Convergence Crisis

Technology has wrought huge change in media content, consumption and access. It's changed business models, viewing patterns, and now - in the words of the Australian government - "the NBN will transform the delivery of content in Australia, allowing viewers to access virtually limitless content from all over the world."

And so the government is planning a major review of its media policy, the "Convergence Review". A big challenge with convergence is the increasing irrelevance of national borders and the futility of national governments attempting to regulate and restrict what is now an international - and internationally accessible - media.

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Wikileaks: Winning the War

What's the point of trying to shut down Wikileaks? If this past week has shown anything, it's that cutting off the hydra's head only results in a hundred more growing in its place.

Thousands of people are now mirroring Wikileaks' content, both officially and unofficially. Tens of thousands are downloading and sharing gigabytes of data from Wikileaks. One file - insurance.aes256 - is a "poison pill" that will automatically be encrypted and released on the djavascript:void(0)isappearance or death of its figurehead, Julian Assange. Not even US authorities have been able to crack it.


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Eternal September

"Eternal September" was first coined in 1993, to describe millions of AOL internet users that came online, disrupting Usenet's previously small, intimate community.

It's now a term used to describe any ongoing influx of newbies who discover a service, and overwhelm it, often ignoring its conventions and etiquette and changing it beyond recognition. Which is understandably resented by original users and early adopters.

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BROADBAND BREAKTHROUGH?

Is the tide turning on NBN sentiment?

Despite a concerted disinformation campaign by the Opposition, it seems that mainlanders are scrabbling to get connected to the fast, fibre network.

According to NBN Co, 90 per cent of households in some regional cities have already signed up. That compares with around 51 per cent of Tasmanians.

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Fibre Future

It's amazing to think that this election was largely decided by the issue of broadband - by a man who admits to not even using a computer himself. But even without personal knowledge and skills one can still be a visionary. And this is what Tony Windsor has demonstrated, describing broadband policy as a "game breaker":

"You do it right, you do it once, you do it fibre."


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Era of the E-Celebrity

The most interesting aspect in the whole Jessi Slaughter/4chan/Stickydrama saga is Stickydrama itself. It's further proof of the trend towards user-generated content, encroaching on yet another Old Media phenomenon.

Stickydrama is a gossip site about internet celebrities. It's about people who don't have agents and aren't "famous" in the traditional media sense. But they're objects of fascination and notoriety to thousands, even millions, of internet users.

From the Star Wars Kid to Justin Bieber, internet celebrities can and do make the mainstream media, and plenty of them stay there. A day after eleven-year-old Jessica Leonhardt became the victim of cyber-bullying for her expletive-strewn online video rants, the only Google News hits for her were blog-style sites such as Gawker. A couple of days later, and her web name "Jessi Slaughter" generates hundreds of news hits from Fox to the New Delhi Chronicle.


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Conquering the Great Firewall of China

No visit to Shanghai would be complete without conquering the Great Firewall of China. It's arguably more challenging - and more satisfying - than ascending the Eiffel Tower, climbing Uluru or scaling Everest.

China's censorship regime comes in for plenty of well-deserved criticism, but the motivation behind the censorship is not always properly understood. While there is some moralistic blocking of adult content, the main aim of the censorship is to avoid social instability. It is less about covering up corruption (though of course it does cover it up) than preventing widespread outrage and public riots that would be very difficult to handle in a country of 1.5 billion people.


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Filter Backdown

It's hard to believe that it took a democratic government nearly three years to come up with basic transparency and accountability measures for such a major policy as the internet filter. The fact it took this long, and the lack of commitment to such measures from the get-go, are an outrage.

Sadly, those of us who have witnessed the propaganda, misinformation and outright lies by the Communications minister on this policy, won't be surprised.


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Digital Split

There's a growing schism in the world of digital content.

On one side: those that advocate a free, ad-supported business model.

On the other: those pushing paid content.

The paywalls are already flying up in force, but it's going to be some time before the results and the analysis are thrashed out. And both ideologies face significant hurdles.

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Communications Breakdown

"A liar." "Sneering, sarcastic, patronising, grudge-bearing." "The most incompetent excuse for a communications minister in living memory."

Not the words of disgrunted punters in the pub, but the opinion of leading IT industry executives and commentators about Australia's communications minister, Stephen Conroy.

Relations between the ICT industry and the minister have been dire for a long time. Now the ill sentiment is escalating at such a rate that several commentators are wondering if it's time for Sentator Conroy to step down.

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The Filter: the Future

So we know that the internet filter is a wrong and terrible idea, but the government is going to do it anyway. What might happen once the Great Firewall of Australia goes up?

1. Daily leakage of the blacklist

Even before the filter arrived, ACMA's secret blacklist was leaked - multiple times - to Wikileaks. Expect it to go up on a daily basis. The people with access to it will also be those most likely to (a) oppose censorship (b) be able to get and leak the list and (c) know how to cover their tracks securely when doing so.

2. The Big Ban campaign

Anti-censorship groups are already lining up a lig list of technically "prohibited" sites to bombard ACMA with. The idea is that the more numerous and mainstream the sites that get banned (for example the Amazon listing to euthanasia book The Peaceful Pill), the more public opposition to the filter will grow, and the more workable it will become.

Find out more likely reactions here

Six problem the Internet filter will create

The government has announced it will bring in its controversial internet filter. It's been reviled from everyone from IT industry groups to children's charities, with many parties pointing out why it won't even work.

But here are six reasons why it will actually make Australia's internet situation worse.

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Internet Pigeon Protocol

One of the quirkiest stories in Tech Report this week was a pigeon that flew faster than the internet.

An experiment was carried out in rural New South Wales where a car, a pigeon, and a Telstra ADSL 2 connection all raced to deliver a 700mb file. The pigeon won. The internet connection dropped out twice, and eventually failed to send it.

This kind of non-electronic data transfer is known as a "sneakernet". They're actually widely used today. Online DVD-rental services send digital media by post. Oil companies generate vast data files from seismic surveys, and have to take them back manually. If you've ever carried work files home on a USB because they were too big to email, you've used a sneakernet.

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Smart cities of the future

In September 2009, Cisco invited regional media to Incheon, South Korea, to see how next-generation networks can transform cities.

Interview: Michael Malone, CEO, iiNet

iiNet CEO Michael Malone speaks about why he thinks the Australian government's proposed mandatory internet filtering is inappropriate.

Internet of Things

Finland has just made it a legal right to have 1mbps broadband.

It's well below the fastest speeds available in most countries, though still better than many Australians enjoy. And by 2015, Finland will expand that legal right to 100-megabit broadband access.

More importantly it signifies that internet access is starting to be seen as a utility rather than a luxury.

As governments increasingly put services online, they have a duty to ensure that citizens can access them easily and for a fair price. But even more critically than this, connectivity is vital for the "Internet of Things".

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Internet censorship in Australia

Back in February 2008 Sky News Business Channel was the first media organisation to uncover that the Australian government's planned internet filter would be compulsory even for adults.