[LINK] Weekend Magazine - The Future of Australian Television - Taxation, Licensing, Advertising or Criminalization?

[Tom Koltai]

Given the attention of Governments to file sharing, it would appear that
the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) was obviously caused by you sharing a
copy of Lily Allenes “F*** you very much”.

We have Ministers flying all over the world to discuss how to
criminalize 15 year old kids who can’t yet vote.

These same kids don’t bother reading political manifestos, or if they
do, have no idea how the restrictions being discussed on their personnel
freedoms will impact them in the future.

What the world does not need is an unworkable trade agreement
facilitating third party interference with the choices of any one
country’s citizens.

What it does need is a system that recognises the validity of claims for
payment by artists, authors, publishers and distributors and renumerate
them according to their contribution to the creation of the content.

In the UK, the BBC has had the benefit for years of Television Licensing
fees. This has enabled the UK to become one of the eminent producers of
quality content.
In fact, it could be argued successfully that UK TV licensing fees have
created the only real competitor to Hollywood and the American TV
networks.

I recently viewed a BBC show called Wild Down Under. One of the best
representations and photography that I have ever seen of outback
Australia. Into one hour, the BBC packed what it took me over 15 years
of weekend adventuring to view firsthand.

How is it that an English company can outdo Australians at pictorially
representing our own country?

There is but one answer. Experience and talent created by content
creation funding. Paid for by the annual £142.50 household UK Television
license fee.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_United_Kingdom
> 

Twenty-six million Brits paying an annual license fee adds up to an
impressive £ 3,804,075,789  (or  $6,805,659,118 AUDI) Quite a nice
windfall for any production company. 

That works out to  $ (AUD) 110.84 per man woman and child in the UK.

In comparison, the Australian ABC funding of 
$ (AUD) 1,070,900,000 (Gov 800+ M, other sources 200+ M) works out  to
only  $ (AUD) 50.61 per citizen.

That extra sixty bucks a year would help produce an awful lot of
viewable high class content. 

Meanwhile back at the ranch, the Internet highway is being redesigned
into an Internet super highway (Trademark Al Gore   :-) See References)
or in Australian parlance, the NBN.

Mind you, the proposed ACTA legislation will make most fun things
illegal, so there is some doubt about the eventual profitability of the
service. i.e.: if one is unable to use the internet for what it was
designed for – sharing content, (and reading newspapers for free) then
what good will it be?


The parallel is winning a brand new Ferrari and being told that there is
no way you can drive it on the freeway at full speed.

You might as well buy a two stroke Trabi
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trabant> , and paint it red.

To Create your own Customized Trabant, click on the image.

Let’s talk about highways and motorways for the moment. Travelling time
between the southern suburbs of Sydney (Liverpool) and the city used to
take about an hour. 

Then along came the M5. For $1.50 you could drive between Liverpool and
the airport at speeds of up to 110 kilometres per hour with no traffic
lights.

Now with peak congestion, the trip takes only two hours and twenty
minutes. (As per my experience last week when I left the house at 5:50
am to ensure that I would be in town by 8:30. I made it to College
Street via the Williams Street off ramp with only ten minutes to spare.)


The difference?
Three things, 
land prices in the outlying areas rose because of the motorway;
a company now receives the toll for the privilege of being allowed to
queue up on the morning city bound carpark;
and public transport by comparison looks REALLY good. (It only takes an
hour from Liverpool by train to Museum station).

The M7 was then developed as a ring road to benefit outlying areas of
Sydney.

The cost to drive on the M7 from (let’s say Blacktown) to Sydney and
back again?
M7 $ 6.67 M2 $4.95 Lane Cove Tunnel  $2.73 Harbour Tunnel $4.00 = $18.35
each way or $183.50 per week.

Even the RTA know they have a problem with Tolls. 

Visiting sydneymotorways.com and selecting Plan your trip and calculate
tolls will allow you to Select for example Sunnyholt road as your entry
and Beecroft road as your exit. A nice little 10 Km drive. Nope, the
official RTA route wants you to drive 94 kilometres. (So much for
Government databases.)

So it would appear the NSW Government have totally stuffed up the
economy of anyone living in the western suburbs who works in the city.
(The only good thing I can say is that those responsible have retired
from politics.)

But the Toll companies are getting rich.

With the average weekly travel cost now about two hundred per week, who
the hell can afford to buy music or rent DVD’s?
Certainly not the greater population of Sydney. So scratch 5 million
from Australia’s population for the purposes of music and movie
purchases. They're too busy paying tolls to buy any music.

So here we have an example of Government, Lobbyists and Companies
allowing the economy to be damaged for the benefit of private interests.

Never a good long term economic plan.

But enough about motorways, let’s get back to the National Broadband
Network.

It is proposed that eventually we will have fibre to every home (FTTH)
in Australia at a cost of around $4456 per home.

This fibre will allow the population to turn off their televisions,
disregard their newspaper deliveries and receive all of their content
via interactive means.

If we calculate the available bandwidth per consumer (by the time the
FTTH is delivered in about eight years time) on the basis of Moore's
law, Australians will have available approximately 640 MB per second of
access to Australian content.

If we utilize Standard Definition television resolution, (with one hour
of programming being 400 MB) then the average TV viewer requires 11.2 GB
per week. In a previous article I suggested that the obvious solution to
the file sharing problem was to propose a per Gigabyte viewing tax of
one cent per Gigabyte.

This of course could be ameliorated via advertising. 

So for those that are well heeled, one cent per Gigabyte would be a
pittance that few would object too to be able to be masters of their own
viewing choices.
i.e.: Imagine being able to download all the Star Trek movies and
episodes in a few hours to be able to watch whenever you wanted too,
without having to wait for “To be continued
..”

For those to whom this taxation impost was an anathema, the choice to
accept voluntary advertising would still allow them to participate in
the future download spree but assist in retaining the economy’s
necessary consumer retail programming.


Benefits to Government Benefits to Consumers Benefits to Content
Creators. Benefit to Australian Content Creators

TABLE


I can hear the doubt, but lets do the numbers.

9.2 million homes in Australia. (Future number)
2.3 persons in each home.
Standard Definition TV picture @ 400 MB per hour.
11.2 GB per week per person (based on 4 hours and 11 minutes of TV
viewing time)
1 cent per gigabyte.

Total weekly Broadband license (Tax) $ 2,369,920,000  (Assuming each
person in the home has separate screens. As we do in the Koltai
household.)

Annual Total? $ 123,235,840,000.00 

(Boy - wouldn't that fix the budget deficit?)

To Do List:

Develop an Electronic Program Guide (EPG) that scrapes all content from
all sources.
Develop a set-top box that sits between the LCD/Plasma screen and the
media storage device.
Develop a tracking regime as to what content was viewed by whom when.
Organise advertising companies to fund the development of the set-top
box.
Pass legislation that mandates a set-top box media device with one cent
per Gigabyte billing (with appropriate exemptions for pensioners and
advertising recipients).

And
 Develop a methodology for tracking royalty payments to ensure they
actually get paid to the creators and not just those with the most
lawyers on board.

C’mon Australia, let’s solve the financial crisis, create a huge pile of
jobs, eliminate criminalization of our younger population and obtain
better content all in one go.

What say you? Let's not make the same mistake with our content that we
made with the NSW motorways.

Allowing private corporations to dictate Government policy leads to
financial suicide or at the very least financial hardship, for our
future citizens.

Senator Conroy, Prime Minister Rudd, I call on you and the Australian
Labour Party to follow the innovative leadership initiative created by
the announcement of the NBN and to implement a sensible, meaningful
solution to the file sharing problem and not blindly follow the
direction of the American lead, driven by corporate greed and led by
individuals whom are scared of technological advancement.

ACTA will not put any money into the pockets of Australian corporations,
or benefit Australian citizens. 

This proposal will create jobs, ensure the content creators are
reimbursed for their content on a user pays basis with a substantial
amount left over for the further funding of the ABC and the NBN. 

Tables, links and images (with story)  here -->
http://www.perceptric.com/blog/_archives/2009/11/14/4379856.html


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