(For my personal background to this article, and my own effort at writing some fan-fiction, please refer to my earlier post: Sacrificial: A (Star Wars) short story.)

As I discussed in the above-mentioned article my initial gut reaction to the thought of writing a Star Wars story was something along the lines of: '...mere fan-fiction? why waste my time on that?'. Obviously I ignored my gut and wrote the story anyway. Why? What could this endeavour possibly offer me when I've got plenty of my own stories crying out to be written?

Don't waste your time...?

Looking at fan-fiction as a negative (and ignoring any issues of copyright at this stage), the prevailing argument I've seen over the years is that budding writers should craft their own playgrounds instead of squatting in someone else's. There's sense in this: after all, virtually the first lesson that any budding writer will be taught is that character is the most important element in any good story. You can come up with a blinding plot, but if the reader has no interest in the characters then you may as well be writing a dish-washing manual. To use characters that someone else has already originated and fleshed out for you denies you the experience, not to mention the practice, of creating your own fully-fledged, multi-faceted characters.

To a lesser degree the same goes for exploiting an established universe, or using an existing dramatic situation. When writing original fiction, it's a given that all writers have to go through the process of creating backgrounds for their characters, working out histories for their locations, exploring possible conflicts and situations, etc. There's an entire process that goes on before a word even hits the page. It could be argued that taking an established fictional event bypasses this process, regardless of whether you develop it further. Again, the writer misses out on a crucial exercise - one which some might argue is actually more enjoyable than the writing itself. (Though I haven't countered the above argument in the section below, you could propose that what I've just written implies that historical fiction is nothing more than fan-fiction.)

Finally, there's the very practical issue that anything you write as fan-fiction cannot legally be published (but here's an entertaining tale of a douche who thought otherwise). It may well be that the feedback from dozens, hundreds, or potentially even thousands of other fans is all the recognition you need, but this is not something you'd ever be able to make a career of.

Surely all writing is worthwhile...?

It (almost) goes without saying that writing for TV or film is vastly different from writing for print (however, I always insist there are valuable lessons prose writers can learn from screenwriters, and vice versa: a good story is a good story whatever the medium). Nevertheless, a critical stage for any writer who wants to break into TV is writing a spec script or two. These are 'demo' scripts written for established shows that, in theory, prove the writer is capable of writing for characters and situations that have already been created by someone else. Yes, it's essentially fan-fiction, and the better you are at it the more chance you have of getting a job.

That's a fairly specific argument, although if you ever wanted to write 'licensed' fiction, or 'tie-in' novels on a professional basis I imagine a similar process would apply. In any event, my suggestion is that writing convincingly for characters that you haven't created yourself is a challenging exercise in itself, and arguably one that all writers should try out once or twice. You may find that it helps to broaden your own voice, particularly if you try writing for a character you would never place in one of your own stories.

Speaking a little more from personal experience, I found that writing my Star Wars story was undeniably more liberating than writing original fiction. For one thing I didn't need to get bogged down in backstory. I could safely assume that, because it was based on Star Wars, and based on a memorable event from the very first film, that almost every person who reads it would already know the backstory and be familiar with the character of Princess Leia. This meant that, aside from a few flashbacks for dramatic effect, I didn't really need to spend much time setting things up (either in the planning stages or in the text itself). I did still need to do some research of my own, but only for minor details, and only really to satisfy my own pedantry: the main background to the story is already well established in the public consciousness. The principal benefit was that there was little need for exposition.

I could argue that in really good writing the character and background should come from what the characters say and/or do, and shouldn't need spelling out, but that's possibly more of a screenwriting argument. In any case, exposition can be the equivalent of literary quicksand for both writers and and readers, so it's nice to be freed from it once in a while.

There was, naturally, a slightly more mercenary aspect in my approach towards writing this fan-fiction. Since there's never any chance ever of this story being published, or being entered in a competition, or earning my any money at all, I wasn't prepared to spend too much time on it. However, neither was I prepared to compromise and write something that wasn't as good as I could possibly make it. What that minor conflict resulted in was me producing one of my quickest pieces of writing ever - 3400 words in slightly over a week, and a story that I'm fairly pleased with.

I haven't read enough fan-fiction to provide a quality gauge, but my suspicion is that most writers churn out their stories with little thought to editing and upload them almost as soon as the last word is typed. I suspect this because I'm guessing that most fan-fiction writers don't particularly want to be professional writers and therefore don't follow the usual procedures of writing a story. It was partly this theoretical stigma attached to fan-fiction - that it's rarely done well, so isn't worth doing well - which briefly stopped me from writing the story, but then the writer took over. It's likely that, as with all amateur fiction, there's a handful of truly brilliant efforts to be found, but you need to be willing to work through the rest of it to get there.

Does it need to be fan-fiction at all...?

When my wife read the story a key observation she made, which pleasantly surprised me, was that the Star Wars setting was, in the end, entirely incidental - the nature of the story was such that it could have easily taken place in the real word. As it happens, before I started writing I had briefly considered a non Star Wars scenario, but never gave the idea that much thought. I figured if I'd gone down that road the story would have taken a whole lot longer to write, and I also fancied the idea of dabbling in fan-fiction. I may still look at adapting the story (particularly if I ever get asked by Lucasfilm to remove Sacrificial from my site) but the upshot I took from my wife's comment is that even when you play around with someone else's characters you can still, perhaps without even realising it, tell your own stories. To a limited extent it could almost be a useful exercise to borrow characters from your favourite show, novel, comic, or film and use them to test out a scene you want to write. Freed from the constraints of creating characters you can instead focus on how the scene itself works.

To sum up the above, I do think there are good reasons to dabble in fan-fiction, and it can provide some useful exercises. I wouldn't suggest doing it too often, unless fan-fiction is all you ever want to write (and there's no shame in that). I certainly wouldn't suggest ever writing anything more than a short story: honestly, if you've got a fan-fiction novel inside you, then it's worth making it entirely yours and putting your own characters in it.

Also I wouldn't suggest ever writing a full screenplay prequel to The Thing, or trying to rewrite the entire script for Star Wars: Episode One, or even attempting a Highlander/Angel mash-up - no, that's not something that I would ever try to do ... not ever ...

Further reading

I did a fair bit of research on the topic of fan-fiction prior to writing this. Most of my efforts were directed towards trying to find the correct wording for a disclaimer to place on my story: it seems that fan-fiction is an enormous grey area legally speaking. Also, writers themselves (the published type) don't have a consistent view either. Most tolerate it, a few encourage it, a few actively try and stop it. My understanding is that George Lucas and Lucasfilm don't mind fan films, but take a slightly dimmer view on fan-fiction - or maybe they don't mind fan-fiction at all. This might be because there's only a few Star Wars films out there, but there's an entire publishing industry churning out Star Wars tie-in novels.

Finally, it's worth pointing out that fan-fiction can have it's pitfalls for the author - if you don't respect the author's right to their own creations then you might find yourself done out of a new book or two from that author, which is what happened in the case of Marion Zimmer Bradley.

My original plan was to write a lengthy post exploring the ins and outs of fan-fiction, with my own entry providing a sort of epilogue to the piece. However, I decided: sod it - let my story stand on its own. There's not meant to be any suggestion there that Sacrificial is such an evolutionary step in the world of fan-fiction that it couldn't possibly be diluted by any other content. To the contrary, I think the proposed examination of fan-fiction itself will probably be more interesting, and to include vague witterings about why I'm writing a story featuring Princess Leia would probably distract.

So I'm putting all those witterings here.

Sometime over the previous weekend (February 20, since you probably don't want to have to work out the date for yourself) I found myself half-asleep and pondering a specific scene from Star Wars (and by 'Star Wars' I, of course, mean 'Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope', just so we're clear). The scene in question was Leia being held prisoner on the Death Star while Governor Tarkin sets about showing off his new toy and destroying her home planet.

I often put far too much thought into these semi-conscious musings, which resulted in me wondering why Leia didn't do more to save her planet, other than telling a half-lie and doing little else than whining "Nooo" at a key moment. The answer is, before you say it, because that's how George Lucas wrote it, but these things take a life of their own very quickly. If they didn't then I imagine film history would have followed a vastly different path - but at least we would have been spared the prequel trilogy.

Now I have no interest in rewriting the scene as we already know it, and I'm not a great fan of revisionism or retrofitting - yes, Lucas, I'm looking at you. In any event, my train of thought expanded beyond the scene itself to wondering about Leia's guilt. We don't see much, if anything, in the films of her mourning Alderaan, or debating if she could have saved the planet. Neither do we see anyone else pay much mind to Alderaan, nor do we even come across anyone who's a bit pissed off that their whole planet has just been wiped out.

So, with all this buzzing around in my head my brain inevitably started working out the narrative possibilities. After a day or two it got to the point where, even though I didn't really want to spend valuable writing time on 'mere fan-fiction', the story simply wouldn't go away, so I sat down and started writing. You can judge the results for yourself - there are links below for either epub or pdf versions of the story.

I'll be discussing my thoughts on fan-fiction in greater detail in my next post, but one thing I did want to mention is that Sacrificial is probably one of my most efficient pieces of writing to date. I managed to write it in just over a week, which given my usual pace is nothing short of Olympic standard. It also tells what I hope is a relatively broad-ranging tale using just one location, two characters, and a time span of probably no more than about 20 minutes.

Hope you enjoy it. As always, all feedback, good or bad, is welcome.

To access the main RSS feed for this site look no further than http://www.edpriceishungry.com/rss/ (the previously available URLs http://www.edpriceishungry.com/feed/ and http://www.edpriceishungry.com/feed/all/ will also still work). At present the main feed is provided by Feedburner, but the above URL now automatically redirects to Feedburner, so there's no need to use any other link.

The formatting for the main feed has also changed recently. In a bid to offer the complete content of each article, with html formatting, in a way that should be compatible with most rss readers, the main body of the article has been moved to a new <content:encoded> element (and placed within CDATA tags). The summary for each article is placed within the standard <description> element. However, since most readers seem to show either the <content> or the <description> but not both, the summary is repeated at the top of the <content> element.

I've also reconfigured the feed so that any attachments to articles should now be available via rss as well. Strictly speaking the rss format allows only one enclosure element (or, attachment) per item (or, article) so in cases where an article has more than one attachment you may only see one turning up in the feed. We'll see....

For the time being I'm maintaining the separate 'by category' feeds, but it's likely that I'll also move those to feedburner in the near future. When that happens it's likely that the links to those feeds will change (unless I can figure out a viable method of providing an automatic redirect).

Apologies for the inconvenience to those few of you who have had to change your rss links recently. The Feedburner URL will still work, but for maximum futureproofing you may wish to use http://www.edpriceishungry.com/rss/ since that URL will now *always* work, whether redirected or not.

As far as I understand it, comment spam can be broken into three main methods:

1. Human: a genuine, real live person actually sits there and types a spam message into your comment form – unsurprisingly this is the least common form
2. Bot: an automated script scans your website, finds your comment form, generates a spam message and posts it to your site
3. Harvester: yet another script scans your website, finds your comment form and copies it – days, weeks or months later the offsite copy of your form is used to start submitting spam messages to your site

We’ll look at some methods for combating each of these in turn.

Only human

Other than comment moderation (wherein you give yourself the power of God over each and every message posted to your site) there’s not a great deal that can be done about the human-generated spam. Some filtering services, such as Akismet, will scan the content of messages to determine the likelihood of it being spam and deal with it accordingly. Akismet is closely associated with Wordpress, but can be used on other platforms and is free for non-commercial use.

I personally haven’t implemented it on my blog, but it’s doubtless a handy addition for sites that attract heavy traffic. It’s probably worth pointing out that using such a third-party service takes some of the control out of your hands, but is likely a small price to pay if human-generated spam is causing real problems.

You could also set up a login system and force users to create accounts in order to post comments. This might deter spammers, but it might also deter users (it certainly deters me since the last thing I want to do is to create yet another account somewhere just so I can post a brief comment on someone else's site). However, there's always the possibility of using OpenID, which enables people to either use an existing account or create a generic account for all OpenID supported platforms (and here's an interesting article covering how easy it could be for people to use OpenID).

Death to the autobots

You’re probably all-too familiar with the godawful Captcha screens (and variants) that appear on many web forms. And, after that sentence, you’re probably also well aware of my feelings towards such techniques. Captcha is based up on the Turing test principle, which is really just a way of testing whether someone’s a real person or a machine. The typical method is to include an element on your web form that requires cognition, as opposed to mere calculation – machines can calculate, but they’re rubbish at thinking, even the ones that look like Scharzenegger.

Captcha works because you have to look at a picture and determine what words or letters are displayed on the picture. Captcha doesn’t work because to ensure the picture can’t simply be scanned and OCRed by a machine the words need to be obscured the to such a degree that even a human can barely work out what they say half the time. These days I tend to view the employment of Captcha as a usability failure.

Nevertheless, the idea of using a Turing test is sound. For my blog I use a simple maths sum: I give the user two numbers and ask them to add the two numbers up. This might cause minor issues to those who have genuine problems with basic maths, but a calculator is never far away on any computer. On my initial attempts I stupidly included the answer as a hidden field on the form – needless to say the spam kept rolling in. I quickly fixed that and, to make it a bit harder for bots, the current version requests the answer in digits, but phrases the question using words. Here’s the basic script:

$numbers = array("zero", "one", "two", "three", "four", "five", "six", "seven", "eight", "nine");

$a = rand(0,9);

$b = rand(0,9);

$answer = $a+$b;

The word values for the numbers are placed in an array – those familiar with array structures will immediately see that the key for each entry in the array equates to the value (with the first key in a standard array always being 0). In other words, the key for “zero” is 0, the key for “one” is 1, and so on.

On the second and third lines we generate two random numbers between 1 and 9 (as a digit, this time). Note that we use a consistent range of 0 to 9 throughout, this range can always be expanded if needed, but the array and the range for the random selector need to match. On the fourth line we calculate the sum of the two random numbers selected: this value is used to verify the answer that the user enters on the form.

We do have a slight problem however: we need to tell the processing script which answer was generated by the form script otherwise how can it verify whether a user has entered the correct value or not? If your processing script is on the same page as your form then it’s not such an issue, but for added security I have the form and processor separated – therefore I need to send the user-entered answer as well as the generated (and correct) answer to my processing script in order that they can be compared.

To resolve this we use a random value to ‘salt’ the answer and then we encrypt it:

$s_answer = md5($salt.$answer);

The salt value can be anything you want – in the case of my blog it’s partly derived from something specific to both my domain and the blog post itself. Either way, the important thing is to ensure than the value is the same on both the form and processor script.

The relevant form field looks like this:

<input name="answer" id="answer" />

<input type="hidden" name="s_answer" value="".$s_answer."" />

<p>Please enter the sum of <strong>".$numbers[$a]." plus ".$numbers[$b]."</strong> in digits (e.g '19')</p>

The first line is the input field for the user to type in their answer. The second line contains the ‘salted’ answer as a hidden field. The third line tells the user what they need to do and displays the numbers (from the $numbers array) that need to be added together. Note how we use the randomly generated $a and $b values to pull the equivalent words from the $numbers array. You’ll be able to see the real life example at the bottom of this page.

We process the posted values as follows:

$user_answer = (int)$_POST['answer'];

$salt_answer = $_POST['s_answer'];

if( md5($salt.$user_answer) != $salt_answer ) {

$errmsg[] = "Please answer the security question correctly";

}

Simply put, if the salted version of the user’s answer does not match the salted answer posted from the hidden field then an error message is generated and the comment is not submitted.

If you prefer not to resort to basic maths then you could use a similar technique to ask simple questions (e.g. “What color is the sun? Yellow”). However, this may cause problems if someone decides the sun is white, or if they can’t spell yellow correctly, or if they’re think you’re referring to the red sun of Krypton, and so on. Maths is less ambiguous.

Harvest of fail

The third main method of spamming blogs -  if you’re still awake there - is to harvest (or copy) the comment form itself and subsequently post spam messages from a remote site. To combat this I originally used the HTTP_REFERER header to check that comments were being posted from my own domain, but since the HTTP_REFERER header can be easily altered or omitted (often, ironically, by internet security software) it’s not a reliable method. Accordingly I’ve had to implement a number of other techniques to try and prevent offsite spam.

The first is setting a session which contains the URL of the page containing the form:

$host = (substr($_SERVER["HTTP_HOST"],0,4) != "http") ? 'http://'.$_SERVER["HTTP_HOST"] : $_SERVER["HTTP_HOST"] ;

$request = $_SERVER["REQUEST_URI"];

$_SESSION[‘my_referring_page’] = $host.$request;

On your processing page you can simply check whether or not this session has been set and, if not, bounce the user out. As a further measure, should you be worried that the spammer might work out what you’ve named your session and duplicate it (and obviously I’ve used a different name in my actual code to that published above), you can easily check whether the referring page comes from the right domain or not using straightforward string comparison.

My second technique involves setting a random key/value pair on the form which is then verified on the processor page. This, once again, uses the random ‘salt’ value defined above. Furthermore, in order to foil spammers who might harvest your form and wait some time before posting spam, the key/value pair is only valid for a maximum of two hours. (In truth, the time limitation was a throwback to when the key/value pair was posted via the form: I now pass the key/value pair in a session, but it does no harm to leave the time limit in.)

Here’s how we generate the key and value:

$now = date('HDY');

$key = md5($now.$salt);

$value = md5($salt.$now);

$_SESSION[$key] = $value;

// values from one hour ago in case user posts on the hour

$prev_now = date(''HDY'',strtotime('1 hour ago'));

$prev_key = md5($prev_now.$salt);

$prev_value = md5($salt.$prev_now);

$_SESSION[$prev_key] = $prev_value;

You can define the date format for $now and $prev_now in any way you like – in fact the more random the better, it makes it less likely that a spammer would work out the resulting key/value.

The value I generate for $now includes the hour in order to limit the window – you can opt for a day or a month if you wish, but including a value for minutes and/or seconds will make it almost impossible for anyone to post comments as the key/value pair will expire within minutes and/or seconds. As you’ll see above I also consider the fact that a user might post on or near the hour itself, therefore I also calculate the equivalent key/value for the previous hour.

Remember – the above script must also be repeated on your processor script so the key/value pair can be verified. And here’s how we do that part:

if( (isset($_SESSION[$key])) && ($_SESSION[$key] == $value) ) {

// form passed antispam - unset the session

unset($_SESSION[$key]);

unset($_SESSION[$prev_key]);

} else {

// give them an hour's grace

if( (isset($_SESSION[$prev_ key])) && ($_SESSION[$prev_ key] == $prev_value) ) {

// ok we still passed security - unset the session

unset($_SESSION[$key]);

unset($_SESSION[$prev_ key]);

} else {

// otherwise probably a spammer - don't tell 'em!

$errmsg[] = ".";

}

}

Notice that we don’t give a particularly detailed error message. We do want to generate an error in order to prevent the comment from being posted, but we don’t really want to explain to the spammer that he’s been caught, or indeed how he’s been caught – that would just help him work out how to circumvent the spam trap.

Final notes

I should point out that I don’t get particularly heavy traffic on my blog, so I can’t claim that these techniques will keep really determined, frequent, or excessive spammers at bay. However, even my blog, when I first set it up a few years ago, attracted several spam messages a month – sometimes more. I also noticed that once a spammer targeted a particular article more spam comments would almost certainly follow.

Now that I’ve implement these techniques I don’t get any spam. I’ve possibly had one or two that are clearly human generated spam, but the days of logging into my admin pages to see dozens of automated spam messages attached to my blog posts are long gone.

If you think there’s a flaw in any of the techniques described above I really, really want to hear about it – in fact, that’s one of the main reasons I’ve written this. Of course, I’d also love to hear if you think any of the above is likely to be of use to you. I haven’t attached the completed scripts to this article because you’d as likely need to do as much work trimming them to fit your site as to make it fruitless exercise. However, if there is demand I will look into uploading a basic version of the complete form and processor.

The original title for this post? "Beating vacansopapurosophobia" (which, of course, means fear of blank paper). That headline would be enough to scare anyone away, so we'll just stick to the everyday wordage for now. Still, at least writing the above excuse has ploughed me nearly a hundred words into this particular blank page.

The blank page is the writer's worst enemy and best friend. It's a fearsome barrier that holds the promise of your greatest ever writing. You can spend hours, perhaps even days, starting at that white space while your brain picks over and rejects those first words, while you tear yourself apart with the certainty that what you actually end up writing will be a pale shadow of the genius that really lurks inside your head.

Of course, once you actually, finally, start writing most of that fear goes. It might be transplanted by entirely new torments and insecurities but at least you don't have to face that blank page again. So here's a really simple and, perhaps most importantly, quick method of bypassing those first tortuous stages of the writing process. It works for me, it might work for you, or it might not. Also, it assumes that you do your writing on a computer, but even if you don't you can simply try reading 'notebook' for 'file'.

1. Create a new file - give it the working title of your new story. Easy, right?
2. Now that you've got your new file you may as well open it. Go to the first line - type in the name of the story. You already had the name, so no great effort there. And that's pretty much it: no more blank page.
3. Tell you what - since you've got the page open anyway, just write a quick synopsis: "This is a story about blank pages."
4. You've probably got a little bit more inside you than that, and I'll bet you've got a minute or two to spare, so write that little bit more: "This is a story about the all-encompassing fear of blank pages and how we beat it down into a bloody quivering pulp that lies shattered somewhere underneath your keyboard."
5. That's great; a nice short synopsis, you don't really need much more than that. But you've almost certainly got your next scene, plot point, key beat figured out, so why not write it down? Just quickly, just a few words, a line or two. If you've got nothing better to do why not keep going?
6. When you're happy just stop. Have a cup of tea.

If you want to keep writing at this point then go for it, but as a rule of thumb this is meant to be a quick, completely non-daunting method of removing a barrier to starting your story. I wouldn't really peg out more than a minute or two for the process: the whole idea is that it's something you can do while you're waiting for the kettle to boil, or while the adverts are on, or that one last thing before you switch the computer off, etc. You don't even need to write any of the actual story, the real psychological benefit is in creating the file that will hold your story and ensuring that it's not completely blank when you next face it.

In all honestly, this is something I've only recently started doing - and mostly by accident. I'm not great at making notes for the blog posts and stories I want to write so, mostly as an aide-de-memoir, I started quickly creating new files in Google Docs, one for each story or blog post. Since I have several ideas buzzing around at any one time I took to adding "this story is about..." on several of them. I also have a Google Docs gadget on my iGoogle home page which means that whenever I load up my browser I'm shown a quick list of the latest documents I've worked on. It's an exceedingly small step to go from there to actually writing something on one of those documents.

As you can probably imagine this has proved a lot more effective than my previous method of: "Oh, I really should that blog post about... hmm, what was it I was going to write about...?" Fingers crossed it works for one or two of you as well.

Along with many other Australian residents I am deeply concerned about the proposed mandatory internet filter, as announced on December 15, 2009. It is my belief, and I am far from alone in this, that the filter will do little to protect the people it is designed to protect, will do nothing to prevent people from accessing illegal material if they want to, and represents a serious breach of civil liberties.

There is a wealth of expert testimony available supporting the above, including unambiguous condemnation of the proposed filter from iiNet, one of Australia's biggest ISPs, and further direct criticism from Google, one of the most significant global businesses of our time. If you've already chosen to ignore the variety of expert opinions that patiently clarify why the filter will not be effective then I see little point in me repeating them here. I do however feel the following points are well worth stressing:

• Illegal material is already banned under laws which, one presumes, ISPs wholeheartedly support and enforce to the extent of their abilities.
• The filter will prevent access to only a fraction of targeted 'RC' content.
• The filter will NOT prevent access to illegal or RC material to anyone who actually wants to view that content.
• In reality there is an extremely low risk of a child, or any other person, accidentally stumbling across pornographic content (and, in my extensive experience of using the web, zero chance of stumbling across bestiality, paedophilia and the like). Generally the only sites that actively promote pornographic content (apart from pornographic websites themselves) are 'underground' sites that would generally only be visited by technically proficient users: in other words, those users who are already more than capable of circumventing the filter.

In respect of my objection to the filter I wish to emphasise that such an objection does not make someone either paedophile or a person who supports child abuse, as Senator Conroy has implied in his own previously reported exchanges in defence of the filter. Indeed, as a father of a three-year-old I find it distasteful that I should even have to defend my position with the previous statement.

My son uses the internet and I find little cause to worry that he will stumble across anything inappropriate. What does concern me is the prospect of him growing up in a country where basic choice has been stripped away, where otherwise legal content that the government deems unsuitable is blacklisted under a 'Refused Classification' category.

We purportedly live in a democracy, where the electorate should be sufficiently respected by the governing body to make their own decisions. After all you don't lock us all up in our houses in order to prevent us committing crimes. Despite the prevalence of road deaths you don't find it necessary to take away our cars, or to forcibly limit their speed to 50kph. You trust the majority of people to abide by the law. Why then should our choice over how we use the internet be treated any differently?

Outside of the law it should not be the job of any governing body to decide what the electorate can and cannot consume. This represents a negation of democracy and puts Australia on a footing with other dictatorial, repressive and militaristic countries. Furthermore it erodes the standing of Australia on the global stage and diminishes its influence among other democratic and progressive states.

If the internet filter, as proposed, is enacted there are two things that are absolutely certain to be borne out of it. The first is that the filter will have virtually no effect in preventing criminals from accessing illegal material. The second is that this filter WILL COST YOUR GOVERNMENT VOTES. I am absolutely certain that, if the filter is put into place, a significant number of people who voted for Kevin Rudd in the last election will find someone else to vote for. I know I would.

However, there is one breathtakingly simple solution: choice. If individuals were allowed to choose whether to take advantage of an ISP level filter (and it could be mandatory for ISPs to offer such a filter) then I expect objections would whittle down to near-silence. Those who are concerned about what they might find on the internet and wish to have a filter can have one. Conversely those who wish to have uncensored access to legal content on the internet can can continue to have it. Meanwhile illegal content is still illegal and the law can continue to do its job in preventing access to such material. Money earmarked for the filter can instead be spent on educating people on the safe use of the internet and implementing measures that will actually work. With such a solution it's unlikely anyone would feel compelled to vote against the Rudd government and it might even win a few extra votes.

It is entirely unacceptable for the government to censor the internet, or indeed any medium, for political, sociological or ideological reasons. Please make the right choice and ensure that Australia remains a country where free speech and civil rights are both respected and upheld.

Should you wish to use this article in part or in entirety with or without alteration for the purpose of objecting to the proposed mandatory filter you have my explicit permission to do so without the need for attribution. For any other purpose terms of the Creative Commons license apply.

Take action - now!

There is an extensive list of relevant parties you can contact and further action you can take on the No Clean Feed website as well as on the website for Electronic Frontiers Australia. I strongly urge you to either copy my letter above or use the form letter provided by No Clean Feed and, at the very least, write to your local representative and to Senator Stephen Conroy and let them know your objections. For your convenience I have also attached an MS Word version of the above letter to this article.

Further reading:

• No Clean Feed
• Somebody Think Of The Children 
• Electronic Frontiers Australia
• Australian Library and Information Association
• The iiNet statement (and additional statements) concerning the filter
• New comments by Google (February 15, 2010)
• Senator Kate Lundy is fighting for choice and answers many of the public's questions about the filter
• A brief summary of articles posted on Gizmodo about the filter
• A guide to protesting against the filter by Lifehacker

Let's start off with a few choice quotes from award-winning investigative journalist Caroline Overington:

"...anyone over the age of 30 who spends any time deep in some sagging sofa, console in one hand, the other down the front of their pants, imagining themselves to be a combatant in some pretend city, is lame.
...
I know what you're thinking. Gamers, who cares? They don't participate in life in any meaningful way. As a rule, they don't even have jobs."

- Caroline Overington, The Australian, February 11, 2010 (source)

You can read the full article by following the link above (or right here if you're just a bit lazy; a gamer, perhaps?). It's not my aim to dissect Overington's article line by line as I'm certain that anyone with even the smallest measure of intelligence can work out where someone might take offence and why. What does bear pointing out is that fact that here we have an award-winning investigative journalist publishing what is quite probably the laziest piece of writing I have ever cast my eyes over. What is equally shocking is that Overington has actually been paid to write this.

Let's try something else:

"I know what you're thinking. Gays, who cares? They don't participate in life in any meaningful way. As a rule, they don't even have jobs."

- (not) Caroline Overington

(Incidentally, you can transplant your minority group of choice, the point still works.) Now, what sort of reaction do you think Overington's article would have provoked if she'd published something like the above? Do you think she'd have even been allowed to publish it at all? Just because gamers don't represent any specific religious or sexual persuasion (hey - gamers come in all colours, religions and sexual preferences - how great is that?) it doesn't make it alright to publish such a gross, inaccurate and offensive generalisation. While Overington is unlikely to fall foul of her media compatriots by pointing her finger at mere gamers you can be sure she's still offended plenty of people - I'm one of them, and I don't even play games that often.

At this point I don't really know whether Overington was merely trolling for publicity (in which case the article has, of course, worked) or whether she was attempting some obtuse form of satire. I must admit I found it necessary to read the article through a few times. On the first pass I kept reading because I really thought she was about to make some sort of ironic comment in defence of gamers. She didn't.

I took a second pass in case I could detect any satire. As it happens, in the strict literal definition (http://dictionary.reference.com/define/satire) Overington's piece does actually qualify as satire. However, in a colloquial sense the term has come to mean something else: we tend to associate satire with something clever, witty or funny, something which often uses its subject's idiosyncrasies in order to poke fun at it. This is something that Overington resolutely fails to do in her article. I'm taking a little time here to define the terms of satire since I wouldn't be surprised if Overington does actually claim her article is satire. By doing so she would effectively be able to disclaim any responsibility for her opinions: "It was just a piece of fun, shouldn't be taken seriously - no offence, etc...". I don't think she should be let off the hook so lightly.

And now a word from our sponsors...

This leads me on to what is really the main point of this post. In the olden days journalists and writers (I refuse to refer to Overington as a journalist in respect of this particular article: it would be demeaning to other journalists) could publish what they wanted without fear of any significant comeback from the public. True you could phone, fax or write to the editor, but I don't imagine an overwhelming number of people did that. Journalists (and writers) would be tempered by the usual standards (i.e. you don't run "The Queen Mother in whorehouse shocker!" because you just know that someone's going to pull you up on that one) but for the most part any reaction from the public at large was silent.

Not so any more. Now people have a multitude of online channels through which to respond, of which Twitter is probably the most immediate. I expect I would have never known about Overington's article (or indeed about Overington herself) were it not for Twitter. Whether you prefer pithy 140 character comments, lengthy blog posts, forum comments, or something else, the internet now gives everyone a place to have their say - and to have it now.

I would imagine this is galling to many journalists who are used to being paid for offering us the privilege of reading their words. Now anyone can publish what they want and potentially have the benefit of a global readership. You can't deny there's a whole lot of content that doesn't deserve to be published, just a quick look at Youtube comments proves that, but that doesn't excuse the handful of articles I've read wherein 'professional' journalists find it necessary to demean their internet counterparts. A popular target, naturally, is twitter, and you'll find countless examples of out-of-touch print journalists dismissing twitter as a tool people use for announcing what they've had for breakfast.

Another popular complaint is that the internet allows people to publish content without having to conform to any standards - in other words, you can say what you want. The problem seems to be that this runs both ways. In their fervour to produce content (remember: content is king!) a lot of media companies seem to have dropped their own standards considerably. Caroline Overington's lazy dismissal of gamers is merely one example. Perhaps equally galling, although for different reasons, is the increasing number of simple typos appearing on the BBC's own news website.

So, to use a broad generalisation of my own, we have a situation where professional writers and journalists can publish objectionable rubbish, but everyone else now has the freedom and, most importantly, the medium with which to complain. If a 'journalist', such as the despicable Jan Moir, publishes something appalling then you can be sure that she can no longer hide behind her masthead - people will take her to task and she will have to respond.

I have to point out that much of the above doesn't apply directly to Caroline Overington, who at the very least seems to 'get' twitter (@overingtonc). As a Murdoch crony she should naturally be viewed with suspicion by any open-minded person, but I pass no judgement on her other works or her character. I do find it interesting that unlike numerous other news sites (including most other Murdoch-owned ones) there is no option to leave comments on her article. In fact as far as I can tell it doesn't look like the public is allowed to leave its opinions on any of the opinionated news stories published by The Australian. Irony indeed.

As an almost-footnote I wonder to what degree Murdoch actually wants you to leave your opinions on his sites. His ideology is to promote his own opinions and dress them up as news, so allowing the public at large the opportunity to dilute his message would surely be counter-productive. We know that Murdoch is planning (hilariously) to start charging for access to his online news resources, and I wonder if part of the reason for that is not so much to make money but to shrink the forum for people who don't agree with his views. After all, if The Australian was behind a pay wall surely you would only pay if you actually thought Murdoch's empire represented decent journalistic standards or had money to throw away? In other words, the sort of person prepared to pay for Murdoch's content is the sort of person least likely to object to it.

If you want to keep up with the aftermath of Caroline Overington's article this twitter search provides a handy (albeit temporary) tool. You can also read these compelling responses from the Interactive Games and Electronics Association and journalism blog Crikey.

Almost every year I make a vow to myself that "this year I'm going to take my writing seriously". Naturally, almost every year I end up writing less than I did the previous year, but I think a whole lot about writing, and I also think a whole lot about not writing. This year it looks like I might actually succeeed in doing some good, honest, possibly rambly, maybe readable writing. It's exciting. You can tell I'm excited because, well, I'm telling you.

There's a genuine and practical reason for this post. For the last few months I've been quietly going - well, quietly unless you follow me on twitter, in which case I've been harping on relentlessly - about producing a few short stories on the assumption that once I start that ball rolling it'll carry on by itself. That's more or less the case, but I feel sufficiently confident now that I can make a vague commitment (by the mere act of saying so in public) that I intend to continue writing with some regularity from hereon.

It's been nigh on impossible for me to make such a statement before now due to either my lack of available time for writing, or my extreme laziness when it comes to writing, depending on how you interpret my excuses. Up until the latter part of last year I had a longstanding freelance job, it's one for which I was and still am very grateful for but, as anyone who's worked freelance will know, there's no such thing as spare time when deadlines are afoot (unless you're rigidly, mercilessly disciplined). Eventually my wife persuaded me that enough was enough and, given that I already have a full-time job as well, a little less cash was a small price to pay for regaining my free time (and, primarily, reducing my stress levels).

There was also the small factor of us having a child just over three years ago. Since I can't really write (and I'm not sure I'd want to anyway) until he's gone to bed my writing 'window' is usually from around 8:30pm until I get too tired to carry on, which is generally somewhere short of 10pm. If I'm particularly productive and reach a natural break before 10pm I'll try and claw back some extra time so I can reward myself with a little catch-up TV. If I'm particularly unproductive I'll stop and probably just sulk about it instead.

Why am I posting my writing timetable in tedious detail? It's because it leads into another excuse. Before this year I maintained a pretty dumb standard that if I couldn't set aside at least two hours for each writing session then it wasn't even worth sitting down. This harkens back to the days when I did, in fact, have entire days in which I could sit down and write (or entire days where I could sit and think about writing and put it off until it was almost too late to get any writing done at all). This is all back when time was less of a luxury and I could spend an hour or two waiting for the words to hit their rhythm.

Obviously that's the ideal scenario, but I've become increasingly mindful over the past few months of the adage about writers writing every day. I've not quite managed every day, and probably never will, but I've realised that if I even write just a few hundred words each day then I'm going to reach the end of that novel, screenplay or short story a whole lot quicker than if I don't write anything at all. Furthermore, as most of you writers will know, once you sit down you usually end up writing more than a few hundred words, and even if you write a few hundred words of crap it's easier to go back the next night and clean that up that it is to start with a blank page staring back at you.

So this is how I've been progressing since the start of the year: a few hundred words when I can, sometimes just a hundred or so words, or a few notes. It's rarely much more than about 500 words, but it's enough, it's a start - it's more than a start, it's a continuation of something that I've allowed to stall too many times over the past handful of years.

As a sort of partner project I'll be trying to update this blog on a more frequent basis than I have in the past. Whereas a handful of posts a year has been my average in the not so distant past, I'm aiming for at least a few updates per month throughout 2010. Ideally I'd like to go for a few updates each week, and given my progress this week that might actually happen, but let's just see how we go.

I actually had a few other things to say. I was, for instance, going to talk about some of the stories I've written recently, some of the stories I'm planning to write and, possibly, a few longer term projects. I was also going to talk about that remarkable moment during the writing process when things just start to happen all by themselves, when moments of history that you hadn't even considered for your characters slot themselves into place, when characters do something unexpected, when that plot point that's had you stumped for days just calmly sorts itself out the second you sit down to write.

Yeah - all that - but that can wait for another post.

"What the housewives of Australia need to understand as they do the ironing is that if they get it done commercially it's going to go up in price, and their own power bills when they switch the iron on are going to go up."

- Tony Abbott (February 08, 2010) (full story)

"I think I would say to my daughters if they were to ask me this question ... [virginity] is the greatest gift that you can give someone, the ultimate gift of giving, and don't give it to someone lightly."

- Tony Abbott (January 27, 2010) (full story)

In the last few weeks opposition leader Tony Abbott has managed to draw a generous number of headlines not through anything he's done, but through a couple of things he's said (see above). It's been a fascinating thing to watch from the sidelines, in large part because under very close analysis there's actually very little wrong with the content of what he says.

Think about it: Australia has housewives, housewives are known to do ironing. Nothing wrong with pointing that out surely? Furthermore, if asked, most parents would probably admit that they'd rather their children didn't throw away their viriginity on some meaningless encounter. Still okay?

Right, time for a bit of a disclaimer. I think Tony Abbott is a loathsome toad of a politician. If I honestly thought he stood a chance of getting into power I'd lose considerable sleep over the prospect. I actually celebrated when he won leadership of the opposition because I figured it guaranteed Kevin Rudd a second term (my enthusiasm for Rudd diminishes each week, but he's still, by far, the lesser of two evils).

However, this article is not intended in any way to be about politics. It's about words. What I want to do here is to analyse why Tony Abbott's words have struck such a nerve, the ways in which they've been used against him, the ways in which he's used them to his advantage, and whether or not they expose him to be the morally withered homunculus that I believe him to be.

Let's try that again

"What the people of Australia need to understand as they do the ironing is that if they get it done commercially it's going to go up in price, and their own power bills when they switch the iron on are going to go up."

- (not) Tony Abbott (February 08, 2010)

"I think I would say to my children if they were to ask me this question ... [virginity] is the greatest gift that you can give someone, the ultimate gift of giving, and don't give it to someone lightly."

- (not) Tony Abbott (January 27, 2010)

Ok - read the above again. I've changed precisely one word in each statement. Ignoring the context (particularly for the second one) tell me if you think there's anything offensive in there now? Either way, let's carry on.

No such thing as bad publicity

Let's assume that Abbott is fully aware of what he's saying and equally aware of the publicity it generates. He says something outrageous, people start attacking him, other people start defending him, yet more people get drawn into the debate, and so on.

This is a huge success for Abbott. The more time people spend talking about him, the less time they spend talking about Kevin Rudd. In short, Abbott has used mere words as an indirect weapon against the opposition. In the ideal world this would be entirely counter-productive: any politician who said something culturally or morally offensive would simply not gain any votes. Unfortunately there are definitely voters out there with sufficiently narrow-minded sensibilities to read Abbott's words and view him as a fine choice to lead the country.

... alternatively: there are definitely voters out there who are sufficiently broad-minded to look beyond Abbott's words and make their own decision about whether he's the right choice to lead the country.

... or even: the smart voters out there would see that such an outspoken and honest man as Tony Abbott would be a fine choice to lead the country.

Do you see how I can rewrite essentially the same sentence three times to mean three entirely different things? More precisely, I can rewrite the same sentence to provoke three different reactions from you. Sometimes it's not about what's said, but the way that it's said.

A witless victim?

In both of the remarks we're discussing Abbott's defense has comprised a slightly baffled rationalisation that people either over-reacted, or quoted him out of context. He generally goes on, pretty successfully, to deconstruct his own statements in order to explain why they're not offensive, while at the same time ensuring that the discussion surrounding them continues.

It's a convincing portrayal, and one that could even be genuine. Were his remarks to come across as any more calculated then he wouldn't be able to get away with the political defense that he is simply being honest (a character trait famously lacking in most politicians). Equally, if he was to choose his words more carefully there would be far less scope for misinterpretation, outrage and, consequently, discussion and publicity.

So now we have something of a semantic tangle. If he's saying all these things by accident then he's hardly the canny politician that a party leader inherently claims to be. If you can't control your words how can you control a country? (Of course, we've seen with George W Bush that a command of words, or even basic intelligence, is not required for power, but my explanation is that Bush was quite literally a tool, in this instance an empty vessel for the Republican party. I don't think Abbott fits that profile.) Conversely, if he's saying these things deliberately then he's not quite the straight-talking man he claims to be. If you're merely pretending to be honest then how honest can you actually be?

There's a third option: he genuinely means what he says and says what he means. However, for reasons that I will go into further down, I simply see this as an extension of the first option - which leaves us with someone who is either witlessly honest or deceptively calculating.

He said WHAT??!

As I've hopefully suggested already, anyone's words can be used against them. While Abbott's quotes are inflammatory enough on their own merits, some of the reporting of Abbott's remarks (and his defenses) is just as guilty of stoking the fires. Take this example:

TONY Abbott says people are being "hypersensitive" about his comments on housewives doing the ironing. (full story)

So, if we find his remarks offensive we're just being 'hypersensitive'? I if I find his remarks sexist and outdated then I'm just being 'hypersensitive'??! That sounds pretty dismissive to me. Way to drive that nail in even further!

But, wait a moment, what did he actually say?

"We've become so hypersensitive about all this stuff," he said. (full story)

Now it's not quite so easy to get offended. He's not talking about you or I, he's talking about 'we'. He's not talking specifically about women doing the ironing, he's talking about 'all this stuff'. Sure, you can still feel dismissed and offended if you want to but, without even being overly generous, you could just as easily read his response as a a weary acknowledgement that the spectre of political correctness is always looming.

Women as 'other'

Here we get to the meat of why Tony Abbot was wrong to say what he said. Now, even though I touched on it above, I want to dismiss any prospect of Abbott simply falling foul of political correctness. You see, political correctness is a scourge upon the written and spoken word that makes anything but the most sanitized language a potential minefield of offensive terminology. Its one benefit is that it's made us more aware of the language we use, but we're now so busy ensuring that we choose the right words that we've completely lost sight of why we're doing it in the first place.

No, I believe there's a simple reason why Abbott's specific words have offended and that's down to the two words I removed in my revised quotes earlier on: women, daughters. In his original quotes he's specifically referring to the opposite sex. Perhaps if he had less of a reputation he might have gotten away unscathed, but I suspect that almost anyone would have caused offence with that choice of words. Abbott's not talking about just anyone, he's talking about women and however easy it is to justify the sentiment or factual basis of his statements, the raw truth is that he's compartmentalizing women: he's reducing them to the status of 'other'.

Most (what I would certainly term) reasonable people these days see no social or cultural division between men and women any more. There's been enough progress in the last century that to even propose that women or men have prescribed roles comes across as rather tasteless. What Abbott is emphasising in his language on is the idea of women as a separate group, and by separating a group you automatically marginalize. Essentially you make them 'other'.

You might also argue that Abbott shouldn't really have any business telling his daughters how to conduct their sex lives. He doesn't, but he was answering a very specific question at the time and I have to wonder if there would be the same fuss if he had three sons instead. His fault (or, perhaps, his trick) was to specifically refer to his daughters and thereby open up the debate about whether a man should be able to tell women what to do with their bodies.

I would propose that the ironing quote is even more damaging and disturbing. At once he's suggesting that only women are responsible for general domestic duties, and automatically implying that women should only perform domestic duties, and also suggesting that the most significant duty these housewives perform is the ironing. Christ - what fucking century are we living in anyway? It could very well be true that the majority of ironing in the majority of households is still done by women, but Abbott's choice of language, quite aside from succinctly perpetuating women as 'other', exposes him not as a potential leader of tomorrow who should be looking forward, but as someone who's still harking back to a social model that belongs very much in the past.

The last word

I worry in part that I'm giving Tony Abbott too much credit here. Personally I think he's an arse who freely gives voice to the obnoxious thoughts in his head because he genuinely believes there's nothing wrong with those thoughts. He doesn't strike me as someone smart enough to even work his way out of the house each morning (at least not without the help of his wife), but then again he's worked his way up to the leadership of the opposition so perhaps he does know a thing or two about what to say. I guess we'll just have to wait and see who has the last word.

* probably

About a week ago I noticed an advert on one of the major channels here for the new version of the lizard-tastic V. It looked fairly interesting, but my overriding thought was: "Yeah, it looks good but there's no way I'm watching it on your channel!".

Even though I've been downloading most of my TV for a good few years now, it was my reaction to the V trailer to that made me realise how my viewing habits had irrevocably changed. I know for a fact that I'm not alone. I also know for a fact that if people don't watch broadcast TV then investment is ultimately going to suffer, quality is going to take a nosedive and decent content on TV will probably enter the halls of legend. So, why don't I watch broadcast TV?

You may argue that, with the prevalence of cheap reality shows, quality content on TV is already becoming a thing of the past. However, right now there is still a wealth of excellent creative TV being made - if there wasn't then I wouldn't be using up my bandwidth allowance every month! Still, there's no such thing as a free lunch and I'm growing increasingly aware that if I want shows like Dexter, Doctor Who, Lost, Law & Order: UK, etc, to continue then I need to find a way of putting my penny in the pot.

At present I happily download all these shows and figure I'll pick up the DVD/Blu-ray at a later date as a way of providing some recompense. Recently I've read that this doesn't really cut it in terms of ensuring that a show stays on the air. Also, more often than not I end up not buying the DVD at all.

So, what's the answer? It's simple: the broadcasters have to forget everything they ever knew about television and start again from scratch! They can lead this horse to water but they can't make him drink - and the herd is growing. There are a number of reasons why I've moved on from broadcast TV - all of which are helpfully detailed below - but the real killer is that I would quite happily pay to watch TV (the programmes I'm interested in watching, at least) but right now there's not really a workable model that will allow me to do that.

The key to everything is choice, and you'll realise that as I go through the four points below that choice is at the centre of each and every argument. Broadcasters need to recognise that viewers now have the choice of how to watch their TV and, more importantly, whether they even watch traditional broadcast TV or not.

Adverts

I can tolerate adverts to a degree - that is to say, I can tolerate them as long as I can ignore them. Adverts that jump up and shout at you tend to do little more than alienate audiences. How many times have you visited a website, had a video start playing loudly or, worse, take over your screen, and then simply left that site entirely? True, there's not quite as many channels competing for your attention on TV as there are sites on the internet, but the principle's the same: if your advertising irritates me I'll turn to another channel, leave the room, or just switch off. Either way, you've lost me.

Back in England I could put up with the advertising on the commercial channels because there was always a certain routine: ads would play at regular intervals of 20 minutes (more or less), or halfway through if you were watching a half-hour show. This meant I could usually predict when I'd be able to make that cup of tea, or nip to the toilet. (It also meant I knew when to get the remote control handy so I could turn the volume down, since once upon a time someone, somewhere thought it'd be a *terrific* idea to have adverts twice as loud as the programme you're watching - and I don't care about compression and dynamic range: louder is louder, FACT!)

Unfortunately in Australia the TV advertising mentality is based more on the US model, which dictates that you should stuff your programming with as many adverts as possible. To make things worse the first half of an hour-long will be largely unsullied by adverts, but once you cross that that point the advertising breaks will increase in frequency and length through to the end of the show until you realise you're spending more time watching advertising than actual programming.

This particularly frustrates me because most US hourlongs are structured with act breaks specifically designed to provide a natural pause in the narrative so you can go and shove some adverts in. These act breaks go completely out of the window on Australian TV, making the adverts even more jarring than they usually are.

Perhaps the greatest insult to Australian viewers is that this method is obviously designed to exploit the first half hour to draw you into the show, thereby ensuring that you're more likely to stay tuned when the advertising starts in earnest. When a viewer's already invested half an hour into watching something it's almost guaranteed that they're not going to waste that investment by switching off before the end, not matter how many adverts they have to put up with (or how little respect you show them by doing this in the first place). Unfortunately, since I don't like being treated like a moron I choose not to watch in the first place.

Now, I'm not completely ignorant of the fact that advertising dollars fund most of our TV channels. My rationalisation is that I more or less completely ignore adverts (if I want to buy something I'll read reviews, not look at adverts) so those advertising dollars are largely wasted on me.

Also, advertising (as a necessary evil) should simply be there to supplement the show. Over recent years the mindset among broadcasters seems to have shifted to the point where the creative content is just something you wrap around the adverts, and an inconvenient wrapper at that. I find that somewhat obscene: the funding should never dictate the content. (Many years ago I worked for a magazine where, appallingly, the advertising department was actually given oversight of editorial. Once that happens you stop being a respected publication and simply become yet another brochure.)

Having grown up in England I grew up with the BBC. I pretty much took it for granted, while complaining at the unjustness of being *forced* to pay a license fee just to watch TV. Now my attitude has totally changed. I would jump at the chance to pay for something as brilliant as the BBC. If I only had that chance!

Personal time shifting

Now we move into an area that's a little more out of my control. Since my wife and I had a child the hours in which we can actually sit down and watch TV have been vastly reduced (to maybe an hour or two at the end of each day). This means that anything aired before about 8:30pm, by which time my son will have finally agreed to fall asleep and grace us with his absence, is pretty much out of viewing bounds for us. And even if something watchable does happen to be broadcast during those precious hours while my son's asleep, then it'll still have to compete with all the other crap that needs to get done, along with the likelihood that I'll have some other DVD/Blu-ray/download to catch up with.

I hear you say 'video recorder' and 'dvd recorder' and, even, 'TiVO'. However, I have no intention of getting any of those things: I don't really need to when the internet is like one giant PVR. Furthermore, broadcasters are starting to latch onto that unavoidable concept of constant internet availability with services like BBC's iPlayer and ABC's iView. These services are almost certainly essential to the survival of traditional broadcasters in the future, but they still need to go a lot further. I can, for example, download every episode of The X-Files from torrent sites, but for the most part the official services don't provide anywhere near that depth of catalogue. (This point is perhaps moot since I can quite cheaply buy every episode of The X-Files on DVD, but you get the idea.)

Additionally, by insisting on 'geotarding' these services (for instance, only UK visitors can use iPlayer, only US visitors can use Hulu, etc) the copyright holders are fighting to protect a commercial model that is simply no longer compatible with the global reach of the internet. On the web everything is available to everyone all the time - it might not be the way a lot of companies want it, but frankly they're outnumbered.
It bears mentioning that if the BBC offered a paid subscription service for international users I'd probably snap it up in a heartbeat.

Erratic scheduling

Perhaps one of the biggest reasons why I stopped watching broadcast TV in Perth is that the broadcasters can't even seem to stick to a basic schedule.
In the UK if a programme is scheduled to start at 9pm it'll usually start within a few minutes of that time, if not on the dot of 9pm. If you sit down at to watch a TV programme in Perth at its scheduled time you'll often end up watching at least 5 minutes of the previously scheduled programme, often more. If you're lucky the programme you sat down to watch will start only about 10 minutes late. (Obviously if you've set up your PVR to record that programme you'll need to add at least 20 minutes to the recording time or you're going to miss the end, which happened to me enough times to put me off recording anything - so perhaps that's the intention!)

This just isn't good enough. TV is not that new anymore, it's not a guessing game. These broadcasters are professional corporations who, at the very least, should be capable of airing their shows when they say they're going to air them. The only excuse for shows missing their scheduled airtime should be cataclysmic breaking news or a major live event unavoidably running into overtime.

Unfortunately erratic scheduling doesn't end there. It's certainly not endemic to Australian TV, but broadcasters here seem to have no compunctions about shifting a show around the schedules or stopping it altogether if the ratings aren't satisfactory. A good example is Torchwood, which Channel Ten first start showing at 9:30pm on Mondays. When the ratings didn't meet expections the rest of the series was summarily bumped to midnight on Wednesdays (and it was probably just pure good fortune that the channel didn't stop airing the show completely).

This is far from the only example, and even if a show maintains its position in the schedule you can usually expect it to be bumped from week to week if something 'more important' such as Big Brother or Australian Idol is on. And if you think I'm the only one who has a problem with all of this read the comments here: http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2009/09/commercial-tv-scheduling-is-a-joke/

Broadcaster loyalty

This really ties into the above point, but I feel it's significant enough to warrant standing on its own. Broadcasters rely on a certain degree of loyalty from audiences. This is why you have lead-in shows - a programme that's deemed just the ticket to get you sitting down at the right time to spend the rest of your night tuned into the same channel.

I'd argue that this works both ways: if we're expected to show any sort of loyalty to any one channel then that broadcaster has to reciprocate and treat its audience with respect. No broadcaster has the right to expect an audience to continue watching when it can't even stick to its own schedule, or when it airs shows at a different time or day each week, or even when it tries to claim that a mid-season episode is a season finale (as has happened with Heroes in the past).

I simply don't feel that my viewership is respected by the major commercial channels here in Perth. Therefore I choose not to be treated like a brainless commodity: I choose not to watch.

Where's the alternative?

What is clear, at least to me (and probably to millions of others, most of whom presumably don't work in broadcast TV) is that the TV viewing environment has irrevocably changed and those who are currently pulling the strings need to realise that (to labour a metaphor) Pinnochio is doing as he pleases and no longer has strings.

TV audiences now have the power to control what they watch and when they watch it. For this reason I can't help feeling that the traditional idea of a broadcast schedule will be dead within a decade at the most. Perhaps broadcasters do realise this, which is whey they're cramming the schedules with cheap reality TV and abundant advertising while they still can.

In any event, the model of the future will almost certainly be TVs that connect directly to the internet and download programming on demand. Most forward thinking companies are already dabbling in this area (step forward BBC, ABC, the UK's Channel 4, and various others).

Choice is the key, so at the same time why not protect revenues by giving viewers the choice of paying a nominal fee to watch a programme (no more than a dollar, or maybe two for repeated viewings) or watching it for free with advertising embedded.

Sure you can keep the broadcast schedule for those who prefer it, but if that's the only model you have then money is going to be lost. If money is lost then people are going to have to stop making decent programmes somewhere down the line, and if the only content that ends up being produced in the future is cheap reality crap then you can count me out.

p.s. I'll be following up this post with a more detailed look at some of the alternatives that are currently available so, as they say, stay tuned!