Hard News by Russell Brown

This week on Media7, we're looking at the curious case of Fyx, the retail ISP launched last week by Maxnet with a new pricing model and -- this is what got everyone chattering -- a "global mode" whose purpose, although the company was wary of saying as much, was to let customers defeat region-blocking on offshore video-on-demand services.

In effect, it opened up a world of film and television. Customers would be able to use (and where applicable, pay money for) Netflix, Hulu, BBC iPlayer and other services. A growing number of more sophisticated New Zealand users have already been buying such an unblocking service from third-party VPN services, attracted by the range of programming and friendly subscription pricing. But selling the service already baked into an ISP subscription seemed to represent a major step-change.

But unexpectedly, four days ago, Fyx emailed its brand-new customers:

We are very sorry to inform you that we have had to make the very difficult decision to withdraw our popular 'global mode' service from the market for the time being.

We sincerely to you for putting this halt to 'global mode,' which will happen tonight at 11.59pm.   While legal opinions have supported FYX's global mode under New Zealand law, it is important for us to cease operation of our Global Mode for now due to increased pressure.

If you do wish to continue with FYX, we would like to offer you a new, lesser price of $30.30 per month, with $0.30 per GB for data. We will also backdate this price to when you first signed up.

If you would like to leave the FYX service due to the discontinuation of Global Mode, we completely understand. We will refund you for any service you have used of ours to date, and if you have had to break any contracts to move to our service, we will refund you those costs with sufficient evidence.   FYX is committed to open access and will continue to work for the benefit of New Zealand consumers.

Yours sincerely,

Andrew Schick and the FYX team

As Tuanz CEO Paul Brislen explained in a very useful blog post on the Tuanz website, it's not clear why Fyx abandoned its previous legal position so quickly.

Chris Keall reported on the NBR website that Chapman Tripp principal Justin Graham had expressed the view that the "global mode" service did not breach New Zealand copyright law's established position:

... namely that geographical restrictions are not consumer-friendly and New Zealand consumers should be able to access copyright content in a competitive and cost-effective environment.

He argues, basically, using a VPN to defeat regional blocks on the internet is legal under our law for the same reason that parallel importing and region-free DVDs are legal here.

The authors of another useful post on the Australian media forum The Conversation were more cautious, concluding that: "The test for any legal question is ultimately in what the relevant court says."

Next question: who spooked Fyx? Not us, say Sky and TVNZ, who might have been expected to object, given that they have paid rights owners for exclusive licences to many of the programmes. We're waiting on a statement from Fyx, which may reveal more.

Even if local broadcasters didn't formally object, it can't be over-emphasised how much this kind of service could break the existing film and TV distribution system. Consumer piracy has already forced New Zealand broadcasters towards "day-and-date" screenings -- Game of Thrones, the internet's most file-shared show, screens here only a couple of weeks after it does in the US. (Pity the poor British, who are only just getting the last series of True Blood.)

But in the zeitgeisty world of internet TV fandom, two weeks is a hell of a long time to look away from spoilers. And, increasingly, to watch those shows, it's necessary to pay Sky TV a lot of money (for things you may not wish to buy) to watch them on Soho. The broadcasters' exclusive rights deals also mean that new VOD entrants like QuickFlix have bugger-all to offer.

But changing that isn't easy. Rights within programmes -- typically, for music used or archive footage -- are negotiated on a by-territory basis. Rights holders and collectors would have to change their models, probably to their considerable cost, to go global. For programme makers, clearing rights for new territories can be very expensive.

That's one reason that many BBC music documentaries aren't sold to other territories: the Beeb has its own flat-rate deal on music rights, but the "cost of sale" of obtaining those rights in other territories can be prohibitive. Our own Nick Dwyer actually lost money recently selling his Making Tracks series into Australia. Publishers, who negotiate on behalf of composers, have programme makers by the goolies. And publishing income is what really matters in the music industry now that people increasingly aren't buying music at retail.

Ironically, the music industry itself is getting through this. Apple has done the slog of negotiating local deals for the iTunes Store, while non-mainstream digital stores (Juno, Beatport, Bandcamp) now basically operate without territorial restrictions. Amazon MP3 and eMusic, on the other hand, have just picked a handful of territories where it's worth their while to set up.

Complicated, isn't it? And all you want to do is watch Game of Thrones within 24 hours of first broadcast.

We'll be discussing this further with Paul Brislen and the head of the local television industry body ThinkTV on the show.

---

Also on the show: our very own Jackson Perry, the keeper of Capture, will be discussing the rights and wrongs of news services grabbing and publishing photographs from the internet and social media in particular. He recently wrote about his own experience here. He'll be joined by the the editor-in-chief of APN Digital, Jeremy Rees. I think it's very commendable of the Herald to come on and discuss the issue, and I'm grateful to Tim Murphy for pursuing it on our behalf.

---

We'll also have some new numbers on online music sales in New Zealand -- which are growing at a much greater rate than they are across the Tasman.

So it's a copyright-tastic show. If you'd like to join us for tomorrow evening's Media7 recording, we'll need you to come to the Victoria Street entrance of TVNZ some time between 5.15 and 5.40pm. As ever, try and drop me an email to let me know you're coming.

According to Nielsen research that I can't be bothered digging up right now, you, dear Public Address reader, are notably confident about buying things online, relative to the general population. It's a fair bet that you're also pretty confident about where to get stuff that you're not actually buying too.

I was nattering with Pete Darlington on Twitter yesterday about places to buy music -- yeah, buying music, that's how old we are -- and he said he'd been using Beatport for dance and reggae music. I tend to prefer the British-based Juno, despite is quirky interface, for the same task.

I'll also buy music from Bandcamp, 7 Digital (UK version), Amplifier (NZ only, and both MP3 and physical orders) and, if there really is no alternative, the iTunes Store.

I guess I'll come around to them eventually, but streaming services -- Rdio and Spotify -- don't really really work for me, and I never really got the hang of Last FM. I like to buy and have, and to do my discovery at Soundcloud, Hype Machine, and blogs like Ghetto Funk (particularly the Weekly Scour of Soundcloud goodies).

Soundcloud is becoming so vast that it's important to develop a list of producers and uploaders to follow and to join groups that meet your musical interests. If you want to follow me on Soundcloud, I'm knowyourproduct and my profile will show you what users and groups I'm signed up to. I also follow some if the more reliable MP3 blogs on Hype Machine, where I'm dubwise.

Sometimes I'll look at the more industry-approved discovery sites like RCRD LBL and We Are Hunted. And of course, there's the PAS Rollers group on Last FM, which has been a little quiet lately.

Locally? The Corner, Cheese on Toast and Under the Radar, with the latter two being good value for gig news. On Twitter I follow those blogs plus Home Brew, Street Chant, the Phoenix Foundation, Lawrence Arabia and others.

And for a great, constantly surprising flow of video, documentary and musical finds, the Dangerous Minds blog has no peer.

But that's mostly just music -- and that's just me. I'm well aware that not everyone in my demographic likes what I do.

I'm interested to know where you get your cultural stuff -- not just music, but books, ebooks, comics, video etc -- and in y'all sharing with the group who you are in those places. So please, go ahead and share.

---

Meanwhile, some free goodies ...

Post Mint Chicks band Opossom's newest MP3 ...

A new, big crunchy tune from my favourite DJ-producer, Pretty Lights.

And that rare thing, a Beatles re-rub that shouldn't be drowned in a bucket:

Last night's Media7 programme is online here -- and there's also a 20-minute extended interview with Bryan Gould. The programme is not entirely unsympathetic to its subject, Rupert Murdoch -- senior lecturer at Auckland University and former Herald editor Gavin Ellis noted the debt that everyone in newspapers owes Murdoch and speculated on what might befall Murdoch's papers if he was removed from command of his company.

But Gould, formerly a senior member of the British Labour Party's shadow cabinet and a colleague of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, was scathing of Murdoch's influence on British public life. He talked about the pact that Blair made with Murdoch and his papers:

I've no doubt that Tony Blair saw a deal with Rupert Murdoch -- and initially it was just a deal, it became a friendship later -- but think he saw the deal as an essential step towards winning power. I think the only question really is how early that happened. My own view is the beginnings were there and apparent long before Tony actually became leader of the Labour Party.

In my few last months, perhaps year or two, I noticed what favourable references there were to Tony in the Times, Sunday Times and so on. And of course once he became leader he worked very hard I think to cement that relationship. And when he in due course won the 1997 election, I think this put the seal on the belief -- which then became absolutely rock-solid right across the political class -- that you had to do a deal and be on good terms with Rupert Murdoch and particularly the Sun newspaper if you wanted to win a general election.

I personally never took that view because I thought that the British electorate was very keen to rid of the Tories, almost as soon as they woke on the morning after the 1992 election, with John Major re-elected, and they thought to themselves then, my god what have we done -- we must get rid of this lot at the very first opportunity.

So if Blair and Brown sought the good opinion of the Murdoch media, what in return was Murdoch seeking? What was the quid pro quo?

I think he wanted in essence access to government. And that's still true of Murdoch and his acolytes. The evidence is overwhelming that, even to this very day with the new Conservative government in power, that Murdoch and his major supporters, his chief executives and so in in News International, are texting and communicating with ministers on a daily basis. Meeting with them on a weekly basis at the very least.

So what he wanted I think was access with a view always to deflecting any undue attention to what he was getting up to and to having himself and his interests waved through if there was any step that was required.

Britain has of course long had its press barons and friendly Prime Minister, back as far as Northcliffe and Beaverbrook at least, but Gould held that Murdoch was different from the old Express and Mail owners in the global scale of his business and in that he was "very overtly prepared to use that power … if you cross Murdoch, he will use the power of his media outlets to punish you."

And yet if British Labour has bitten back, the Conservatives seem determined to stay in what now almost seems like an abusive relationship with Murdoch. Why?

They were victims. David Cameron and his sidekick George Osborne, they were victims to the same mindset that afflicted Tony Blair and then Gordon Brown. In the run-up to the 2010 general election. David Cameron made it his business to signal to Rupert Murdoch that he would do exactly what Murdoch wanted.

So he promised Ofcom, which is the regulatory body for media would be emasculated and have its powers virtually removed. One aspect that we haven't mentioned was the huge Murdoch assault on the BBC. He can't abide the BBC because it's so powerful and it represents a different model of broadcasting from the one that he favours.

David Cameron signalled that he would stop the increased funding for the BBC. And it's only I think since the general election … indeed until very, very recently, until the phone hacking scandal broke and began to embroil government ministers and the police and so on -- it's only then that David Cameron has realised the dangers that he's been running. But it's too late now and I think the damage has been done. Both Murdoch and Cameron are now trying to disengage from each other, but the lid has been lifted a bit, a little corner of the cover has been lifted and the ordinary voter and the electorate can see how closed, how incestuous almost the relationship has been.

The irony is that one of the key issues for Murdoch in Britain was clearing the way for him to acquire the portion of BSkyB that he did not already own. In New Zealand, there would be no impediment to him should he want to do the same with Sky Television, which is presetly 43% owned by News Limited.

In most countries it is impossible for one interest in the media to so much control one of the popular elements of broadcasting that they can force everybody who wants to access that form of programming to pay a fee to join up. Yet in New Zealand we have allowed that happen with Sky's monopoly now, virtually of sport and particularly rugby. And that has meant that we've now reached a tipping point -- there's no going back now. And that is very much the Murdoch strategy in all the markets in which he operates. It is now really impossible for challengers to be able to raise enough revenue to be able to outbid Sky for any programme that they choose to broadcast.

So TVNZ or TV3 really now just have to pick up the crumbs. Anything that Sky doesn't want, they may be able to broadcast. But otherwise, Sky is now not only commanding advertising revenue that has become comparable to that of TV3 or TVNZ, so it's got exactly the same source of revenue in that respect, but it's seeling subscripting to approaching 60% of the population.

Not through same culture of influence we have seen revealed in Britain, surely?

I don't think there's been any real parallel to the close relationship between Murdoch or a Murdoch family member or senior executive on the one hand and British Prime Ministers and government ministers on the other. I don't think that has quite happened.

But I think governments have been very wary of getting offside with Murdoch interests in this country. I think sometimes because they genuinely believe, as I think is true probably of the present government, that Sky Television has been good -- they place no value on public service broadcasting.

I think it has been more a question of community of interest, a sympathy, an unwillingness to get involved -- let Sky do what they can. I think that's been the New Zealand situation, as opposed to the more tightly regulated situation we find in Britain where in order to navigate his way through, Murdoch has had to get support positive support from government …

I don't think there's any disposition on the part of NZ politicians to get in his way at all.

And what did Gould hope for from the long accounting of the Leveson inquiry?

I hope that politicians will have learnt that a little self-respect is a not a bad thing. To prostitute yourself to media interests is not a good way to be.

A system as malign and pervasive as that imposed on British public life by Rupert Murdoch's newspapers was never going to be tidily unwound. But that unwinding -- from the campaigning journalism that exposed the phone-hacking story, to the political recoil, the criminal investigations, Murdoch's blasted tweets and, still, the formal accounting of the Leveson inquiry -- has become both unpredictable and dangerous to anyone caught up in the story.

As Nick Cohen pointed out in The Observer yesterday, the pending appearance of Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks before Leveson this week has already raised the fear factor for David Cameron's government -- not only in what the proceedings might reveal but in what News International might choose to reveal on the way in.

The greatest fear is among the Conservatives. Murdoch's decision to release emails that showed how Jeremy Hunt's adviser was facilitating News Corporation's takeover of BskyB was a taste of what may come. Not just Hunt, but Cameron and George Osborne were complicit in promising sweetheart deals to News Corporation. Coulson, Brooks, James Murdoch and Rupert Murdoch know it. What is more, the Tory leadership suspects they can prove it.

We are in the absurd position where the Conservatives dare not stop fawning over Murdoch now for fear that he will reveal how they fawned over him in the past.

Of course, two Labour leaders -- Tony Blair and then Gordon Brown -- also courted Murdoch. Bryan Gould, who before he was Vice-Chancellor at the University of Waikato was a senior member of Labour's shadow Cabinet under Neil Kinnock and John Smith, wrote about his party's relationship with Murdoch an intriguing Herald column last year.

Gould himself was invited to lunch with Murdoch and his "then right-hand man", Sunday Times editor Andrew Neil. The date turned out to be without apparent purpose. But, he wrote:

We now know Murdoch was intent on using the power that he wielded through his newspapers and other media to cajole, threaten and suborn the leading politicians of the day.

He presumably concluded over our conversation that I was unlikely to be malleable enough to be worth pursuing. Others, however, seem to have reacted differently.

One of those who seems to have arrived quickly at a mutually advantageous modus vivendi with Murdoch was Tony Blair.

He seems to have consulted Murdoch repeatedly about the policy stances he should take in order to win the support of the Sunnewspaper, which was read by large numbers of working-class and potentially Labour voters.

Murdoch had never been shy about claiming the political and electoral influence which he said the Sun gave him.

Indeed, on the morning after the Tory general election victory in 1992, the Sun's famous headline was "It Was the Sun Wot Won It!"

Blair went on to become one of Murdoch's most faithful acolytes.

It was Blair who was the guest speaker at the celebration of News Corp's anniversary in California in 2006 and - standing shoulder to shoulder with Murdoch - who proclaimed that "we are all globalisers now".

Blair's example - his success in apparently riding to three election victories on the back of Murdoch's support - brought most other politicians into line. It became the accepted wisdom that electoral victory depended on Murdoch's endorsement, and this allowed him to demand more and more by way of special treatment from government in pursuit of his business interests.

It was said of Blair's government that Murdoch was the 19th member of the Cabinet - and one of the most powerful - and Murdoch has been assiduously courted since by politicians of all parties.

Media7 has been asking Gould for an interview since that column was published. This week, I'm travelling to Whakatane to do it.

We'll follow that up in the studio with former New Zealand Herald editor Gavin Ellis, who'll talk about the impact of the scandal on newspapers -- including those in Australia, where, as a recent series of reports on NPR's All Things Considered reported:

News Corp. owns the dominant papers in nearly all the country's major cities, as well as The Australian, the only national general interest paper, which has a modest circulation of approximately 130,000 but shapes opinions among elites; it's the paper that gets chewed over by talk radio, television programs and blogs. In addition, News Ltd. owns popular news websites and a controlling minority stake in Fox Tel, the nation's largest cable TV provider, in Fox Sports and the cable Sky News Australia service.

And that dominance does shape the news -- notably on issues such as climate change.

With APN, the publisher of the Herald and The Listener, among others, undertaking a "strategic review" of all its New Zealand assets, having "received approaches in relation to potential transactions involving some or all of" those assets, it's probably a good time to think about these things.

The show will also take a look at some questionable reporting in Afghanistan by the Dateline programme on Australia's SBS channel. The problems with the 'Anatomy of a Massacre' story by Dateline presenter Yalda Hakim were aired in my recent interview with Jon Stephenson and subsequently pursued by the ABC's Media Watch.

UPDATE: SBS Australia has launched a formal Broadcasting Standards complaint about the programme in which Jon appeared. This is ... interesting.

And there'll also be a Dictators' Wives special from Sarah Daniell. I'm looking forward to that.

If you'd like to join us for Wednesday's recording, come along to the Victoria Street entrance of TVNZ some time between 5.15pm and 5.40pm. As ever, try and drop me an email to let me know you're coming.

It was fitting -- if basically incidental to the event -- that New Zealand Music Month month kicked off this week with a local music phenomenon. Home Brew's debut double album wasn't meant to be released until tomorrow, but it popped up on the iTunes Store on Monday -- and, with the help of a bunch of pre-orders, went straight to the top of the local iTunes chart. We'll see if it can do the same trick on the national sales charts.

It deserves to. Home Brew by Home Brew is the funnier, funkier and sometimes darker and angrier successor to Tom Scott's alternative project, @Peace (about which I think I have raved quite enough). If Tom got paid by the word he wouldn't be singing about being on a benefit. This thing is jammed with them.

"We're going to Hell for this one ..." he murmurs at the beginning of 'Good God' before addressing God himself:

Hey yo, what up bro-ski?

Long time no see

So what's the go, G? OD?

It's been a minute since I seen you round at my place

So what's with all the mind games?

Shit bro, for Christ's sake

You ain't even got the time to chat?

Fuck, we're burnin' up down here

You couldn't even write me back. How th' act?

These are serious days

Don't gimme all that shit about you workin' in mysterious ways

That's some bumper-sticker bullshit 

For fools who believe in lies

And spend their rent payin' 10 per cent weekly tithes

Why you fuck around fucking other people's lives?

Tunin' in to people's lives like it's fuckin' CSI

All-seeing eye like some perverse super-spy

Watchin' decent people die tryin' to get their piece of pie

Dyin' for some equal rights, dyin' for some Pizza Bites

How you fuckin' sleep at night, you motherfucker?

Jesus Christ

He spits it all out over a deep, rolling piano groove and gospel vocal injections by Hollie Smith and Tyna Keelan. It's a remarkable track.

That's from the 'Dark' disc, which also includes '55 Stories', a disturbing, vivid first-person suicide narrative with a twist at the end that includes these lines:

And I don't even recognise my own reflection

Catch my eyes in a shop window

And there ain't no connection

I guess that I ain't even someone I trust

The other disk, the 'Light' side, is where the party's at, but it's as disarmingly frank in its own way. "Shit, coke killed a coupla people -- but this killed the dinosaurs," he trills with Lui Tuisai on 'Datura/White Flowers'.

Home Brew are, somewhat inevitably, having a party to launch their record. It's in an unused brothel and it starts at 10am on Saturday and runs till 7am on Monday. They do like a party. It is probably good for my health that I'll be away in Wellington celebrating Fiona's birthday.

You can buy the album here on Amplifier, here on iTunes or in your local record store. You can also pick up their "takeover" issue of Volume magazine, which is, as previously noted, the final issue of APN's music mag, which deserved better.

Meanwhile here's their idea of an ad for the album:

And an actual music video -- 'Plastic Magic', featuring Esther Stephens:

---

Also freshly out, an album from Blair Parkes' one-man project Saturations. It's a great big, fuzzy ball of psychedelic goodness:

You can buy the album for $9.90 (or more) on Bandcamp. I know I did.

In my view, spending 10 bucks on this album is a lot better than buying a drink at The Whiskey.

---

Also available in a busy week: the new Street Chant single 'Frail Girls'/'Salad Days', ahead of the album they recorded at Roundhead.

The Corner music blog has again taken up the task of the old Real Groove magazine's influential underground talent compilation Awesome Feeling and begun posting tracks from artists who ain't famous yet. There are individual tracks here and I gather the whole zip file lands at The Corner at the end of the month.

A free mixtape (yes - really!) from the Alexander Turnbull Library. You can find a download link here (although with the Creative Commons licence geekery) and stream it from Soundcloud here.

And last but not least, a brilliant Music Month collection at NZ On Screen, which includes excerpts and extras from the new Shihad documentary, Beautiful Machine and a welter of archive titles, including two sides of 1978: Neil Roberts' 1978 Eyewitness report on punk rock and the Ready to Roll New Zealand Record Awards.

Best of all, the accompanying notes are by Chris Bourke.

---

Actually not quite last. David Cohen exposed me to the following horror -- a cover of U2's 'Beautiful Day' performed on the British talent show The Voice by Will.I.Am, Tom Jones, Jessie J and a number of other people who should have known better. NME proposed it as it the worst cover version in history, while David describes it as "harrowingly watchable".

Music is dead.

But perhaps you can revive it by posying your own clips. As ever -- just paste in the YouTube long link and the video will automatically embed in your comment.

FYI, we have a new built-in comments player coming soon -- it'll be mobile and HTML5-friendly, work with both YouTube and Vimeo links and offer (ahem) advanced features like full-screen and shit.

Go for it.