🚀 go-pugleaf

I don't know how many of you watched Lateline last night. Two thorny
issues were discussed - Crimenet and Napster.

In terms of Crimenet, it is bewildering beyond description that Attorneys
General still think they can take Crimenet offline and regulate such
content.

www.mynewcoolsite.com.au could be in Sydney or Canberra or Amsterdam or at
sea or in orbit for all I care. I don't need, or in the general course of
thins want to know where the server is physically located.

It's the modern day version of pirate radio stations broadcasting outside
Britain's12 mile limit, or from Mexico into the USA. But in the case of
the Internet, geography does not come into the equation.

On the other issue, the very way Napster is set up means the court
decision will never be anything more than a moral victory from the point
of view of the recording industry. Applications such as Napigator mean
that connections to Napster will simply be diverted to other sites not
covered by the court decision.

Other recent issues such as datacasting and online gambling have also
demonstrated a complete lack of understanding on the part of politicians
and regulators of the way things work in the real world.

For example, Senator Alston said that if streaming media started to affect
the market share of TV networks, he would introduce legislation to
regulate provision of streaming media.

The recent regulations about adult material have been spectacularly
ineffective. IIRC, about 50 take down orders have been issued by the ABA.
Most of the sites affected simply transfered the content to an offshore
server, and a quick change to the DNS brings the same site up again with
the same URL within hours, but out of the ABA's jurisdiction.

Put simply, what planet are Senators Alston and Harradine living on?

Cheers
David