![\"Copyright\"](\"http:\/\/www.digital-digest.com\/blog\/DVDGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/04\/copyright.gif\" "\\"Copyright\\"")
<\/p>\nAgain, apologies for not having anything to talk about last week. And apologies for having too much to go through this week. No time to waste, so let’s get started …<\/p>\n
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![\"Net](\"http:\/\/www.digital-digest.com\/blog\/DVDGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/support_net_neutrality.jpg\")
<\/a>A big win for Net Neutrality, no surprises that ISPs didn’t like the FCC ruling, nor did Republicans<\/p><\/div>\n
So while last week was super quiet, this week was anything but. The most exciting, and perhaps important news of the week came via a source you don’t usually associate with excitement – the FCC.\u00a0This week, the FCC voted (3-2 on party lines, 3 Democrats vs 2 Republicans) to reclassify Internet access as an utility under Title II of the\u00a0Communications Act<\/a>. What this\u00a0means is that, after the setback in the courts<\/a> which seems to have doomed Net Neutrality, the new strategy by Net Neutrality proponents to seek a Title II reclassification appears to have worked. The\u00a0FCC can now implement their Open Internet rules via regulation that’s designed to protect consumers, much like how the government does so in regards to electricity or water access.<\/p>\n What I found most interesting were the Republican responses, many slamming the ruling as “big government overreach”. But when it comes to protecting the free (more as in money, than freedom) flow of information on the Internet, I will side with big government any day of the week over big corporations and monopolies – corporations like Comcast and Verizon who want to toll up the Internet, relegating those who cannot pay to\u00a0second class net citizens. The choice is not between regulation\u00a0and no regulation, the choice is between government regulation designed to protect the consumer, or big business regulation designed to enrich themselves.<\/p>\n The funny thing was that many of these big business anti-regulation politicians took to social media platforms like Twitter to vent their outrage, the very same social media platforms, and indirectly free speech itself,\u00a0that will be harmed if Net\u00a0Neutrality is destroyed. The “market knows” mantra doesn’t work when in effect there is no market, just monopolies – in this instance, the only thing the market knows is how to line their pockets with money at the expense of everyone else.<\/p>\n The fact that most\u00a0big Internet businesses, like Netflix and Microsoft and Twitter and Tumblr, are all hailing the ruling should be giving these so called pro free market politicians some pause for thought. Sometimes by being anti-regulation simply means\u00a0you’re supporting\u00a0one business or industry at the expense of another, and when free market politicians active campaign and legislate for this, aren’t they\u00a0the ones, in government, doing all the regulating and altering the results\u00a0of what was supposed to be a\u00a0free market? Add in the fact that the market and its participants are often\u00a0not rational at all, it all adds up to the idea that you sometimes cannot have a free, healthy market without strong regulation (designed not to stifle it, but to protect it).<\/p>\n Google removes so many results due to DMCA requests, but how many invalid requests do they receive?<\/p><\/div>\n Now I know the story above is less to do with copyright and more to do with the Internet in general (didn’t stop the MPAA from somehow tying the ruling to their anti-piracy crusade<\/a>), but this next story definitely is a copyright story, and had it gone the wrong way, could have had an even bigger impact than Net Neutrality. The Internet was one bad DMCA takedown request<\/a> away from\u00a0having\u00a0the world’s most popular downloads all being blocked on Google, if Google had been sleeping on the job. Everything from Java, to Skype, to WhatsApp, to Redhat\/Apache\/MySQL server software, could have been removed from Google’s index if the DMCA request from\u00a0Total Wipes Music Group for an obscure music album would have been processed without intervention. Luckily, Google’s system is designed to prevent this type of false positives, although right now, there appear to be no punitive action for companies that continue to submit bad requests.<\/p>\n To be fair to\u00a0Total Wipes Music Group, they accepted total responsibility and vowed to never let it happen again (apparently it was a software error that, instead of grabbing links related to the name of the music album, grabbed links related to the word “download” instead – no wonder then that\u00a0the most popular downloads in the world were all listed).<\/p>\n ——<\/p>\n I suppose, being in Australia, I should talk about the new\u00a0industry code of conduct to deal with the piracy problem here. The proposal calls for a three-strikes system<\/a>, but one that appears to be full of loopholes and watered down actions. For example, those on business plans are exempt, while you can get away with two infringement notices every year without any sort of punitive action (the three-strikes counter resets every 12 month). And even when you do get that third strike, it’s up to Big Content to get a court order to compel the ISP to hand over customer details – whether Big Content wants to go down the “sue the downloader” route again, after already admitting that it was largely a mistake, I don’t really know.<\/p>\n What I do know is that our no good, universally\u00a0despised and most likely to be voted out of office government has been putting a lot of pressure on ISPs and\u00a0content owners to come up with an industry solution, with the threat of government intervention if talks fail. This is the same government that failed to consult ISPs and consumer groups<\/a>, and instead, only talked to content owners\u00a0before coming up with the idea that everything must be done to ensure US companies can continue to rip off Australian consumers by charging more for less. Why am I not surprised?<\/p>\n In all my excitement last week about the, um, total lack of excitement, I actually forgot to talk about the January\u00a0NPD results. But they weren’t that exciting though, with the PS4 once again back on top after the Xbox One sales event ($50 off) ended, before bringing the discount back half way through the month.<\/p>\n This week did yield something a bit more interesting, with Nielsen releasing the results of a survey that\u00a0shows just exactly why people choose the console they choose<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n