Just a quickie from the road today. I'm in Wellington, having addressed the Parliamentary Internet Caucus - a cross-party group of MPs who care about communications technology - on the future of television. I shared the bill with Jason Paris of TVNZ and it was worth the trip. Jason and I answered a lot of questions and the session was curtailed only by the division bells.
I was surprised - although perhaps I shouldn't have been - at the extent to which MPs aren't familiar with the whiffier details of the Copyright Amendment Bill, but it was a useful opportunity to have a bitch about Section 84(c) - the part that would remove our right to time-shift TV programmes if there is an on-demand version of the programme available (TVNZ doesn't want it and thinks it's unrealistic; RIANZ is gaggin' fer it). Maurice Williamson, who had been regaling me beforehand with tales of how he uses his DVD recorder (he pays his nine year old son $5 for every programme he goes through and edits out the ads from!), certainly seemed to take the point.
So thanks to InternetNZ for bringing me down, and for the taxi chits. I have an interview with Hollie Smith this morning before flying back up so I can go to the NetGuide Awards tonight. That was fun last year.
Returning to business we've covered before, there's yet more evidence of falsification and lies in The Great Global Warming Swindle, with another scientist (a climate sceptic) accusing the producer Martin Durkin of fabricating data. It was hard to understand how Durkin could be allowed more TV time after his record of lying and misrepresentation: surely this is the final straw? Troublingly, the "documentary" has already been produced as a DVD, with the fake facts left in.
Meanwhile, CNN has screened another so-called sceptical programme by its loose-unit commentator Glenn Beck that - you guessed it - contains multiple (and apparently deliberate) falsehoods about climate science.
And another planet altogether, James Leckie, the idiot touch judge who made the most basic error imaginable in allowing a quick lineout with the wrong ball in the Blues-Force Super 14 game last weekend, has been rewarded for his incompetence by being named both linesman and reserve referee for this weekend's Blues-Sharks semi-final.
What exactly is going on here? We already endure the weekly reminder that Murray Mexted simply doesn't know the rules of the game - now it's the refs too? And they wonder why the viewing figures are tanking?
And, finally, check out Anika Moa covering the Mint Chicks in OurTube. Is nice!