Some time ago, I was going to post on the ‘Population Crisis’ as it had been reported at the time (months ago) and why I though, generally speaking, it was rubbish. I held off, as accurate statistics were tricky to get hold of, and I’m generally pretty easy to distract. I blame Twitter.

Julie has gone and put our population, and the illegal immigrant portion thereof, back in the spotlight. (A great speech, I recommend you read in its entirety. It is somewhat lengthy, feel free to finish this before you do.)

The real population crisis, is much, much worse.

Here’s the thing about population. There’s a lot of it. Not just here, but globally. We breed like rabbits. No – scratch that – like humans, and it seems the fruits of ‘keeping warm’ during the long, cold winter months have led to a somewhat unbalanced ecosystem. The best digestible write up on this I’ve seen to date comes from Greenpeace co-founder and Captain of the Sea Shepard, Paul Watson. (Who, being an ecological activist since 1968, is somewhat ahead of the game as far as I’m concerned)

Here’s the other thing. Check out a population density map.

See how nice and low density Australia’s population is? Now look up, and to the left a little – and you find yourself espying the Globe’s most densely populated areas.

Of course, we know that that 80% of our population is huddled against the shoreline, afraid of the hot, arid, spidery death that awaits us all inland, but it’s not brain surgery people – the world is running out of room.

And conveniently for the folks that currently have the least room – there’s a big, open (looking) space not so far away – surely, being the kind, generous, diplomatic and friendly nation they promote themselves as being, that place could take in some of the overflow. Even if they do eat such strange and universally despised ‘foods’ like Vegemite.

I’m not suggesting we’ll be overwhelmed by the ‘Mongolian Menace‘ so feared by our predecessors and the Federal Council of Australasia anytime soon – but at some point in the future, assuming we don’t all suddenly realize that China might be on to something with the whole One Child thing, the population waters will rise, and they’ll all need to go somewhere. In 40, 60, even 100 years time, we will need to learn how to accept each other’s culture, language, behaviours and skin colour – and learn how to truly share this planet. All of us.

So yes, detractors – there is a population problem, but realistically, immigration policy doesn’t have a lot to do with it. Pragmatically, it’s good to see that JG has this at the (near) top of her agenda as PM, and now she’s opened the can, let’s see how quickly, and in how many ways our underlying national racism can worm its way out.

It’s not the outspokenly prejudiced that I’m concerned about though – it’s the rest of us. You know, the one’s who “aren’t” racist.

I’ll wait a minute while your defensiveness dies back down as you detect the sarcasm. Good. Moving on then.

I’ve always thought that the way we use words and how a question is posed can give a valuable insight into it’s answer, and this one has always been a favourite of mine.

We seem to be asking a lot the question “Are we racist?”. To that I respond with another question. Who, exactly, is ‘we’?

I don’t suppose it’s our immigrant population. Obviously ‘they’ can’t be racist about themselves. You know, the ones who populate ‘our’ call centres and taxi ranks, causing no end of strife because they can’t speak ‘our’ language. I mean, ‘they’ only account for what, a mere 24% of our total population? (ABS, 2006) And you know, the very Federation of our Great Nation was established on the fear of this mob taking over.

‘We’ is probably not our indigenous population either. (Pause for seeming gross misuse of grammatical structure. In context, it makes sense, but it is painful to write I assure you.)

After all, ‘We’ apologised to ‘Them’ in 2008 about the whole ‘Stolen Generation‘ thing.  And you know, they probably migrated here over land bridges from Southern Asia anyway.

And definitely not visiting foreigners. We all know Sol Trujillo was just a Mexican after ‘our’ money, and his opinion didn’t really mean much anyway, so it was OK for him to go home. To Wyoming. In the USA. And don’t even get me started on Harry Connick Jr. He’s an American southerner of all things – what could he possibly know about racial prejudice?

So next time you ask yourself, or hear the question asked “Are we racist?”, try and make sure you answer with the understanding that when we say “we”, apparently, we’re asking about the attitude of those true-blue, first fleet, 7th generation Aussie whitefolk.

In which case, if you ask me – the original question kind of answers itself.

“The internet industry and copyright holders had been in detailed discussions for a number of years, before AFACT and its Executive Director, Ms Pecotic, called off negotiations in August 2007 to commence their unsuccessful legal proceedings against iiNet in the Federal Court.”

Naturally, the ‘Gamers, Porn and BitTorrent Society’ .. sorry, the Pirate Party Australia – had their own view on the AFACTs suggestion that we are being left “behind the rest of the world”, referring to the recent adoption of a 3 strike disconnection system introduced in such countries as Britain, France, South Korea, Taiwan and New Zealand;

“Pirate Party Australia completely rejects the implementation of any system that disconnects account holders from the Internet, increasingly the most important platform for communication and political discourse today, upon allegation of infringement, without full judicial oversight and due process. Mechanisms like this will see entire households disconnected, upon an allegation from an industry association.”

“The provision of an Internet service should be considered akin to the postal service, in that packets of data are sent and received, and this communication should be considered private—no person or organisation should be opening and reading the content of these packets.”

First and foremost, I want to point out the ridiculous nature of that particular argument. If you are going to equate the provisioning of internet connectivity to the postal service, you land it (more) squarely in the lap of the Dept of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, and expose ISPs to further regulation by the same. This seems a little counter-productive, unless the PP are suddenly considering themselves ‘besties’ with Senator Conroy.

I’ve previously stated my view on making ISPs ‘defacto cops’ of the Internet (to use a PP-coined phrase), and in the main, that opinion stands. ISPs provide a very specific core service. That service is to provide us, the consumer of that service, the means for us to connect to the internet.

To me, the concept of the provider of that service being held accountable for my use of it is nothing short of insane.

It’s like asking the blokey fellows contracted to conduct roadworks (ISP) who make the roads I drive my car (computer) on should pay my speeding fines ( the $4000 worth of  stolen music on my computer) out of some sort of crazed notion of perceived obligation.

(Authors Note: $4k of stolen music exists as hypothetical example only. I’m pretty confident I’m the only IT guy in history who’s never burned a music CD )

(Additional Authors Note: No offense intended to non ‘blokey’ roadworks persons, I promise)

The law has been tried and tested and in this case, common sense would seem to have prevailed. To quote Cowdroy, the Judge whom presided over the hotly debated and soon to go to appeal AFACT vs iiNet case:

“..mere provision of access to the internet is not the ‘means’ of infringement.” (Summary, Sect. 12)

Sorry AFACT, but no. I know the law, and if I break it, I know that there is a risk that, as the offender, I will be punished for doing so.

You may see the current state of the law as “.. a threat to our digital economy” – I see it as sensible, reasonable, and the 34 studios you represent can sue me should they ever have a problem with my online activity, thank you very much.