First birthday post on The Inquisitr here.

I won’t do a huge stats post this month. Short version: 2.34m page views, just over February’s previous record of 2.31m I also managed to screw up the GAnalytics code this month, so there’s a day and a half missing in the total count. I’m guessing the total was around 2.45m.

Technorati out to 235. Weird month. We got in as close as 120 at one stage, then out to over 300. The six months prior was a growth time, so we’re not getting as many links as we’re losing, but not by much.

Finances were down CPM off March, which isn’t surprising given March was a strong month. The counter was more traffic in April which means while we made less this month, it wasn’t as big a drop as it might have been. We’re also ahead of Jan/ Feb on a CPM basis, so although it’s disappointing to see a drop, it’s not as bad as it once was. Overheads are up in April with the addition of two CPM based writers, which will be bigger again in May with Paul Short being made permanent.

Courier Mail: Stephen Conroy’s internet filter ‘won’t stop child porn’

Question then, if it won’t stop child porn, why do it at all?

After all, it was Conroy who continually said that the filter was all about child porn.

“Black lists are needed to combat child pornography” Conroy (The West)

On the overall policy: “It also focuses on managing current threats through technical mechanisms such as ISP-level filtering of illegal material including child pornography.” Conroy (speech)

“Central to the Government?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s plan to make the internet a safer place for children is the introduction of Internet Service Provider (ISP) level filtering of material such as child pornography.” Conroy (media release)

“Conroy told the media that it would censor online child pornography and other ?¢‚Ǩ?ìinappropriate material”” WSWS

“If people equate freedom of speech with watching child pornography, then the Rudd-Labor Government is going to disagree.” Conroy (ABC)

“We are not building the Great Wall of China. We are going after the filth – like child pornography. Its been done around the world and it can be done here.” Conroy (IT News)

The last quote is important: Conroy now claims that the filter isn’t a silver bullet, but said that the filter was all about blocking child porn, which he now says it won’t stop.

So what is it then?

Time to go Senator Conroy, if you keep up these backflips you’ll end up with a broken back.

One last quote out of the UK, which I think fits here
BT admitted that the UK’s “Cleanfeed” scheme was “intended to prevent users inadvertently accessing illegal material, rather than to stop hardened paedophiles.” ZDNet

Sort of sums up Conroy’s policy doesn’t it.

On March 3, the Reserve Bank in Australia (RBA) abolished bank intercharge fees on ATM’s in favor of a pay to use system where consumers pay a rate determined by the owner of the ATM.

This was allegedly about reducing charges for consumers, and providing a more transparent charging regime.

SMH March 24

Reserve Bank assistant governor of financial system Philip Lowe says the reforms of ATM fees, which came into affect on March 3, have increased competition and benefited consumers.

Dr Lowe said that across the entire system most cardholders were paying no more for ATM transactions than previously and some “may have the opportunity to play less”.

What has happened since March 3 is that most foreign ATM’s (that is, ATM’s not owned by the bank you bank with) now impose a $2 withdrawal charge.

In theory, you can opt not to cop the fee by only using your own banks ATM. But what if your bank or bank like institution doesn’t have ATMs, or more particularly an accessible supply of ATM’s.

My credit union doesn’t.

Until March 3 I could use any ATM and not cop a charge. As of April 1 (the Credit Union is rebating the fees this month) I’ll have to pay money to withdraw money from an ATM.

Oh, but you can use EFTPOS or the PostOffice. Great. The reason I switched to my current Credit Union is because my last Credit Union ran the same line and I never had free use of ATMs. The current credit union has teamed up with some other credit unions for the “Redi” ATM network, but the nearest one is 10 kms away and no where near anywhere I regularly go.

So the RBA says that I should be saving money, but now I’ll be paying fees where I never have before, and there’s really no 24/7 alternative.

Thing is, there are still a fair few small credit unions around with a similar setup, particularly employee related Unions.

In effect, the RBA has actually done more in entrenching the big four and reducing competition than it ever has before. Little credit unions can’t compete on ATM’s, and customers want access to fee free ATM’s. The big four with their army of ATM’s win out.

An epic failure in public policy.

I probably should just duck and hide before writing this.

There’s a storm in the blogosphere over a post Erick Schonfield made on TechCrunch last week alleging that Last.fm gave user data to the RIAA.

Erick isn’t exactly on my Christmas card list, and I’d be the last person to naturally want to defend either Erick, or TechCrunch, but I’m going to.

I’ve read and re-read the post, and I don’t see that it’s quite as bad as people make out.

Yes, the data was incorrect, untrue, a lie…what ever you want to call it. But that’s the nature of tips: some work out to be true, some don’t. Some are great scoops, some ride the fail train.

The question then becomes: which ones do you publish, and how do you publish them.

If you read the post carefully, Erick clearly points out that this is a rumor, and actually publishes the tip clearly marked as such.

He then goes into padding out mode (the mode you go into when you don’t have a lot to write about) where he talks about the broader privacy implications if the rumor is true.

Not once in the post did he say categorically that it was true.

He also made attempts to contact both the RIAA and Last.fm. Last.fm gave a one line response that clearly didn’t rule out the proposition “To our knowledge, no data has been made available to RIAA.” That’s not a categorically no we didn’t type response. That’s a response that says to me that it might have happened, but the person writing that line isn’t aware of it (hedging bets).

There are of course broader implications of printing such rumors in terms of the effect it can have on a company at the receiving end. That’s a debate left to others, but I’d note that if no lead, tip or leak was ever published, the role of the media (including blogging) as a accountability watchdog would cease to be.

I ask myself what I would have done if I had received the same tip, and although I might have worded the post a little differently, the difference would be small. I would have run that post if I was still at TechCrunch. I might not run it today because I don’t have a highly paid team of lawyers backing me up, but I would consider it.

Love them or hate them, TechCrunch got to where it is today off the back of exclusives and being first. Sometimes they get it wrong, but so to does just about everyone at some stage.

I’m not suggesting that TechCrunch shouldn’t be criticized ever, and that much of the debate around this topic shouldn’t be taking place as much of it is healthy in terms of looking at the broader ethics and placement of blogs, but in part “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone.”

I’m sympathetic to old diggers still holding a grudge against the Japanese given the historical context, but in 2009 there’s no place for this, particularly when a lot of the message is coming from people born well and truly after WW2 who simply don’t have an excuse to hold a grudge.

Age: Japanese ship unsettles Darwin

TERRITORIANS paused to remember the 1942 bombing of Darwin yesterday, but for some the commemorations were marred by a Japanese vessel docked in the harbour…..

Controversy rose over the presence of the Tokyo University ship Umitaka Maru, docked at Stokes Hill Wharf only metres from the ceremony. “A lot of people are very upset about it being there,” said Andrew Burford from the Maritime Union.

Mr Burford said he had been inundated with calls from people, outraged that the vessel, in Darwin to pick up supplies, could be berthed so close to the ceremony.

Japan is Australia’s No 1 export market, we’ve been at peace with Japan since 45, and trading with them since the mid 50s. It reeks of unfounded Xenophobia.

What a pathetically lazy piece of journalism this is.

They’re obviously quoting from a press release, because they continue to mix figures from one site with the entire market.

Example

Australian employers are also turning to the virtual job market to find cheap employees: 1484 Australia-based accounts have hired an elancer in the past six months.

Elancer is a specific term to Elance, one of many, many sites facilitating online work, and even then, that’s excluding the broader market, including direct deals, so WTF with the next paragraph:

Australian bosses paid $US898,000 to online employees in 2008, up 44 per cent from $US624,000 in 2007.

HOLY SHIT! Alone I account for something like 5-6% of the money flowing to online employees from Australia.

But that’s just a small taste.

Cause and effect?

There are currently approximately 1300 active service providers on Elance based in Australia, making it the fifth biggest country on Elance regarding visitors per month, behind the US, India, the UK and Canada, according to independent reporting from Quantcast.

Um, number of providers from Australia has NOTHING to do with the traffic the site gets; if it’s popular in Australia, that would be due to Australians looking to hire primarily people overseas; there’s no correlation between providers and traffic, only customers and traffic.

Then there’s the clueless union official

Sharan Burrow, President of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), said she was concerned some employers would use the economic downturn to cut pay and conditions.

?¢‚Ǩ?ìAustralian workers should carefully check whether jobs advertised on these websites pay the legal minimum rates if the job is based in Australia,?¢‚Ǩ¬ù Ms Burrow said.

For starters, most of the jobs run by a bidding system, and aren’t fixed rate. But that’s besides the point, because legally there’s no “legal minimum rate” because there’s no employment relationship; the tie up is exclusively a contractural one where a minimum rate doesn’t apply. THE ONLY WAY a min rate would apply would be in the event that a service applier ended up doing 80% of more of their work for the one person, and that’s presuming both parties are in Australia (that rule came in under Howard, and a lot of contractors hated it, because it meant they had to be treated as employees). The chances of an 80% load rule applying on Elance or a similar site: 0/100. But hey, why let common knowledge facts get in the way of a web beatup.

Update: I nearly forgot

Blogging critics have dubbed the sites ?¢‚Ǩ?ìdigital sweatshops?¢‚Ǩ¬ù that take advantage of stressed-out workers who resort to menial jobs at terrible rates.

The link in that paragraph goes to a forum, so the journalist seemingly can’t tell the difference between a blog and a forum. But here’s the better part: there’s nothing about digital sweatshops on the page linked to. Indeed, the link is to an online business forum and an entry made by a new member, and the responses to him. Nothing even remotely related to the story.

Lazy stuff.

Absolute steal.