Posts by Lucy Telfar Barnard
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Speaker: We don’t make the rules, we're…, in reply to Sam Durbin,
What you’re talking about is what happens when people by-pass geoblocking – you might still pay Netflix or Hulu for that content, but they haven’t paid for the right to distribute it to you (being outside of America), meaning the revenue you provide them goes straight into their bottom line and not to the creators and owners of that content.
Thanks for that Sam, it's the first description I've read that has allowed me to understand why there's a difference between me buying an episode of Broadchurch from Amazon UK (which I can do because we lived in the UK recently and set it up on our Nintendo Wii, and it still works here) and waiting to watch it a week later on NZ TV (which I "pay for" by exposing myself to the advertising that comes with it).
I'd really rather I could pay each content creator individually. I watched Wolf Hall on iBBC, and I'd have liked to have been able to pay them either in cash, or by exposing myself to NZ advertising. I don't feel like I really paid for it because the advertising in it was for UK products and services, and therefore of no value to the advertisers who paid the BBC. But given that there was an apparently legal avenue available to watch it now, I wasn't going to hang around however many months waiting for some NZ channel to pick it up.
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But whether we like it or not, the reality of the content model today, put in place by content owners, is that premium video content is sold with geographic rights at very substantial prices.
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Some are arguing that we are chasing the wrong people and that we should be chasing those who sold us the NZ exclusive content rights in the first place. …. I don’t believe it’s fair or reasonable for content sellers to be regarded as responsible for the active promotion by others of services that avoid the constraints of the geographic rights they have sold.
Content sellers are not “responsible” for active promotion by others. They are, however, responsible for having sold you NZ-exclusive content rights while knowing full well that they couldn’t guarantee that exclusivity. You’re responsible for your commercial decision to pay what you did for the content, also knowing full well the exclusivity wasn’t assured.
Our concern is that NZ companies like Callplus, who have paid nothing for content, are actively promoting a commercial service which enables large numbers of customers to access content without needing any technical know-how
This line really made me see red. I get the point made by others here that that it’s the “large numbers” bit which matters, because of value to the content provider, but what you’re basically saying is that it’s fine for me (and my parents) to be able to watch the TV we want, as soon as it’s available, because my husband has the technical know-how and has told us how to do it easily; but anyone who doesn’t have a tech-savvy friend or family member just has to suck it up. Amongst all your talk about fairness, that’s pretty insulting.
Until that point, I had some small respect for your willingness to publish this piece here, knowing that you’d be writing to a very hostile audience. However, your arguments are poor even when not insulting, and I find myself wondering whether your decision to contribute this piece was based on an underestimate of the sophistication of your likely readers – much like your decision to pay large amounts for “exclusive content”.
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I'd assume your assessment is correct except... for a few stories, while the pieces themselves may be fluff, they're probably bringing attention to more serious broader issues. In this category I'd put "School-in-a-box helping Vanuatu kids", "Turning the tide in Te Teko" (the value of in-school swimming pools in helping children learn to swim), "A bright new smile for Megan" (a charity providing orthodontistry for children who can't afford it, part of an issue JC has drawn attention to previously), and possibly "former legal high addict". Current affairs lite, certainly, but still current affairs - as opposed to "Trademe Bunnies travel to new home", which is pure, unadulterated fluff(y bunnies).
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Hard News: About Campbell Live, in reply to Hilary Stace,
That's what I thought too - in part because the advertising delivery is different on demand.
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Hard News: Media Take: The Easter Show, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
I also don’t think the state has any legitimate public interest in collecting data on people’s religious affiliations.
As we all live with the history Ben Wilson refers to, I completely understand peoples’ reluctance to answer questions on religious affiliation. However, the state can have a legitimate public interest in collecting data on people’s religious affiliations, for various reasons.
e.g. The number of Catholics having children could affect future demand for Catholic schooling, and thus (since most Catholic schools are integrated) the education budget. The same’s probably true for Presbytarians, Jews, Anglicans, and other religions which have “Special Character” integrated schools.
e.g. Hospitals may look at the religious makeup of their catchment area to decide on allocation of space/time to priests of different religions and denominations.
e.g. Will there come a point when it might be reasonable to have a fixed autumn holiday rather than the annoyingly (particularly since it affects school holidays) moveable feast that is Easter? Alternatively, if the percentages of New Zealanders of some other religion were to grow significantly, should we be looking at including other religions’ holy days in our public holiday schedule?
… down to smaller scale things like schools needing to estimate how many halal/vegetarian sausages to cater at a sausage sizzle.So, if the goal is ensuring people are well-served, diversity is respected and included, then there can be good reasons why the state would want to know the religious makeup of the country.
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The one time I remember trying this, some time in my early teens, was in the payphone in Colville next to the Post Office, I couldn't quite get it to work, and then the person working in the Post Office next door came on the line and said "Are you having trouble connecting" or something like that, and I made some sheepish excuse and gave up. I guess Colville was so old-school that the phone box connection still went through the Post Office exchange or something and they could hear or see some evidence that something was up.
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Well, that would certainly be logical if you thought list MPs not standing in by-elections was a good idea. But as far as democracy goes, I don’t think it would be good.
Let’s take the example of the Greens. They have no electorate MPs, but 14 list MPs. They’ve only ever had an electorate MP once (Jeanette Fitzsimmons in Coromandel in 1999). Running for an electorate is hard work, but does a lot to help raise the profile of the party, including for voters outside the electorate.
If list candidates couldn’t run for electorates, the Greens would have to either run fewer electorate candidates, or have all their electorate candidates running solely for the purpose of profile raising, in the knowledge that they were highly unlikely to be able to represent anyone – even their local electorate – after the election; while the list candidates would breeze around the country doing, what, general vote-raising, without being grounded in any particular electorate?
Now you could argue that that already happens for many of their electorate candidates, who campaign for the good of the party as a whole. But to disallow their strongest representatives, the ones who were top of their list, from running in an electorate, would be to make the system much more one of workers and queens, and I don’t think anyone would appreciate that much, voters included.
Then there are gambles like the one ACT has lost the last two elections, where a party puts up lower-ranked candidates in electorates, assuming they’ll get their leader in via the list, only to get fewer votes than anticipated and thus not have any seats other than the electorate seat. If Jamie Whyte had run for Epsom instead of David Seymour, and (under your proposed rule) instead of on their list, and the party had made 4% but lost Epsom, the Party would have 5 MPs in parliament, but none of them the leader – which is probably not what people giving ACT their party vote would have been hoping for. Having David Seymour instead of, rather than as well as, Jamie Whyte, is probably not what they were hoping for either – but without the electorate they wouldn’t be in parliament at all, so having David rather than Jamie seems more reasonable than if they’d made the 4% threshold but couldn’t have their leader because he’d run for the electorate instead.
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Moved from other thread, in which Phil Lyth originally wrote...
My inner purist thinks the Electoral Act should be amended to prohibit an MP standing in a by-election; my inner pragmatist tells me this is unlikely to happen.
Also, I think that would be wrong.
There are a number of MPs who came in on the list, but had also ran unsuccessfully for an electorate seat. If a by-election was held in their electorate, it's entirely fair and reasonable that they should want to run again to represent that electorate. Also, for the local electorate committee to have to try to find some other candidate who is less known and possibly less suitable because, y'know, they weren't nominated at the last election, also seems unfair.The point of electorate seats is that each electorate gets to have someone in parliament who is in their corner, and that they get to choose who that person will be. To say "No, you can't have this person represent you because, well, because their party thinks they're useful" is perverse.
The other side of the coin is that if a list MP associates themselves strongly with a particular electorate, as many do, but can't run for that electorate in a by-election, so someone else from their party gets the nod and wins it instead, that electorate gets to have not just two MPs (which is common enough), but two MPs from the same party, which is really less useful. List MPs who associate themselves with an electorate choose one where the electorate MP is from a different party, which means that people in that electorate can go and talk to the MP who they think best represents them. There's no point in doubling up.
Also, what happens at the next election? Who gets to run in that electorate? The list MP who ran at the last election, or the encumbent who won the by-election? It's all unnecessarily messy, and ultimately I don't think it would serve democracy in any meaningful way.
There may be a better way to resolve conflicts between by-election results and election results in parliamentary seat distribution, but preventing sitting MPs from running in by-elections is not it.
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Legal Beagle: What next for Winston?, in reply to Phil Lyth,
My inner purist thinks the Electoral Act should be amended to prohibit an MP standing in a by-election; my inner pragmatist tells me this is unlikely to happen.
I see there's a whole 'nother post on this, so I've moved my response there.
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Ah, OK. We're not a Sky household