Fraudband, entrenching the past to monopolise the future.

The Coalition has now released its broadband policy and it is heartening that the Opposition has finally realised that high-speed broadband is an important infrastructure issue.

However, beyond the technological differences (which others have comprehensively dealt with elsewhere), the policy fails on one of the fundamental advantages of the NBN - ubiquitous bandwidth over a single wholesale network.

A ubiquitous fibre network provides business certainty for the private sector to build and deploy high-bandwidth applications across Australia, the Coalition's hodgepodge of technologies and last-mile monopolies does not provide this certainty.

Only vertically integrated businesses will have the ability to cost-effectively deliver applications across the network proposed by the Coalition - which is good news for FOX and Telstra but bad news for any other business looking to provide high-bandwidth applications.

It seems that the Coalition is keen to replicate the previous mistakes of digital TV and datacasting regulation that has entrenched the status quo in the broadcast sector - little wonder that the "fraudband" policy was launched in FOX studios.

Obligatory Top-10 Tech Predictions for 2013

I did this last year, so rather than shatter any expectations of readers, I will be sharing my technical prescience once again. Of course, all of them came true last year ¹, so here goes:

1. Despite Google's best efforts, users still won't realise that Google Hangouts has a social network attached.
2. Apple will lose its way, so will its users - thanks Apple maps.
3. Windows 8 will fail to revive the glory days of Windows ME.
4. More and more services will move into the cloud, mainly thanks to cloud based companies continuing to expand the definition of what cloud based services actually are.
5. Malware writers will increasingly target web exploits to avoid the hassle of writing for multiple platforms. Software companies will just complain about having to write for multiple platforms. HTML5 will continue to be largely ignored.
6. Facebook will continue to suck, users will continue to complain about it. Facebook will still have eleventy billion members.
7. Tweets will become the number one source for mainstream news organisations. Mainstream news organisations will publish at least one "twitter is stupid" article per month for "balance".
8. Android will continue to grow despite the sucky API and the need to develop for multiple platforms. Apple will continue to grow despite its command economy for apps.
9. There will be enormous buzz in the tech community over a true Linux-based smartphone OS. Lots of buzz. It'll be so slashdottingly buzzworthy that no-one will notice that it hasn't been released nor does it have any support from any major hardware vendor.
10. 2013 will be the year of the Linux desktop.

So there you have it 2013.

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¹ Disclaimer: This post and any prior "predictions" posts may contain harmful levels of hyperbole and exaggeration.

Optus v NRL: Rightsholders vs Technology...again.

The Optus v NRL decision has thrown rightsholders into their usual frenzy of lobbying to protect their revenues from innovation. In summary the decision allows sports fans to use Optus' TVNow cloud services to stream Free to Air TV that they have recorded (often only time-shifting by a few minutes) through the time-shifting exception in s111(1) and s111(2) of the Copyright Act 1968.

As Rares,J found at [74] (emphasis mine):

"The purpose of the exception in s 111(1) and (2) was to accommodate, to some degree, the law to the realities of modern life. Copying for private and domestic use is so much a commonplace that it is not difficult to infer that a user who made a film, by clicking “record”, was doing so for such a use. Indeed, the rightholders did not suggest how anyone, for example, watching a broadcast or film of a football game or television program, on his or her mobile device or PC would be doing so for some reason other than personal pleasure or interest."

Of course, this finding has bought about the usual howls of protest from rightsholders and the attendant claims that the decision will be the end of sport as we know it - despite decisions in other jurisdictions (cited with favour in Optus v NRL) finding similar services to be non-infringing and their content industry continuing to be profitable.

The sports broadcasters seem to have found a sympathetic ear in the form of the sports minister Senator Mark Arbib. Concerningly Senator Arbib has not only used the  time-worn "think of the children" argument but has also intimated that "there were complex issues to consider before legislating, to ensure any laws were not overtaken by fresh technological developments." (emphasis mine)
Senator Arbib appears to be arguing that any law should ensure that any future technological innovation ought to be stunted by copyright law.

This is the typical position taken by a government that sees copyright as essentially an "industry problem" rather than a problem in the content market. The government's position is evidenced by the "secret" copyright meetings between ISPs and rightsholders to the exclusion of consumer interests and the government's apparent preparedness to acquiesce to international treaties that favour the interests of the US content industry.

Unfortunately the government continues to misunderstand the copyright infringement "problem" as an industry-related problem rather than one caused by an inefficient and over-regulated market which has limited consumers' access to reasonably priced legal content. Consumers are willing to pay for access to legal content and the ABC's iView service is a case-in-point recently capturing over 30% of the sources for downloading/streaming content.

Until the copyright infringement "problem" is re-cast as a problem with the market, rightsholders will continue their cat and mouse game with technological innovation and governments will be tempted to pass knee-jerk legislation to ban it.

As Rares,J pointed out, the law as it stands was passed to "accommodate [...] the law to the realities of modern life". It is these realities that have created the incentive for the market to innovate to enable content to be time and device shifted.

It is dangerous for governments to try to pre-empt market innovation by passing laws to further regulate an already over-regulated and highly inefficient market. In this case, it is particularly dangerous as the change to the law alluded to by Senator Arbib will attempt to curtail consumer expectations that are already widespread in the market - expectations that were previously codified in the s111 exemptions.

The result will be inevitable - just as P2P filesharing has become a statement of civil disobedience amongst certain internet communities - technological innovation to make time and format shifting available to the market will continue to expand regardless of the law. If the content industries refuse to harness the technology and give in to the demands of the market, it is not up to the government to prop them up with regressive regulation.

Anonymity, pseudonymity and Google+:an idea to enhance privacy

I've been playing  with Google's new Google+ social network and on the whole I've been impressed. The network seems to combine the best aspects of Twitter and Facebook with a relatively easy to understand privacy model based on "circles". This model is meant to be an analogue of people's offline circles.

However, Google has decided that all profiles must be based on the person's real name which I believe breaks this analogue between online and offline circles and undermines some of the great "open-yet-private" model of Google+

Everyone has different personas depending on which circle they are currently interacting with, their work persona, social persona, family persona, etc. These personas are conveyed by verbal and physical cues when interacting with each persona. These cues cannot be easily replicated online because of the medium. People use pseudonyms to get around this problem, these pseudonyms are often linked to their real persona, but sometimes not. This is a fundamental difference between psudonymity and anonymity.

I use a pseudonym to interact on this blog and on twitter because this is the persona that I want to project to the internet. I interact with people using this persona and although with any quick searching someone could link my real name with my handle, it allows me to use a pseudonymous persona when acting as a public person on the internet. Conversely, my "private" persona, the one linked to my real name, is used to interact with people I know on a personal level.

Google+ conveniently has a privacy system that encourages the adding of people that you might interact with on the internet - not just those who you might know. This means that you're encouraged to add those that you have only ever interacted with pseudonymously which means they are now interacting with you under your real name - even though you have built your relationships under the pseudonym.

There may be many reasons why someone would like to keep those personas separate. For example, I don't want my real name to be searchable on the internet, but I'm happy enough to be found by people searching for my pseudonym - as it's public anyway.

I figure that the reason why Google is enforcing the "real name" policy is all about Search - more specifically providing customisable search results and also providing "endorsements" of results via the user's social relationships (ie. <name> shared this link in Google+ or <name> +1'd this). However, to people who have interacted with me via my pseudonym would find an endorsement by Czaxx more compelling than one by my real name (although the converse would be true for those in my "family" circle). Google+ would be enhanced if users could choose the persona - either real name or pseudonym - that interacts with which circle. For example, my Family circle would see my real name, but my Twitter circle would see my pseudonym - as would members of the public when seeing my +1's or my comments on public posts. Members of the public looking at endorsements by my pseudonym could then search for my other public posts, if they were so inclined (not that I'd expect anyone would care), to see if that endorsement is worth anything  (since a search for my real name would yield very little).

To allow the ability to choose which persona to use to interact with each circle would still fulfill Google's business goals for personalised search and it would also allow another layer of privacy and utility for Google+'s users.

Constructing strong and memorable passwords

The recent Sony PlayStation Network (PSN) hack has revealed that weak passwords are still all the rage with classics such as "password", "123456" and bizarrely "Seinfeld" (considering PSN was launched in 2006, well after the final show in 1998) making up the top passwords selected for access to the PSN.

It's an age-old problem of computer security that no matter how secure the system, users will always be the weakest link - and that weakness is often expressed in password choice. Most users will excuse weak passwords or the re-use of passwords by arguing that "its impossible to remember", which is true if you expect that they'll remember a random collection of numbers and letters. The best way to construct a strong password is by the use of memes - and if you make your memes fun then people will use them to construct their own passwords.

An article in the Fairfax press suggests choosing a nursery rhyme (or other memorable phrase), taking the first letters of each word and substituting some for numbers and symbols will form the basis of a strong password which you can then customise for each service by adding a letter, such as 'F' for Facebook. Although this is a good method it still doesn't pass the memorable test because the nursery rhyme or whatever is not associated with the service. Also adding the letters to designate which service makes the password guessable if one is compromised (a fact the article acknowledges).

A method that I have suggested to people which tends to be effective is to choose a song that they can associate with the service and follow the method suggested in the article. This makes the password memorable and creates vastly different passwords for each service. A few examples that came out of this excercise were a favourite ABBA song for a NAB internet banking password (NAB sounds like ABBA apparently), Please, Mr Postman by the Beatles for a mail service and Taking it Easy by the Eagles for eBay (Taking it eBay, possibly?!). Regardless of the memes used (or their taste in music), each of these elements were memorable to the person making the password. From there it is a simple matter of constructing it along the lines outlined in the article (although I also suggest a consistent substitution scheme for example the first substitution is always a symbol).

So for example, if you chose U2's "I still haven't found what I'm looking for" for your Google services:
IsHfwILF goes to 1sHfw1LF and if your service allows symbols: !sHfw1LF, which isn't a bad password even though the attempt at irony in the song selection is terrible.

NBN & the wireless conjecture: It's not just about your iPhone

Once again we have the opponents of the NBN trotting out what they think is the ultimate argument against the NBN - wireless. Buoyed by Obama's announcement of a nationwide wireless network and conveniently forgetting that the wireless solution is actually plan B (because the Plan A for a fiber network was stymied by conservatives in Congress), NBN opponents gleefully point out the number of wireless devices on the street as ultimate vindication of their wireless argument - see? Obama's doing it! See? Everyone has an iPhone! that's why wireless will obsolete the NBN!

The argument from wireless is spurious and anyone who has any understanding of technology knows it. But then this is not an argument for them, its an argument for the person on the street who probably owns and iPhone and wireless laptop and can't see why anyone would want to tether themselves to a fixed connection. It's like an argument that I used to hear constantly about broadband from users who didn't want to upgrade from dialup - "why would I need it? dialup is fine for what I do" (yes, this was back in the late 90's). People rarely see the need for change. However, conservatism aside, the NBN isn't about your iPhone or any of the other devices that you'd normally associate with computing, just like broadband wasn't just about faster email. There are plenty of fixed devices that will benefit from the NBN.

Your TV and Radio will need the NBN. On-demand digital media, such as Video-on-demand and music streaming-on-demand is a nascent market, which I suspect is on the verge of a rapid expansion (this is assuming that the content industry gets over itself and starts to think about a sustainable digital model for content delivery without their paranoia about copyright infringement). Wireless will never be able to handle the amount of digital media that people will use.

Already the streaming music segment of digital content delivery is beginning  to grow and companies such as Sony are beginning to engage with digital content delivery models with their subscription music on demand services. This content will be delivered to mobile devices as well, but when your radio and TV are connected to the network digital content delivery will continue to expand, and with it the bandwidth requirements - requirements that would quickly overwhelm wireless capacity.

But digital media is not the only thing that access to reliable fixed broadband can enable.

Your smoke alarm will need NBN. Monitoring and alarm systems need a constant reliable connection, one that wireless will never be able to provide. Fire alarms in big office buildings use these sorts of connections and with access to cheap bandwidth there is no reason why these can't be extended to domestic uses - makes smoke alarms with cruddy 9V battery look a bit tame now.

And, yes, your dishwasher will need the NBN. Many devices in the home can become more functional with a connection to the network - eg. saving power and water by only drawing power or water when the tariff is at its cheapest. All of these things need reliable fixed broadband. Home automation systems too (lights, heating, etc.), will require access to reliable bandwidth.

All of these things that I have discussed are just the tip of the iceberg and focus merely on those things which the person in the street may see as a useful reason to get some "faster email".

There are of course many more sophisticated things that such an extensive network can deliver but the person on the street is still thinking about how interwebs is all about getting on to Facebook, so the lofty arguments about health, education, increased economic activity and the creation of new markets/technologies don't resonate. This is why the wireless argument is being repeated ad nauseum but it is the drivers of digital media on-demand services and increased convenience at home that will pique the interest of our person on the street just like access to YouTube and not tying up the phone line drove the adoption of broadband.

The NBN isn't just about your iPhone, its much broader than that. Wireless capacity is just not able to deliver in a way that is feasible for these types of uses - and unfortunately, due to some pesky things known as the Laws of Physics, it never will.