.
For as long as there have been nerds, there has been the nerd-dream: hot girls that are into them for their nerdariffic qualities.
Sure, there are any number of films and stories that perpetuate the myth that the hot cheerleader will leave her jock boyfriend for the pale, skinny guy with glasses (Transformers is one of the most hilarious examples I can think of), but let’s be honest here – sorry guys, it ain’t gonna happen.
It was this post that made me think of this phenomenon, but as a broader thought, why is it that computers are generally thought of as a male domain? This isn’t confined to gamers, or programmers, but computing at large. Perhaps with PC’s becoming ubiquitous classroom furniture these days, we’re only a short time from seeing this change, but I’d hazard a guess that this still won’t be the case.
There is no reason that women are not as capable with technology as men, so perhaps we’re looking at something that is socially attached? Are women less likely to tie themselves to these inanimate objects than men? Do women need more real social interaction? As we become more and more reliant on these technologies, it will be interesting to see what changes take place.
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