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It’s my last time on Radio New Zealand National for a while, and I thought I’d use it to address some more a philosophical question than I often do. I’ve written a separate post with my ideas below.

I’ll be on air after the 11am news. You can listen live, or soon afterwards you will be able to pull the podcast or download the audio as ogg or mp3.

The Internet is an unmediated form of communication between humans all around the planet. It was designed that way and so far it has stayed that way. It’s different from the telephone, which allows targeted one to one communications, and from broadcasting which is one to many, although it does provide those as well. Through blogging, twitter, even email lists, the Internet has allowed us to build many-to-many communications systems. That’s a first.

There’s no doubt in my mind that the Internet is the greatest engine of prosperity since since, say, the telephone or even since mass transportation. It allows us all to interact with people and business around the world without using up fossil fuels and personal resources in travel. It provides businesses with a customer communications channel connected directly to their back-end systems. On the Internet, life is good. And, as I have said on numerous occasions, it only got that way because the Internet is an open conduit for anything people can think of.

It has been recognized by lawmakers for years that openness is the key to the Internet’s usefulness. But, increasingly, that is coming to an end. The Chinese government routinely censors its domestic Internet and forces all Internet traffic entering and leaving the country through a giant gateway it controls. The US allows private companies to remove material placed on the Internet by third parties on accusation of copyright infringement. Australia looks likely to implement a national Internet filter in the name of pornography suppression. The UK is considering a “Digital Economy Bill” which would force Internet disconnections and filter access to websites. Even the New Zealand government is looking at a limited filtering system to combat child pornography.

All this brings me to my point: Can we, humankind, actually stand an open communications medium? One that lets all of us talk to all of us? Along with the huge list of economic and social benefits that brings? Observing the actions of government world wide, I’d have to answer “no”.

It appears that the Internet is just too open and too useful for humanity to come to terms with. Since the Internet is just a communications tool, this means that we, as a species, can’t tolerate open communications between all our members. That’s why I question whether the Internet is just too good for us, whether we deserve it at all.

But then, what can you expect from a species that can’t organize itself to operate in an environment of finite resources? There is no functioning mechanism for us to deal with global environment destruction or fossil fuel exhaustion, for instance. You don’t have to accept anthropogenic climate change to agree that we don’t have a way of dealing with it.

So, then, we are a deeply flawed race careering off a cliff of our own making. Does that mean we shouldn’t fight – that we should just eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die? I don’t think so. For me, each of us who recognizes the problems should act as best we can to hold a mirror to human activities. That means calling governments and industries when they try to hold progress to ransom. It means arguing for cooperative approaches to dealing issues that face us. It means not hiding our heads in the sand about limited resources.

I certainly don’t have all the answers. But until we at least accept the questions, neither will any of us.

How we deal with the Internet and its ability for us all to communicate will the question I posed in the title: is the Internet too good for us?

I make no apology for using Sir Winston Churchill’s title for the first volume of his history of the Second World War to describe the culture war between those who would capture ideas for their exclusive use and those who would disseminate them widely.

It’s not a straightforward issue. On the one hand, most of us would accept that there is value in providing an incentive to create clever things that ultimately benefit many people. That’s the public good argument for copyright and patents. On the other, our culture and our technology are built on the work and ideas of others and controlling people’s access effectively controls our development as a species.

These are important matters that need a global consensus. What I’m seeing at the moment is an attempt to enclose the commons of ideas for the benefit of a few and to detriment of us all. That’s been the case for a century at least, but the arrival of the Internet has pushed things to a whole new level.

That brings me to ACTA, the treaty being negotiated in secret by our government and others, which is at least partly about the interaction of copyright and the Internet. I’ve railed against the secrecy around ACTA before, because it prevents the ordinary people whose lives will be affected from having a say in it.

There have been some remarkable revelations about ACTA in the last few days. Firstly, there have been three leaks. The text of the Internet chapter, an analysis of some countries’ views on transparency of the agreement, and an analysis of each country’s negotiating position on the Internet chapter of the draft ACTA agreement. We don’t know where the leaks are coming from, but it’s clear that many people negotiating the agreement are unhappy with the insistence of secrecy coming from (we now know) the US, South Korea and Denmark.

Nat Torkington has analysed the New Zealand positions from the latest link. New Zealand’s negotiators are pushing for clarity, for reasonableness and for transparency. Good on them. It looks as though New Zealand is making its view more felt than many other countries. Even so, what we end up with, of course, is not just up to New Zealand.

People in our government are listening about the lack of transparency. Our negotiators have just issued a call for submissions on some points of the Internet chapter ACTA by 31 March. This, coupled with the leaks, offers ordinary people a chance for some kind of say. So does the PublicACTA event to be hosted by InternetNZ on April 10th, right before the next round of ACTA negotiations which are to be held here in Wellington the following week.

It’s good that we have found out more about ACTA – even if it is mostly through unacknowledged “leaks”. It’s good that New Zealand is pushing for transparency. We need to empower our negotiators and those in like-minded countries to reject the extreme positions that some of the other countries are taking. Do consider sending a submission, even if it’s just “the current model works well, don’t change it”. I’ll write some more detailed points and publish them here well before the deadline.

However, it’s still appalling that a treaty that will affect everyone is being negotiated in secret, with an agenda being pushed by one industry based mainly in one country which won’t let the secrecy be lifted for fear that other countries’ citizens won’t let them stay in the negotiations.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant. We’ve had a glimpse of it. Let’s throw the curtains wide.

I’ll be talking today on the radio today about a development in the entertainment industry’s ongoing war against the Internet. Last week, a federal judge in Sydney ruled in a case where 34 movie and TV companies – all the big ones, essentially, were suing an Australian Internet Service Provider called iiNet.

The movie companies’ claim was that iiNet knew that some of its customers were downloading copyrighted material over BitTorrent, because the movie companies had told it so, and that iiNet should have told these customers to stop or disconnected them. Sound familiar? It’s awfully like the “draconian” Section 92A of the New Zealand Copyright Act, rushed in in the dead of night by the former Labour government and taken out again by John Key’s government when they realised how unjust it was.

The outcome of this case was a comprehensive loss for the movie companies. The judge found that iiNet did not authorize copyright infringement, that it had no obligation to stop other infringing copyright even if it knew who they were, which it couldn’t. The judge was scathing about the movie companies’ contention that iiNet should disconnect its customer on the basis of an accusation of copyright infringement made by the movie companies, saying that a judicial process would be required.

Ultimately this was not just about one ISP. It was about the openness of the Internet. That’s why we saw the whole might of Hollywood taking on the third largest ISP in Australia. Presumably the movie companies thought that iiNet would cave to pressure and Hollywood would have established a precedent that it could control people’s Internet access. Good on iiNet for standing up for them!

I’m on Radio New Zealand National after the 11am news. After the broadcast, you’ll be able to download the audio.

I talked about Apple’s latest launch, the state of Telecom’s XT network, Google being hacked in China and ACTA. I didn’t get time for Lieutenant Uhura, but she’s here.

No speaker notes for today – most of it was done off the cuff after the Apple launch. But if you missed it live, you can download the audio as ogg or mp3.

Today I wrote a guest post on Publicaddress about ACTA, the secret treaty that could take away your right to an Internet connection. It’s all being driven by overseas lobbyists, and they have quite a number of countries negotiating a treaty to force draconian laws on all of us.

This isn’t idle scaremongering. The previous government showed it was quite willing to give the right to cut off your Internet connection to appease a handful of unaccountable industry lobby groups, and the current government is negotiating an international treaty to guarantee it.

You don’t have to put up with this. Just say no. Write to your MP. Write to the responsible Minister, Simon Power. Or write to John Key. Tell them: you wouldn’t cut off the power to a household whose neighbours said it played music too loud. And you can’t cut off the Internet for a house where someone has been accused of downloading a song. And tell them that New Zealand doesn’t need its Internet damaged – and New Zealanders don’t deserve to have their rights curtailed – to suit the needs of a very few companies.

Today on Radio New Zealand National I talk about copyright matters again – about whether the proposed Google Book Settlement is a black hole or cultural opportunity for the whole world. And why music companies want to grossly exaggerate the number of illegal downloads.

You can listen live after the 11am news, read on for my speaking notes, or after the broadcast you’ll be able to download the audio as ogg or mp3. (more…)

On Thursday I presented my submission on Software Patents to the Commerce Select Committee of Parliament. It was a fascinating experience, and one which is open to all New Zealanders.
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Today on Radio New Zealand National I talk about the deranged world of software patents, where someone can claim that an idea they had five years ago suddenly means that entire industry owes them a fortune. I’ll be on after the 11am news.

Read on for my speaking notes, or after the broadcast you’ll be able to download the audio as ogg or mp3. (more…)

“Without us, the Internet would be empty.”

That ludicrous statement is Ant Healey of APRA talking to the Dominion Post. Apparently he expects us to believe that the content industries as he calls them are the sole contributors of information on the Internet. Cue the Tui Billboard!

Let’s just pause for a moment and celebrate a few of the things that people get over the Internet. Wikipedia. Twitter. Email. Hubble Space Pictures. Skype. Travel Bookings. Banking. News. Maps. I could go on, and I’m sure you could too.

By saying something as stupid as this APRA is showing that it really doesn’t live on the same planet as the rest of us. It thinks we are all just consumers of its members’ copyrighted materials and the only difference between us is whether we pay it or not. This is just plain wrong. Really, it looks as though APRA is contemptuous of what you and I do on the Internet.

The question is, once we have all finished laughing, what do we do about this attitude? Answer – laugh some more. The best thing is to just keep pointing out how silly it is. Derision is the best response. Just laugh at them!

A bit over a century ago, when a different new infrastructure was being introduced, the business people who felt threatened by it got a law passed against it. That law didn’t last. Neither will any backlash against the entire Internet. The Net’s just too useful to too many people for it to be killed to suit one group. And resorting to ridiculous assertions like APRA’s one here shows that.