On Friday I was a guest on ABC Radio National’s Life Matters discussing online reputation. This has close ties with the privacy concerns that are getting more and more attention in the media these days. There seems to be a lot of concern and a growing realisation that once the genie is out of the bottle it’s hard to put him back in. It was an interesting discussion, though I wonder if I’m becoming a harbinger of doom on these matters.

You can catch the show here or listen below.

[audio:http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/2010/11/lms_20101112_0905.mp3|loop=no]

I did another appearance on the 7PM Project on Wednesday, talking about Facebook vandals (/b/tards, basically) defacing tribute pages. It’s a difficult subject in some ways, as we must balance the outrage and no doubt genuine anguish caused by such actions against the practicalities of any response and its implications for legitimate anonymous free speech. I wrote something on the subject earlier in the year when a similar incident occurred. That can be a hard line to sell when a grieving parent is involved.

Today I had a short spot on The 7PM Project discussing the Government’s plans for a National Broadband Network and contrasting it with the Liberal plan.  The NBN is a massive undertaking, at $43 billion, and given the cost we’d expect to see a pretty solid cost-benefit analysis, yet none has been forthcoming. It’s therefore hard to know quite how enthusiastically to support the NBN.

I do have a soft spot for a bold, forward thinking and long term project like this one, and I appreciate as well as anybody what this might mean in terms of future educational and business opportunities for the country. The need for connectivity will not go away, so I think the Commonwealth’s asset, in NBN Co, will have real value. I want this for myself and my business. It’s slightly concerning that it requires a leap of faith, but there you have it.

Stephen Conroy, as usual on a Friday, made some major filter announcements today, using the excuse of a review of the “RC” classification category to put the filter on the back burner for 12 months. He also announced that three large ISPs – Bigpond, Optus and Primus – would begin a voluntary filtering scheme. Although that raises some red flags, it would be definitely preferable to having a compulsory government-controlled scheme. However, it looks like the old plan is still very much in the offing.

Read more on the SMH here, or listen to me discussing the issue on the ABC:

ABC – The World Today

Today was officially “Quit Facebook Day”, whereby 24,000 users – out of 400 million – threatened to quit over privacy issues. I was on “The Circle” today to discuss the issue – and it was good fun. Watch below.

Four Corners tonight tackled internet censorship in an episode entitled “Access Denied”. For a debate ruled, like most debates, by sound bites – “child pornography”, “censored like North Korea” – I was excited to see the issue get a detailed examination over 40-odd minutes of quality investigative journalism.

I thought they did a good job. There was, as usual in this discussion, much emphasis on the evil content on the internet without really pointing out how the vast majority of people use the internet the vast majority of the time without any unpleasantness whatsoever. There was, for some reason, a lot of filler shots of porn sites themselves. But several sides of the debate got an airing that we wouldn’t normally hear. At about 12 minutes in, teenager Justin Katz is asked about whether kids need to be protected from nasty material, and he says exactly what you’d expect from a sane person: “I think if you just have common sense and the right attitude you don’t need to be protected from anything, that with just a straight mind you’ll know what’s right and you’ll know what’s wrong.”

The pro-filter camp included some of the usual suspects like Jim Wallace and Clive Hamilton. Clive did not disappoint with his rhetoric about “perverse and extreme sexual practices”. The phrase “penetrated in every orifice” quickly made an appearance along with “bestiality” and “copraphilia.” (Eww. I start to worry about what’s on Clive’s hard drive for research purposes.) Unfortunately for my self-image someone on twitter pointed out that Clive and I look somewhat similar: “Clive Hamilton and Colin Jacobs are both bald w/glasses. But Clive has the look of a man who doesn’t get laid much.” Thanks, @renailemay.

I also though the producers did a good job highlighting the democratic dangers and putting the lie to the government’s “child pornography” rhetoric by showing some much more controversial material that would be blocked, and is currently prohibited. The oldies learning about proxies and the outraged anti-abortion candidate certainly illustrated this important point.

I also found it surprising that they discussed how the current classification scheme applies to normal adult material, with Fiona Patten of the Australian Sex Party showing the audience how some pirate porn needs to split the swashbuckling violence onto a separate DVD to the piratical sex in order to pass classification muster. I think most Aussies have little problem with the idea of adults being able to watch this sort of harmless material, and it was a good and light-hearted counterbalance to the worst-of-the-worst rhetoric we normally get.

I’m in there with a couple of grabs about how the filter was presented to the electorate and how it has since changed. Mark Newton had better material with his final line, though (spoiler alert): “The idea that the internet is this scary place that parents don’t understand, that everyone needs protection from, isn’t a view that’s held by  most of society . What it really is is a scary place that politicians don’t understand and politicians need protection from, and that’s why we’re having this debate now.”

You can watch the show at the Four Corners site or on ABC iView.

The topic was also discussed on Q&A after Four Corners. Kaiser Kuo, who I have followed and read since living in China, had me worried but actually proved to be an eloquent opponent of censorship under all but the most extraordinary circumstances. A poll of the audience showed the overwhelming majority against the filter. Brett Solomon stuck up for us internet-loving nerds with genuine passion. Definitely worth checking out on iView.