"Free speech" should be honest speech

I've been thinking about the media, as I am sometimes known to do. The most recent round of thought was sparked by this blog post by Russell Brown on publicadress.net.  In it, Russell looks into how the New Zealand Herald has repeatedly used an audience rating figure for TVNZ7 that is incorrect. Worse, the Herald has ignored attempts to inform it of the error or correct it.

The incorrect information supports the Herald's editorial line that no one watches TVNZ7. This view is less supportable when the real viewer stats are taken into account...and we see that TVNZ7 has at 3 times the viewership the Herald has reported.

So what do you do when the major news source in your town proves - again  - to be 'economical with the truth' when the truth is contrary to their political agenda?

Owning mass media should not be confused with the right to free speech. If you do blur the two, then "free speech" effectively becomes the right of billionaires to spew propaganda at us....and we are powerless and effectively silent....as we don't own a voice of comparable magnitude. We can talk all day and no one hears us for all practical purposes. There needs to be a powerful check on abuse by the owners of voices so loud and so powerful they drown out all others.

Media who lie or deliberately mislead (very subtle difference) should be accountable. An outlet that consistently behaves this way should be prevented from owning media, just as we prevent dishonest people from owning pubs, casinos, banks or brothels. 

Almost Time to Vote!

It's almost voting day.

I'll be voting Green because they are the only consistently reality-based party with respect for evidence.

I'll be voting to keep MMP because it's the only system that ensures the real majority governs and that I was able to actually elect people I want to represent me.

STV will be my fail-over choice. It's the only proportional alternative.

What will you do?

Copyright, You are Dead to Me.

As of now I do not give a rat's bleeding arse about copyright. It's obviously become a scam allowing corporations to steal from all of us. It's not for me or anyone like me.

I just tried to upload a video I made that was made up of bits of video shot at the Auckland Lantern Festival in February. Amid the thousand people talking in the background someone, somewhere was singing some very bad karaoke.

My camera's mic picked it up for a few seconds (30?) and braindead YouTube laid a copyright infringement claim against my video before it had even finished uploading. Fair Use is being trampled completely. These corporations are stealing from us all with impunity. 

I now officially do not give a flying monkey's toss about copyright. These corporations clearly do not care about my rights.

Let's call that even. It's over. 


Copyright, you are dead to me. 

YouTube and Fair Use

A couple of weeks ago I was walking up Queen St in Auckland and came across some young people break dancing in Aotea Square. Some of them were pretty good.

I had my 3D camera with me (Fujifilm Finepix Real 3D W3) and I shot some stills and video. Later, I made a video of the best efforts by the best dancers and uploaded it to YouTube. Two days later they notified me I had infringed copyright because of the music the kids were playing on their sound system. YouTube restricted the ability to see my video on some platforms (mobile, in particular) and in some countries. They advised me I could dispute the claim if I wished.

I definitely wished.

The videos were recordings of a spontaneous, unorganised, non-profit event in a public place. The sound track includes chatter, clapping, cheers and laughter. The segments of the video aren't in chronological order. Parts of several songs are included and not necessarily in the order in which the incidental music was played by the dancers. I have no idea who the artists are or what the names of the songs might be.

If this isn't Fair Use....then YouTube have allowed it to be killed by the RIAA.

I have disputed this claim. I don't know how long the disputes process takes, so will be interested to find out. I'll post more information as it comes to hand. 

Here is the disputed video. [Update: I deleted the video off YouTube. You can see it at 3DF33D.TV if you're interested]

(The embedded player doesn't seem to include 3D support. You may wish to click through to YouTube for other 3D modes.)

VIDEO DELETED

The Long Emergency gathers pace....

Coverage of the "Global Financial Crisis" appears to suffer from a lack of perspective. Most of it is focused on the most obvious and immediate elements and lacks any real attempt to understand the event (if a process can be called an event) in a wider context. 

In 2003, James Howard Kunstler correctly anticipated that what he calls “The Long Emergency” was imminent and unavoidable. His perspective was based on the consequences of Peak Oil hitting the global economy and societies everywhere, initially producing a bumpy plateau of recession and recovery as energy prices fluctuate on the event horizon of growing scarcity. 

We can add to this the gathering effects (and huge and growing costs) of climate change and the economic and fiscal consequences of a decade of outsourcing jobs to countries with cheaper labour which has destroyed literally millions of manufacturing jobs in the West and / or converted them into lower-paying service jobs….whose workers either pay less tax on lower incomes or have no income and rely on state assistance or family members who still have an income. At the same time, taxes were cut for those on the best incomes, making matters even worse. De-regulation of the banking sector in the late 90s appears to have been a catalyst in exaggerating the consequences of bad debt due to poor (or non-existent) risk assessment. This failure with respect to risk appears to remain unresolved as central banks everywhere continue to use interest rates to manipulate money supplies apparently divorced from any concept of risk.  

The fuller picture, very broadly, is one of people on a declining income base (thus shrinking the tax base) being offered cheap credit secured by whatever assets they had on hand to maintain a lifestyle that isn't sustainable by any measure with the global economy on the threshold of a transformation driven by the twin engines of climate change and ever more expensive energy. 

So here we are…and this civilisation-changing process is only now getting underway and gathering pace. Our world is on the cusp of huge change and our leaders (and most voters) haven’t got a clue….eyes riveted to the rear-vision mirror in their feeble attempts to chart a viable course into the future.

People need to start paying attention. Sleep walkers everywhere will end up road kill on the highway of life. 

Epsom for the Lulz

So the two main candidates for the National Party nomination in Epsom were:

1. John Bank's biographer, Paul Goldsmith
2. John Bank's mayoral campaign manager, Aaron Bhatnagar

LOL....

...and now John Banks, a newly faithful ACT party member, awaits his rubber stamped destiny from the voters of Epsom.

Anyone need any more proof National took over the ACT party?

Letter to the Herald 2011-06-02

Wrote this letter to the New Zealand Herald yesterday in relation to their editorial about Minister of Transport, Steven Joyce, rejecting Auckland City's case for the CBD rail tunnel.