Darkness at Noon

There is no doubt in my mind that Bill Henson’s latest exhibition which has lead to allegations of child pornography is art, and quite good art at that. It’s little wonder that Australia is such a Nanny State when the police have to intervene to prevent the opening of a show at a gallery.

Anyway, there are people that know about this sort of thing a lot better than me – the Creative Australia 2020 Summit representatives.

They are quoted in Crikey today:

As members of the Creative Stream of the Australia 2020 Summit, we wish to express our dismay at the police raid on Bill Henson’s recent Sydney exhibition, the allegations that he is a child pornographer, and the subsequent reports that he and others may be charged with obscenity.

The potential prosecution of one of our most respected artists is no way to build a Creative Australia, and does untold damage to our cultural reputation.

The public debate prompted by the Henson exhibition is welcome and important. We need to discuss the ethics of art and the issues that it raises. That is one of the things art is for: it is valuable because it gives rise to such debate and difference, because it raises difficult, sometimes unanswerable, questions about who we are, as individuals and as members of society. However, this on-going discussion, which is crucial to the healthy functioning of our democracy, cannot take place in a court of law.

We invite the Prime Minister, Mr Rudd, and the NSW Premier, Mr Iemma, to rethink their public comments about Mr Henson’s work. We understand that they were made in the context of deep community concern about the sexual exploitation of children. We understand and respect also that they have every right to their personal opinions. However, as political leaders they are influential in forming public opinion, and we believe their words should be well considered.

We also call on the Minister for Environment Heritage and the Arts, Mr Garrett, to stand up for artists against a trend of encroaching censorship which has recently resulted in the closure of this and other exhibitions.

We wish to make absolutely clear that none of us endorses, in any way, the abuse of children. Mr Henson’s work has nothing to do with child pornography and, according to the judgment of some of the most respected curators and critics in the world, it is certainly art.

Read the rest of it – it’s worth while.

Van Thanh Rudd’s piece Special Forces (After Banksy) has been pulled from the Ho Chi Minh City Young Artists Exhibition put on by the City of Melbourne because they found it offensive. I’m not going to comment on it’s worth as a piece of art, that’s for art critics and the City of Melbourne to decide.

What alarms me is this: “Legal assessment had also indicated it might infringe trademark and copyright provisions”

So copyright law, laws that are designed to protect people’s creative outputs, once again stifles creativity in favour of a multinational corporation.

How can this be a good thing?

I thought this article was worth a read.

When the industry finally capitulates and realizes that they can no longer charge a meaningful amount of money for digital recorded music, a lot of good things can happen.

First, other revenue sources can and will be exploited, particularly live music, merchandise and limited edition physical copies of music. The signs are already there – the live music industry is booming this year, and Radiohead is releasing a special edition box set of their new album for £40.00 simultaneous to the release of their “free” digital album.

Second, artists and labels will stop thinking of digital music as a source of revenue and start thinking about it as a way to market their real products. Users will be encouraged (even paid, as radio stations are today) to download, listen to and share music. Passionate users who download music from the Internet and share it with others will become the most important customers, not targets for ridiculous lawsuits.

The price of music will likely not fall in the near term to absolutely zero. Charging any price at all requires the use of credit cards and their minimum fees of $0.20 or more per transaction, for example. And services like iTunes and Amazon can continue to charge something for quality of service. With P2P networks you don’t really know what you are getting until you download it. It could, for example, be a virus. Or a poor quality copy. Many users will be willing to pay to avoid those hassles. But as long as BitTorrent exists, or simple music search engines like Skreemr allow users to find and download virtually any song in seconds, they won’t be able to charge much.

Just a quick reminder about our next forum on Tuesday at the Horse Bazaar with Sue Kenny. Should be a really fascinating one:

Cosmopolitanism – An alternative globalisation

Speaker: Sue Kenny (Deakin University)

In many senses globalisation has brought us closer together. However it has also enhanced the ability of the developed world to exploit everyone else. Instead of the unity we were promised we have a greater disparity in living standards and wealth. So what sort of globalisation could actually bring us together? Can global networks of NGOs help bring us together in a way our government’s have failed to? Can it be the key to greater understanding between cultures and nations, were our similarities bind us together creating a cohesive world order? Can we move beyond nationalism to a single moral community?

When: Tue 20 May, 7pm.
Where: Horse Bazaar (http://www.horsebazaar.com.au/), 397 Little Lonsdale Street
Cost: Gold coin donation (free for ACDJ members)
Contact: centre@democracyandjustice.org

Alternatives to Globalisation Forums

The Australian Centre for Democracy and Justice’s forms often cover what is wrong with the current corporate-centric globalisation we are currently experiencing, but what are the alternatives to this? In or first series of forums for 2008 we explore a range of alternatives to economic globalisation.

Do we need to localise and turn to a slower, less transport intensive society where all our sources of food and fuel come from the local area? Does the answer lie in a single moral community? Or does it lie in a multitude of singularities all networked and interlinked with peers interacting to create an information-based society on all levels from the individual to the global?

On Monday (12th) the AEC released the donations disclosure returns lodged following the 2007 federal election.

You can see them here.

The first point I’d like to make is that the AEC’s disclosure site continues to be a nightmare to navigate. But I’ve spent a bit of time there and I think I know my way around now.

However the second point is that it is just ridiculous how little has been disclosed.

For example, I started by doing a search on Donor to Candidate returns. What would you expect? A long list of people that have donated to political parties or candidates during the 2007 Federal Election campaign. What do you find? Three donors:

• Hills Transport Pty Ltd
• Manildra Group
• Mist Consulting Pty Ltd

So then I do a “list of candidates”. I’d say 90% have no declaration at all. Presumably people are donating the political party, not individual candidates. The problem is, you can get a list of all the candidates that declared “nil” donations, but don’t you want a list of all the non-nil candidates?

So we do it the long way, we scroll through the lists of hundreds of candidates picking out the ones that don’t have an ‘*’ next to them indicating that they are candidates that did not have and donations to declare.

First on the list is John Adams from the Climate Change Coalition. He received a meagre $1,414 in donations. So how many does he declare? None, no donations over $10,500 here. But then again, $1,414 aint much and there’s no real concerns about his funding sources here.

So let’s look for someone else. Rudd? Nope, no donations. Howard? Nope, no donations. So, at a quick glance I find Steve Gibbons, ALP Member for Bendigo. $19,849 in donations. How many donors listed? None. Same goes for every other MP I find that declare donations.

Of course (it slowly dawns on me) there will only be two candidates that actually declare donations from anyone, Tony Windsor (who received donations from Hills Transport and the Manildra Group and Sam Miszkowski who received a donation from Mist Consulting.

So this is really just a convoluted way of saying two things:

1. The AEC site is horrible. It’s obviously running off a database of some sort so why can’t we have access to the .csv file for our own examination. I have requested this by email and been told that this is not available.
2. A donation disclosure limit of $10,500 is absurd and makes a mockery of disclosure itself.

Is it just me, or has it finally dawned on Nelson that he’s in opposition?

Subsequently he can make rediculous claims – especially considering he’s 2 and a half years away from an election.

To paraphrase: “A tax on alcopops – that’s rediculous, I’m blocking it until July 1, up yours Ruddy. Looks, I’m holding a bottle! And as for petrol, IT SHOULD BE CHEAPER! You don’t have to be a Doctor to figure that one out.”

Really, it’s so rediculous.

What I’d like to see is Rudd turn around and say: “Blocking my Alcopops tax in the Senate hey, do the words ‘double dissolution trigger’ mean anything to you? How do you think your Senate majority will look after a full Senate election Dr 7%?”

Just a quick follow up to this post.

The people’s paper tells me that support for a republic is at it’s lowest point since 1993:

Despite Prime Minister Kevin Rudd raising the issue at the 2020 summit, just 45 per cent of Australians support a republic with an elected president.

Forty-two per cent want the monarchy to stay and 13 per cent are undecided, according to a new Roy Morgan poll.

If Prince Charles was crowned King, 56 per cent of Australians would support a republic.

More than half of Labor voters want a republic while more than half of Liberal-National Party voters back the monarchy.

“With an elected president” is clearly the key phrase here and for all my pro-democratic musings I suspect a bi-partisanly supported president with a purely cerimonial role is the best answer as the last thing you want is the office to be politicised.

But everytime I hear myself say that I feel uneasy.

Having just seen this site, I was pleased to come across this:

This one slipped my radar (but caught it thanks to looking back through some old RSS feeds via Law Front.)

Waugh Partners, with the financial support of sponsors, NICTA, IBM and Fujitsu, have released a report into the Australian Open Source Industry and Community.

You can download it from here.

I wasn’t at all surprised to read that Frenzal Rhomb guitarist Lindsay McDougall had been ‘duped’ into being part of an anti-piracy video. I’d almost expect it of the “Australian music industry” (presumably the Australian Recording Industry Assocation).

But what is interesting is the way the Age reported it:

Record labels are seen as the big losers from music piracy. While artists benefit from having their music distributed to as many people as possible and are able to reap significant returns from merchandise and concert ticket sales, record label revenue is dropping rapidly as people buy fewer CDs.

NO! As I’ve said earlier, the Australian Recording Industry Association’s own figures (quietly released the day before ANZAC Day) show that “the legal sales of recorded music climbed to an all time high in 2007 – a high that could only have been dreamed about in the years before the advent of downloading and CD burning.”

Let’s understand this issue properly. It’s very hard to quantify these sorts of things, but if anything the evidence is pointing to the fact that file sharing is actually making the record industry richer.

Update: This one got a run at Boing-Boing as well.