Posts by Matthew Poole
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Legal Beagle: MPs' Pay, in reply to Deborah,
percentage increase that is no more that the increase in the CPI over the previous year
The mean for the parliamentary term during which it is set would be better, since that gives a longer-term metric. After all, if we'd used 2009 as the benchmark year there would've been some pretty nasty CPI figures whereas if it'd been for 2007-2009 it would've been more moderate. If the pay is being set for a term, it's only fair that CPI movements be averaged across a term.
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How many mid-term-elevations of list MPs have occurred? It can't be many, but I'm curious how many people have been paid illegally.
If you haven't yet sent it in, the last paragraph of "Deductions from Suspended Members", second line (as formatted here) says "at lease" when you mean "at least".
It would be nice if salaries were indexed to the median income, but as a feedback measure it loses its power if it doesn't take effect until the following term. I like the idea of Key et al having their pay cut as a consequence of their presidency over a decline in the median income.
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Hard News: Disrupting the Television, in reply to Paul Brislen,
saying it was at an end and they’d try to be simpler, easier to deal with.
Wasn't it said before an international telco conference, and part of the reason the audio was considered so damning was that it was a "This is what they say to each other in private" moment, revealing the inner workings of a coven of devious bastards.
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Hard News: Disrupting the Television, in reply to James W,
I don’t believe the “attitude” of not expecting to pay for television/movies is unassailable
The evidence from the home of The Pirate Bay is that useful, realistically-priced music services destroy the incentive to pirate for many users. Which shits all over the supposed argument that people won't pay in future for things they're currently getting without paying though, as you point out, the longer that people are forced to resort to downloading if they want to get content digitally the harder it may turn out to be to make such services viable in NZ.
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OnPoint: Student Loans are Loans (Duh.), in reply to Kumara Republic,
And wouldn’t it raise the teacher entry bar above that of other OECD nations?
Not particularly. Finland requires a Master's degree to become a teacher, and their education system really is the OECD's pinnacle of perfection. I would say that this is a worthy step on the way to being more like Finland, but there's no money to increase the pay of these better-educated teachers, there's now doubt that those better-educated teachers will be eligible for a student allowance by the time they come to do their teaching qualification (or possibly even the necessary post-graduate study), and it's clear that this is window dressing to distract from all of the other parts of the budget announcement that directly attack the quality of education in this country.
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Hard News: Disrupting the Television, in reply to Paul Brislen,
I happen to have the audio (here, as part of a longer video clip that'll bring back memories for many), and the "huge pause" is no longer than a lot of the other pauses in the piece. About as long as the pause between "It's used confusion" and "as its chief marketing tool", in fact.
Whether or not Gattung was just speaking an industry truth, though, a lot of entry-level customers, for want of a better term, didn't grasp that they were being fed a load of manure. Those of us in and around the industry, or with an interest in telecommunications, knew that Telecom was leading us down the garden path, but there is no shortage of technically-unsophisticated people in NZ who will blithely swallow anything that's said by a large company and packaged by a large marketing budget.
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Hard News: Disrupting the Television, in reply to merc,
It's worse than that. She got snapped saying it while Telecom was still being the rapacious incumbent and she was in charge. There're suspicions that the recording of her saying that was the last straw for Labour.
Gattung got rewarded for running a successful company into the ground. If ever there was proof that executives don't get punished for their mistakes, her payout was that proof. Bruce Shepherd was ropeable.
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Hard News: Disrupting the Television, in reply to Sacha,
You may recall sculptor John Radford’s case against Hallensteins using photos of his works on teeshirts.
That was related to a fillip of copyright law which protects against photographic reproduction of sculptures that are installed in a public space. I can’t recall the exact section of the law, but it was quite a specific legal argument (which I believe he lost) and is not broadly applicable.
ETA: Section 73. The legal argument was around whether the work was permanently installed (and thus ineligible for protection against graphic reproduction) or merely temporarily installed.
EATA: And if I'd read the article, I would've found the section :P
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OnPoint: Student Loans are Loans (Duh.), in reply to NBH,
Ah, interesting. Explains the rush of legislation setting up the rest.
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Hard News: Disrupting the Television, in reply to JacksonP,
That's not fair dealing, it's republication. Fair dealing covers the narrow situations of review/criticism (of the work), reporting on current affairs, and education. In all those cases it's only permitted to use a portion of the work, generally accepted as being about 10% (but that's not hard-and-fast because you could take three sentences out of a thriller and reveal the entire plot, and that would leave you very open to a lawsuit), and only for those purposes. Republishing even still frames is still using a copyrighted work in a manner that requires permission.
Although the video was of someone else's copyright work, the video was your copyrighted work. Use other than fair dealing required your permission, even though you clearly didn't understand why you were being asked.