Rupert Murdoch may be rich, clever and influential, but his plan to remove News Corp content from Google’s index is just daft. If he wants us to read his stories, let alone pay for them, we have to be able to find them first.
Articles by Stilgherrian 
About Stilgherrian
Opinionated writer, broadcaster & consultant about digital ways of doing things, based in Sydney. All hail Eris! Vive les poissons rouges sauvages!
Why AFACT v iiNet is important
iiNet is battling AFACT over illegal sharing of copyright films, tv and music via peer-to-peer networks, and the implications will be wide reaching. Who is responsible for the content of internet traffic?
Conroy’s internet filter dread
Senator Stephen Conroy must soon set aside the joys of taking the axe to Telstra — satisfying though that must be — and return to a topic he surely dreads: internet censorship.
Freedom (or freebies) of the press takes another meaning
There was once a time when photographers were sent to cover major events, like today’s Sydney dust storms. These days, free pictures are harvested from the internet.
Crikey Clarifier: What caused Sydney CBD’s Telstra outage
Thousands of businesses and homes in the northeast of Sydney’s CBD spent a day or more without telephones and the internet yesterday. What happened? And what can you do if it happens to you?
Telstra split: good or bad idea?
Online reaction to Telstra’s not-quite-forced “structural separation” is split. Telstra shareholders are angry. Everyone else is quietly jubilant — especially Telstra’s key competitors.
Telstra has to morph into a different kind of beast
The Rudd government’s legislation is the stark choice being offered Telstra: split your wholesale and retail operations or you don’t get any more wireless spectrum.
ACMA iTunes and the failure of net filtering
The underlying Australian internet censorship process is unworkable, and always will be. Opponents of the filter are busy proving it, with complaints about iTunes selling MA15+ films without requiring age verification.
The serious risk of cyber-grooming. Or not.
A new report from broadband minister Senator Conroy has declared “cyber-grooming and sexual solicitation are potentially the most serious cyber-safety risks.” Expect more tabloid-style stories to blur the facts and exaggerate that “potential” risk.
PM’s website hacked? No, just script kiddies
The overblown mainstream media claims over the “hack” on Kevin Rudd’s website mask a more prosaic truth, that actually it was just unavailable for a few minutes.
Telstra consigns nowwearetalking to the memory hole
Telstra’s often-controversial corporate blog suddenly vanished yesterday afternoon. The conversation had simply moved on. Still, it was an interesting social media experiment, even if it failed to keep up with the times.
NSW gets its geek on
NSW Premier Nathan Rees this morning reinforced the state’s commitment to “open government” with the apps4nsw program. It’s in stark contract to what happened in March this year.
Proposed intercept laws could create thousands of “Little Brothers”
Proposed amendments to the Telecommunications Act could dramatically increase the monitoring of your electronic communications. What will the loss of privacy mean?
They’re building data pipes under the ocean: why no media coverage?
Over the weekend, a new undersea fibre-optic data link from Guam to Sydney was fired up, which will increase Australia’s international data capacity by almost 50%. Not that anyone seems to care.
Government 2.0 Taskforce: seeding a cultural revolution
Last night’s Government 2.0 Taskforce Road Show in Sydney didn’t look like the start of a revolution. Yet the Taskforce has indeed been charged with fomenting a cultural revolution.
From hype to backlash, Twitter’s path is inevitable
The Hype Cycle for 2009 places microblogging services like Twitter at the start of their descent into the Trough of Disillusionment — along with green IT and e-book readers, where they’ll join public virtual worlds like Second Life and online video.
Twitter “40% pointless babble”? What twaddle!
40% of the messages on Twitter are “pointless babble”, claims a story doing the rounds of the media this morning. Except, the ‘research’ is just rubbish pseudo-science pimping a product.
Bug-free computer software: Australia paves the way
A computer crash and reboot will hopefully soon be a thing of the past, thanks to new Australian research on microkernels and bug free computer systems.
Elections slip out of newspapers
Australia’s newspapers have a problem: over the last three decades, there’s been a marked decline in front-page coverage of federal elections, according to research released yesterday.
eCrime: the bad guys pwn the internet
“Information is the money of the internet” and that’s exactly what cyber thieves are after. Online criminals are getting smarter and faster at stealing and authorities aren’t doing enough to stop it.
Internet filtering: speed won’t be the issue
With word that Conroy’s internet filter doesn’t affect ISPs’ speed, the debate will now centre around whether internet filtering actually “works” or not.
Literature? What’s that got to do with the price of books?
In all the talk of the Productivity Commission and the price of publishing, we shouldn’t forget that a book is not a novel. We shouldn’t be focusing on the container, but the content.
Ruddblog: populist masterstroke or full of fail?
I really want to like Kevin Rudd’s new blog. I really do. For Australia’s sake I want to be able to say that government is finally getting Web 2.0. But I don’t.
