Posts by jon_knox
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Radio NZ from the 12th of July on the Copyright issue. It obviously lacks the rich detail of an 110 page thread, but covers a fair chunk of it sensibly.
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Ben Goldacre on illegal filesharing from The Guardian. Bet he's made somebody's git-list.
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From BBC Radio 4 today the Performing Rights Society talking about where they're at- starts at 40 mins 10 seconds.
The Guardian on the Ordinance Survey/free data story/series last week.
The Guardian also had a piece last week on the costs of freedownloads.
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I don't buy that it's a poverty thing to eat in a way that tends to obesity. It's a cultural thing, and one thing that a depression can do is change culture.
Got any evidence to back-up your theory Ben? Seems to be plenty in support of the poverty-obesity link. Or is there a culture of poverty reference that I've missed. Perhaps more of an explanation is required.
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Not quite, jon, as the court process would hold the defendant innocent until the charge is proved. That's the issue with s92A that people have been calling "guilt by accusation" because, unlike court, you have to prove your innocence.
oh yeah...so you have your 3 strikes, then the ISP waits for your appeal to be concluded before the disconnection occurs. Something again seems bung!
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Regarding the evidence thing, the fines are not required. They should just use the courts like everyone else does.
Special powers bring special responsibility. To require the alleged infringer to refute via the courts creates an even greater burden...which is even more bung.
There definately needs to be a mechanism to allow the allegation to be appealed and if it's not the courts acting as the arbiter of fact, who should it be? Also note that the courts would be likely to impose fines where the allegation has not been found to be reasonable?
I'm not aware if a value for any such fines has even been suggested, which I think would be important in determining if such a mechanism would be both effective and an effcient use of resources.
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It's not just the art sector that end up elsewhere.
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That inter-web thing, it's really quite good at overcoming physical isolation. As NZ suffers a touch from that physcial isolation thing a touch, I think that not investing in building up the platform & skillsets from which NZ Businesses can huck their wares (esp services ) is absolutely foolish.
So we continue to remain dependent on primary production of goods that we've got to ship or fly all that distance to consumers overseas.
Buliding a cycleway, or pinching money off network infrastructure projects to build roads & upgrade state housing, has one hell of an opportunity cost....and we will probably have to play catch-up later...when that competitveness-ship has sailed a bit further and the costs are higher as per David Skilling's ideas regarding the peloton effect.
NZ could stand to be a big winner, but instead...
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The thing that annoys me most is that the cyclepath idea is the flagship in terms of infrastructure spending. It doesn't really pitch NZ forward in terms of creating a platform that growth can be subsequently built upon.
So after we all finishing opening services to cater to cyclists, perhaps we'll return to real estate funded growth as the primary means of creating economic growth, whilst we wait for the riches generated from cycle tourism to fall from the sky like West Coast rain.
Where is the consideration that maybe a bit more funding infrastructure for the knowledge economy and exporting our skills via the platform that the rest of the world is laying massive networks to support? Sure there is a significant dependence on imports to provide many of the physical products required for this, but perhaps if a strategic investment had been made earlier the local engineering & manufacturing sectors, we'd be in a better position to supply the gear that's needed now....rather than pinning our hopes of an feat of economic magic on a project disguised as a cycleway because of it's low import dependence.
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There are huge swathes of BBC factual programming that local broadcasters either have shoved at them in unattractive packages or can't buy at all.
I wonder how much of an impact it would make if the BBC allowed it's factual content to be freely available to all. I sSuspect allowing those ideas to float freely to would make a bigger impact to global democracy than flushing money in unwanted foreign conflicts. Making the content available for only the former colonies sends a message about two standards existing, which in my view is not positive.
It rankles me slightly that TVNZ blocks international traffic to it's factual content. That knife, it cuts both ways.
Allowing information of that kind to flow freely is like making the big torch of democracy available to those who feel they're trapped in a room darkened by barriers of one kind or another.