Podcasting, Broadcasting Policy and Terrorism

The Australian newspaper published my opinion piece today on "Policy needed on podcasting".

As one TV network's Podcast director has pointed out, I did not actually say what policy is needed. So I arranged to give a seminar on this and related matters at the ANU this Wednesday, 4pm in Canberra to help work it out.

To make things topical the ACMA issued new program standards to prevent the broadcast of programs that directly recruit or solicit donations for terrorist organisations and terrorist activities. This restriction does not appear to apply to podcasting. Perhaps I should re-title the talk "The Revolution Will Not Be Podcast" (apologies to Gil Scott-Heron, author of the poem "The revolution will not be televised"). ;-)

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College of Engineering and Computer Science
The Australian National University
Computer Science Seminar Series

PODCASTING AND THE END OF THE MYTH OF LIVE BROADCASTING

Tom Worthington, Director of Communications Technologies (The Australian Computer Society)

DATE: 2006-03-29
TIME: 16:00:00 - 17:00:00
LOCATION: CSIT Seminar Room, N101, Computer Science and Information Technology (CSIT) Building, North Road, Canberra, ACT

ABSTRACT:
Podcasting is the distribution of media files using web based syndication to handheld devices. Tom Worthington will outline how it works, discuss some of the public policy issues it raises and ask for input to the ACS's policy on digital broadcasting. To the IT professional, Podcasting is a simple application XML technology to digitized audio (the ANU already supplies students with the digital audio of lectures). However, while technically simple, podcasting raises public policy issues: is it broadcasting? how and should it be regulated? how and who makes money from it? See: http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2006/03/podcasting-politics.html

BIO:
Tom Worthington is an independent information technology consultant and Visiting Fellow in the Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology at the Australian National University. He is Director of Communications Technologies for the Australian Computer Society, and was elected a Fellow of the Society in 1999 for his contribution to the development of public Internet policy.

<http://cecs.anu.edu.au/seminars/showone.pl?SID=177>

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