The National Broadband Network (NBN)

[OSJ]

Originally Posted by James Saito

That's not something you can be proud of. Ever heard of "copyright"?

Seriously though, most of the money I spend on live music is for artists that I wouldn't have ever known of (and therefore paid to see live), if I had to have paid 20 or 30 dollars for a CD. And unlike the CD - where they get 10%, I know they get a much bigger proportion.

Morals are only defined by what people think and do, and laws and the morals of the majority are not necessarily reflective of one another. (gay marriage *cough*). I'm sure you'd find that very few people see huge multinational corporations suing children for downloading one song as something that's morally just.

[BobDaBuilder]

It appears we are downloading smut quicker than they can film the stuff.

Australia needs to revise it's conservative views on the making of adult films. We have that 21st century joint in Docklands being unused. We have some attractive women and creative people, its time to build a Pornowood in Melbourne.

We can become world leaders in the purveyors of fine porn!

[James Saito]

Originally Posted by OSJ

Morals are only defined by what people think and do, and laws and the morals of the majority are not necessarily reflective of one another. (gay marriage *cough*). I'm sure you'd find that very few people see huge multinational corporations suing children for downloading one song as something that's morally just.

Three-strikes law has been just passed in France. New Zealand is considering it. I don't think it will be too long before we get it here in Australia too.

'Three-strikes' law for net users
French internet users persisting in illicit downloading of music and films could have the plug pulled on their internet if a controversial new law is approved.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programme...ve/7967689.stm

[gappa]

Originally Posted by redbaron_012

I have no idea about how all this stuff works ( I have wireless ).......but.........For the cost ( Lots ) and a time frame of 8 years. Wont technology be amazingly different and all this will be obsolete ? IMO.........maybe they could install small document lifts in buildings to move information to offices on different floors.....WOW !

True. Don't you wish they never installed all those phone lines years ago. I mean they're already obsolete.

For that matter we should stop building all these roads. They'll be obsolete once we all get our shiny new flying cars.

[OSJ]

Originally Posted by James Saito

Three-strikes law has been just passed in France. New Zealand is considering it. I don't think it will be too long before we get it here in Australia too.

'Three-strikes' law for net users
French internet users persisting in illicit downloading of music and films could have the plug pulled on their internet if a controversial new law is approved.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programme...ve/7967689.stm

What does that have to do with morals? It's already illegal - having a 3 strikes law doesn't somehow make it more illegal, and doesn't change the morals or public opinion of the situation.

Put a law like that (or again, like Gay marriage) to a referendum and see what happens.

[BobDaBuilder]

^

What is the big deal with downloading music or films? You don't pay money to listen to the radio or watch films on the tele do you?

It is simply a matter of your paradigm, and of course the record labels will grizzle as they are being cut out of the action. The artists got very little of the take anyhow so they don't give a toss as long as people are actually listening to their stuff is all they care about because then you might be inclined to see them live etc..

Another thing is, most music is RIPPED off anyhow, there is so much plagiarism in the music industry it isn't funny. An example is Led Zeppelin. How many times have they been acused over the years of ripping off other musicians? And they were one of the MOST influential groups of musicians in history. These other artists we hear about are not in anything like their league.

And if I see an original concept or plotline coming out of Hollywood, I'll tell you about it. Everything they do is following formulas which are not original.

Bottom line is it really it all depends on how you want to look at it. My take on it is this, if you are not profitting by it, ie, not on-selling it you are not doing anyone any harm.

Chances are you simply would not bother with it if it wasn't free in anycase. How many people here would pay to see 'Love Guru' or pay to listen to Duffy?

[nazor]

Dont blame us!

Blame the record companies for charging $30 for a cd that prob cost em 20cents to make. Its more of a rort that bottled water!

[Homeroids]

Going a bit off topic, but don't get me started on Copyright and the history of copyright. Basically in the 30's Disney started pushing hard for longer IP expiries. I believe it was 7 years and then an original work entered the public domain. Disney kept pushing and pushing for their cash cows. I believe they pushed for 100 years.

Having these ridiculous time frames actually stiffles creativity. Look no further than Disney themselves. Most of their classics were based on folklore stories. A great recent example is the Lion King. It has so many coincidental references to Kimba the White Lion. Even the main Lion's name was similar - Simba.

So Disney create an "Original" work on something that is already out there. Maybe we should say, "inspired" by something out there. Go and then try to create something "inspired" by The Lion King? Result? Disney IP lawyer comes out guns blazzing and they want to basically keep the cash cow for 100years.

There is another reason why The Lion King is not available for sale - creating a false scarcity. Disney do re-releases of their works all the time. If they had their way, you would not buy anything of theirs. They would prefer leasing.

/rant off

[hornetfig]

Originally Posted by Homeroids

Going a bit off topic, but don't get me started on Copyright and the history of copyright. Basically in the 30's Disney started pushing hard for longer IP expiries. I believe it was 7 years and then an original work entered the public domain. Disney kept pushing and pushing for their cash cows. I believe they pushed for 100 years.

Copyright on books was initially 20 years (this is in 1714). Different works and other material have had different levels of protection by copyright over time (e.g. in the 19th Century there were specific copyrights for lectures; some things that were once protected by copyright now require a registered design etc).

In the 20th Century most works were regularised to life + 50 years. Most other materials (publications, films, sound recordings etc) got 50 years from first publication.

But yes 50 is now 70 and 90 is the next "target". Along with resale rights for artistic works. Moral Rights are also new.

I don't really know where the Disney thing comes from though. It may or may not be true. If the original cartoons and movies start to come out of copyright, you no longer need a licence to publish them. However it may still be an infringement to go and, say, duplicate a broadcast of it.

Disney's characters themselves are registered trademarks. They can be protected in perpetuity.

[Homeroids]

Another recent example was a lot of the Beatles songs are coming out of copyright. There was a huge campaign with the likes of Cliff Richards arguing against it. I think 2010-12 is about the year copyright will expire. Anyway, the British authority determined that the current time span will NOT be changed. In theory, soon a lot of the Beatles songs are going to the public domain.

[city_thing]

Man, I can't believe how many GB's some of you guys use.

I think the best thing about the new RuddNet is that TV will have to change enormously. Shows will actually have to be good to attract viewers, production companies can release stuff without having to sell it to a TV station to get it viewed. Basically TV shows can be podcast, and we won't have to put up with crap like "Whats Good for You" and other filler shows. The same goes for music these days - an album now has to be great for people to buy it, otherwise just downloading the good songs individually will be done. Heaven forbid the record companies will now have to stop filling albums with filler-songs and actually release half decent stuff.

Hopefully the RuddNet will open up the opportunity to watch a lot more international programming as well. I hate waiting for stuff to be released in Australia.

[redbaron_012]

Originally Posted by gappa

True. Don't you wish they never installed all those phone lines years ago. I mean they're already obsolete.

For that matter we should stop building all these roads. They'll be obsolete once we all get our shiny new flying cars.

Gappa....your as bad as me !...........PS. my flying car will be matt black....for stealth!

[invincible]

The commercial networks' only hope for discerning 18-24 people like me is if they bring in something ABC's iView. They otherwise have no appeal to me at all.

[BobDaBuilder]

James Packer was smart, he could see the writing was on the wall for regular tv.

It will go the way of AM radio. You have guys like Ernie Sigley on banging on about the 'good ole fucking days'

Channel 9 is a good example of what is to come, just loads of recyling and repackaging.

The good news is, there will be more things like www.channelsurfing.net, www.justin.tv, tvunetworks where you can pillage all the tv you want from around the world.

The world will ultimately be a better place.

[Lijman]

Originally Posted by BobDaBuilder

It appears we are downloading smut quicker than they can film the stuff.

Australia needs to revise it's conservative views on the making of adult films. We have that 21st century joint in Docklands being unused. We have some attractive women and creative people, its time to build a Pornowood in Melbourne.

We can become world leaders in the purveyors of fine porn!

Thinking of auditioning?

[Jack Daniel]

Originally Posted by Homeroids

Going a bit off topic, but don't get me started on Copyright and the history of copyright. Basically in the 30's Disney started pushing hard for longer IP expiries....Having these ridiculous time frames actually stiffles creativity.

Couldn't agree more. I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks this.
Take Romeo and Juliet. Its plot is based on an Italian tale, translated into verse By Arthur Brooke in 1562, and retold in prose in Palace of Pleasure by William Painter in 1582. Shakespeare borrowed heavily from both. Today, If I were to borrow heavily from say Stephen King I'd be sued.

[TRS-80]

Originally Posted by Trunter

This is good news. I have a question. Does this mean that Broadband caps will be gone? For instance, we have a 20GB a month limit and if we go over it, we get punished with an awfully slow internet that is probably slower than dial-up. I hope those days are limited!

They will still be around, but the private sector is building new cables which will increase the size of caps. What will also happen is ISPs providing fast local content like iView, or even Hulu (a man can dream).

Also, if the government is able to spend this much on a Broadband network, I wish it could also find the money and time to spend it on a high-speed rail network and other infrastructure projects around the country like metros, etc.

I think the big question is whether the market is prepared to buy the bonds to fund this and other infrastructure at the moment. Faster internet is clearly needed and has benefits beyond the strictly financial whereas it's a lot harder to justify HSR if it doesn't turn a profit. Either that or HSR needs to get better marketing.

[MILIUX]

I enjoyed using 96mbit fibre optic FTTH connection while residing in Amsterdam and only pay about 40euro a month. Unlimited download, very good latency and it maintained its speed because the Dutch government worked in partnership with the private sector. Now, the Netherlands is one of the formiddable force in IT and customer service related businesses such as KPN which taps into its multi-lingual workforce.

The stuff i could do with 96mbit connection compared to the crapola adsl2+ connection is in a totally different league. My classroom had interactive web conferencing with classrooms in India and the United States and we did interactive simulations and shared datas simultaneously. These stuff cannot be possible because of Australia's horrible latency and stone-age derived bandwidth restrictions.

Imagine downloading pay-per-view DVDs in several seconds instead of hours.

I always cringed coming back to Australia being stuck with mediocrity because the neo-con keyboard warriers would always chuck a fitty everytime the government is involved in ambitious projects.

"Oh noes!! The chinamen control our fibre optic net by SKYNET!"

[invincible]

We have pretty good latency if you ask me. I used to typically get pings of 5-10ms back when I still played games, so latencies within Australia are excellent. The problem with latency can't be solved with more fibre - there are already tens of thousands of km of fibre under the ocean but it still doesn't change the fact that data needs to travel half way across the world to get anywhere.

Remember, light travels at 300,000 km per second, so the theoretical minimum time for data to travel 15,000km (circumference of the earth is 40,000km) is 50 milliseconds, plus inefficiencies caused by routing hardware. So sure, it's better in Europe (just like everything else), but our latencies are not a result of bad infrastructure but the simple fact we're far away from everything.

[BobDaBuilder]

Interesting that Tassie will get the benefits first, no doubt because they are setting themselves up as an internet gambling mecca. Also it is small in size, about the same as Wales or Lithuania so it will appear the government is getting things done quickly.