2022/04/24

John Lions Unix Commentary: Tanenbaum on public record noting 'book' was crucial to MINIX, leading directly to Linus, Linux, iOS/MacOS and Android.

To paraphrase Tanenbaum: "No Unix, No Lions Commentary, No MINIX, No Linux, No Android, No iOS/MacOS". 

Text file with links, commentary & edited video transcript

Andrew Tanenbaum, creator of MINIX, gave a talk at the UNSW John Lions Distinguished Lectures day on 29 July, 2021, which for copyright reasons wasn't uploaded.

A comment has been added to the "Welcome" video with links to the 2016 CACM article and MINIXcon talk included in the text file linked above. [ Since deleted by others ]

Tanenbaum notes that AT&T changed the license for Unix V7 and after to ban books or teaching the source code. He was forced to develop MINIX, a functional clone of V7 and free of AT&T "IP", in order to again teach Operating System from the source, not theory only.

Tanenbaum wrote the O/S on and for an IBM PC, affordable for students, then wrote & published his book, with full source on floppies. In 1991, Linus bought a PC and began using & studying MINIX.

Linus then used MINIX as the development environment for early versions of Linux.

"Open Group", the current owners of the Unix trademark, have a "History and Timeline" page.

One of the best & most complete charts of the Unix Timeline is from Levenez. [Multiple PDF versions]

A much more complete history of Unix variants at Bell Labs and their descendants in the first 10 years by Warner Losh is "Hidden Early History of Unix" [PDF] from the "50 years of Unix" effort.

Links 

Tanenbaum on public record noting 'book' was crucial to MINIX, leading directly to Linus / Linux, iOS/MacOS and Android.)

Lessons Learned from 30 Years of MINIX, March 2016, CACM https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2016/3/198874-lessons-learned-from-30-years-of-minix/fulltext

 04:10 min video
http://cacm.acm.org/videos/lessons-learned-from-30-years-of-minix

MINIXCon 2016 Talk Slides https://www.minix3.org/conference/2016/slides/Tanenbaum.pdf
MINIXCon 2016 Conference Programme https://www.minix3.org/conference/2016/program.html

MINIXCon 2016 talk #11 Andy Tanenbaum video
36:28 min
Monday, 1 February 2016, 09:00 to 18:00, Vrije Universiteit [VU] in Amsterdam
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNLH8c3PMFY

Notes on Tanenbaum's 2016 CACM article/video

Lessons Learned from 30 Years of MINIX


        04:10 min

        <http://cacm.acm.org/videos/lessons-learned-from-30-years-of-minix>


        Lesson. Eat your own dog food.

        Lesson. Do not trust documentation blindly; it could be wrong.

        Lesson. Listen to your students; they may know more than you.

        Lesson. Nathan Myhrvold's Law is true: Software is a gas. It expands to fill its container.

        Lesson. No matter how desirable your product is, you need a way to market or distribute it.

        Lesson. Size matters.

        Lesson, Try to make your design be appropriate for hardware likely to appear in the future.

        Lesson. By not relying on idiosyncratic features of the hardware, 

                one makes porting to new platforms much easier.

        Lesson. As with software, hardware can contain bugs.

        Lesson. When someone hands you a lemon, make lemonade.

        Lesson. The Internet is like an elephant; it never forgets.

                Be careful what you put out on the Internet; 

                it might come back to haunt you decades later. [Flamewar]

        Lesson. Do not assume today's hardware will be dominant forever.

        Lesson. When standards exist (such as ANSI Standard C) stick to them.

        Lesson. If you are running one of the biggest corporations in the world

                        and a tiny startup appears in an area you care about

                        but know almost nothing about,

                        ask the owners how much they want for the company and write them a check.

        Lesson. Even after you have adopted a strategy, 

                you should nevertheless reexamine it from time to time.

        Lesson. Working on something important can get you research funding, 

                even if it is outside the mainstream.

        Lesson. Each device driver should run as an unprivileged, independent user-mode process.

        Lesson. Try for an early success of some kind; it builds up everyone's morale.

        Lesson. Keep focused on your real goal.

        Lesson. If V3 of your product differs from V2 in a really major way, 

                give it a totally new name.

        Lesson. Doing Ph.D. research and developing a software product 

                at the same time are very difficult to combine.

        Lesson. Einstein was right: Things should be as simple as possible but not simpler.

        Lesson. If you want people to use your product, it has to do something useful.

        Lesson. If marketing the product according to plan A does not work, invent plan B.

        Lesson. It is very difficult to change entrenched ways of doing things.


        In 1977, John Lions of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, 

        wrote a commentary on the V6 source code, explaining line by line what it meant,

                a technological version of a line-by-line commentary on the Bible.

        Hundreds of universities worldwide began teaching UNIX V6 courses 

        using Lions's book as the text.


        The lawyers at AT&T, which owned Bell Labs, 

        were aghast that thousands of students were learning all about their product.

        This had to stop.

        So the next release, V7 (1979), came equipped with a license 

        that explicitly forbade anyone from writing a book about it or teaching it to students.

        Operating systems courses went back to theory-only mode or had to use toy simulators, 

        much to the dismay of professors worldwide. 


        There matters rested until 1984,

        when I decided to rewrite V7 in my spare time while teaching

        at the Vrije Universiteit (VU) in Amsterdam

        in order to provide a UNIX-compatible operating system my students 

        could study in a course or on their own. 


        I decided to write a book describing the code, like Lions did before me,

        and have my publisher, Prentice Hall, distribute the system, 

        including all source code, as an adjunct to the book.

        After some negotiation, Prentice Hall agreed to sell a nicely packaged box 

        containing eight 5¼-inch floppy disks and a 500-page manual for $69.

        This was essentially the manufacturing cost. 


        Thirty years later the consequences of Van Renesse's offhand remark are enormous.

        If he had not mentioned interrupt 15, I would probably have eventually given up in despair.

        Without MINIX, it is inconceivable there would have been a Linux

        since Linus Torvalds learned about operating systems by studying the MINIX source code

        in minute detail and using it as a base to write Linux.

        Without Linux, there would not have been an Android since it is built on top of Linux.

        Without Android, the relative stock prices of Apple and Samsung might be quite different today.

2021/02/02

Evolution of Hyper-partisanship in Media & Politics

Thesis

Have we just seen the End Game of US Capitalism and Democracy with the Republican Party not prepared to criticise, condemn or call to account a President who actively sought to overthrow a pillar of Government and backed an attempt to decapitate the Congress, to have killed the whole of the elected line of succession?

Elsewhere, this would be a grand Coup, with the perpetrator immediately removed from power and imprisoned. In sections of the US media, this is lauded and applauded, the antithesis of Democratic principles and responsible reporting.

The problem with the "American Disease" is that "where the USA goes, the world follows". No country is immune from copycats or the consequences of changes in US politics.

We didn't get here by accident. This was predictable, preventable and foreseeable, a consequence of well known, well tested principles.

For a century of more, our brains and psychology have been consciously exploited and used against us by those who'd you hope might have our interests at heart, but sought power or fortune for themselves and associates.

Social Media and new Media via the Internet have increased the power of this exploitation many fold, resulting in dysfunctional Government in many Western Democracies and the destabilisation of the largest, the USA.

How we 'work'

Our Brains / Minds are wired for efficiency and speed: we filter everything we perceive and think through the filters of our Beliefs then Knowledge. To quote Alan Kay [pdf], "If you don't believe it, you can't see it."

The 'unvarnished' Truth is always uncomfortable because it challenges this filtering: it jibes with our view of the World and our brains need to resolve the conflict. This internal conflict is "cognitive dissonance", a powerful agent of change, and is resolved in many ways - from attack & denial, ignoring, or 'partitioning' our world view to acceptance and 'integration' into a persons' belief system, knowledge or world view.

All of these approaches are adaptive and successful to some degree. The proof is Social & Genetic "Selection": more functional adaptions, genetic, mental or social, by definition, survive more often, while less functional, or wholly dysfunctional, adaptions lead to lower rates of survival and possibly extinguishing the trait or approach. Skills / behaviours that lead to an early death cannot be directly inheritable.

Deep Change is hard and challenging because we need to change our view of the World and, quite probably, our Beliefs as well.

People routinely die for their Beliefs, not just in Wars, Protests or Imprisonment, but in much more mundane ways: on the roads, in hospitals, on the streets, at work and at home.

The easiest example is the number of people addicted to legal drugs / activities - smoking, drinking, gambling - who would, and do, rather die than Change. Cancer & Cardiac wards see many deaths of smokers who would, or could, never quit.

The notion that we are all wired, at a basic level, to fight for survival, no matter what is only partly true. This primal survival instinct is surprisingly strong for those who've not experienced it themselves.
There's many people who know they need to change to improve some aspect of their life, even exactly how their 'choices' are destroying their lives or killing them and how they need to change to survive, yet choose to continue along the same path.

The reasons are always complex, but always revolve around being unable or unwilling to change.

Political Polarisation and Hyper-Partisanship

You're with me or against me: the rise of polarised, Black & White arguments and positions.

The Canadian, Marshall McLuhan, studied the interaction of Media on Society and vice versa, in the late 1960's formulating the maxim, "The Medium is the Message".

First came the Polarisation of the Media with the normalisation of extreme views and hyper-partisanship involving abuse, disrespect, denigration and high-emotion instead of reasoned debate, listening to other points of view and working hard to find common ground or workable solutions.

Politics became polarised and partisan because of the Media and the Media fed off the Political conflict and partisanship. This created a vicious circle, where the Media and Politics reinforced each other, feeding back via isolated "echo chambers" where people were only ever exposed to one side of an argument, inveigled to join 'a tribe' who "all thought the same (correct) way" and attacking anyone outside 'the tribe' as wrong, ignorant or uninformed.

This march to extreme, entrenched & intractable positions, sometimes on both sides, was slow, incremental and unstoppable because of the underlying principle of difference, not uniting / commonality - this was the break from the past.

Nations in the Western Democratic tradition are Common-Wealths:

they exist to increase the Common Wealth of everybody, not the few, not an elite, not just one 'tribe', group, ideology or political party. Democracies are run in the interests of everybody.

American Politics have had a guiding principle:

National Interest before Party Interests before Personal Interests.

This principle has been steadily undermined, forgotten and abandoned over the last 5 decades. To the extent that a President can, and has, without censure or consequence ignore not only all normal conventions, but black-letter law that limits his powers and actions meant to ensure public office and the public purse aren't abused and misused.

The role of 'the Internet' in creating extremists

With the rise of the modern, fast, "always connected, anywhere" Internet since 2000, the term "self-radicalised" has come into being and is used more frequently, no longer restricted to militant and extreme non-Christians, but now "home grown" white, Christian terrorists.

It's not The Internet that radicalised people, it's Social Media, specifically the "Algorithms" used select what is included or excluded in users "feeds" or offered as selections.

There are two interlocking feedback mechanisms at the root of how Social Media select what users see:

  • including "more of the same", expressed as "you've liked these in the past, here's more similar",
    • whilst excluding material and views not consistent with a user's "likes", "interests", or "preferences", usually consistent with their online social connections, directly leading to "echo chamber", or "like minded people" effects.
and
  • increasing "engagement", increasing how often people 'like', 'follow' or view items in their feed.
    • People "engage" more when they react emotionally, not logically, and engage most after having a highly emotional response.
    • This leads to a slow and inexorable march to being shown more and more extreme views and material in their feed.
    • As a person normalises a sets of views / material, their emotional reaction to those items diminishes: Social Media firm can only generate more strong responses by increasing sensational, shocking or "outrage" provoking items in a users' feed.
    • From decades of TV studies, before age 10, most children are desensitised to violence and murder. The gaming genre of "First Person Shooter" amplifies this desensitisation.

People become addicted to Social Media, suffering pain, anguish & other symptoms on withdrawal, as well gaming and other Internet Media as new Media firms better understand our Psychology and provoke automatic responses. The extreme cases are people who die while binging or engaging on-line. There's a growing genre of "the last selfie" as people are accidentally killed trying to capture their "ultimate" selfie.

This is deliberate behaviour with intentional effects by Social Media companies, designed to manipulate us into spending more time with them, consuming more of their content (because they assume copyright of the images, videos and text users post), giving up more information about ourselves and, finally, generating more revenue for them.

This should not be shocking to any adult.
This has been the modus operandi of all Advertising, especially TV, and Casinos & gambling / gaming venues for most of the 20th Century. Gambling addicts don't just happen, they are wilfully created by Gambling venues by preying upon ordinary people when they're susceptible.

"Qanon" and the 6-January insurrection & invasion of the Capitol Building were directly mediated and created by Social / Online Media. The impact on, and threat to, Western Democracies is no longer theoretical or improbable: in military terms, this is a Clear and Present Danger.

McLuhan would not be surprised at either the power of New Media or the outcomes from it's unregulated use.

There are very strong arguments to regulate Social / Online Media, Gaming Industry, Advertising & Gambling Venues to put limits on how, and how much, they can prey on customers.

The Public Interest, especially in Western Democracies, should be mandated as coming before all commercial interests or we will have exponentially increasing dysfunction, such as the Insurrection, leading to the end of Civil Society. Literally, our survival depends on it.

This same principle should apply to Food (Obesity & Diabetes epidemic), the Environment (pollution, habitat destruction, species extinction), Sustainable Energy, Manufacturing and Transport, Safe Housing and Healthcare. In our Age of Abundance, is there any reason for anyone in a Western Democracy to live in poverty or with a treatable illness?

Critically, where is the line, where does our responsibility to our Fellow Man end? Is it on arbitrary national borders, geographical boundaries or what?

Who can offer a limit on others that they'd be happy to have imposed on themselves? This is the essence of Christian Doctrine, at the heart of Western Democracies: Do unto others as you'd have them do unto you.

Free Speech and Free Markets may be basic Rights and may be the cornerstone of our financial and economic systems, but they are not, have never been without limit or Responsibility.

If the Public / Common Interest doesn't come before all political, economic and commercial interests, then what does? Who are the privileged few who we are going to gift unlimited benefits? On what grounds do they deserve this gift?

Politics

Trump in the USA and BrExit in the U.K. can be traced directly to hyper-partisanship in Politics led by the the Extreme Right capturing the Conservative right and leading to escalating and complementary responses from other groups, even some Progressive / liberal groups.

"Political Debate" has devolved to personal attack, shouted abuse, paranoia & populism, unabashed lying, denial, deflection, distraction and "the Big Lie". The zenith demonstrated first by Trump winning the Republican Party nomination, then his election campaign leading to uncontrolled, escalating behaviours as 45th President.

New double-speak phrases arose in this fact-free, unaccountable world: "Alternative Facts", "Fake News", "Enemy of the People", "Very fine people on both sides", "people are saying"

FCC "Fairness Doctrine" est 1949, abandoned in 1987 under Reagan & his "Deregulated Free Market" approach, leading in part to "Political Polarisation", due to a perceived“chilling effect” upon Freedom of Speech with Cable & Satellite networks claiming exemption. Like many things, it's a complex issue.

  • required broadcast licensees to both present controversial issues of public importance and
  • to do so in a manner that was honest, equitable, and balanced.
    • with subjects of Editorials, or perceived unfair attacks, given the Right of Reply.
    • candidates for Public Office given equal air-time.


Schooling: without fluency in the current Information Tools, how are people supposed to use them well and wisely. To avoid falling for conmen and charlatans, to discern real vs 'fake' news or information?

The failure of general US public school system to teach well and prepare young people for their adult lives, directly gave rise to the current Polarised, hyper-partisan culture and politics.

Qanon: "Research it for yourself": False premise, these people know how to do good 'research'.

but if people aren't taught at school how to do research, how to critically assess what they see and hear, and importantly the "quality" of the source - 

=> Fox News, Pushing the extreme right political & economic ideology of Murdoch. Amplified by other media reporting their most outrageous comments. 1.5M subscribers and $1B revenue - with a much larger impact.

-> Trump's autocratic, demagoguery accepted, amplified and normalised on Fox News.

=> Tabloid Journalism and "Race to the Bottom": Sensationalism, pandering to prejudice, fears & paranoia of audiences.

=> Republican Party has been corrupted by hyper-partisanship and holding onto power with Senate being a road-block to legislation for decades: "Power at any Cost, Unquestioning Loyalty to Ours, Uncritical Demonisation, attacks and denigration of 'Others'" demonstrated by their unflinching resolve to not impeach #45 regardless of evidence (Russian 2016 Interference) or unequivocal incitement to attack them personally with the possibility of decapitating the entire Congressional Line of Succession.

Normalisation of "Common Sense" and "You just know it's true", alongside distrusting and questioning Expert Opinion and Advice, leading to rejection of the Science of Climate Change without rational cause.

People are proudly "Anti-Expert". What the?!?!?!

The mass perversion of "Christianity". "The love of money is the root of all Evil".

The "Great American Dream", the "opportunity for prosperity and success for everyone" has devolved into greed and a desire for riches, leading to just three of 300 million people controlling or owning half the assets in the USA, and one thousandth of the population owning 80% of its assets.

For a notionally religious, Christian country, this state of affairs where "avarice beyond dreams" is accepted and unremarked seems contradictory.

Why FOSS: standing on the Shoulders of Giants

In response to a great run-down of "Why FOSS" - standing on the Shoulders of Giants.

Loved the Daniel Pink video: life & work aren't only about Profit at any cost.

longer version at: http://stevej-on-it.blogspot.com/2016/11/why-open-source-google-facebook-amazon.html

Humans in groups benefit more from general co-operation than competing fiercely all the time.
Competition creates 'challenge' and prevents complacency and laziness - it's not a bad thing in itself.

But competition comes with downsides:
  it's economically 'inefficient', re-inventing the wheel repeatedly.
  In Engineering terms, everyone reinvents the wheel, repeating some, not all, mistakes
    and no one group ever learns all the 'good' things. Until they merge or are bought up...

Monopolies, or Oligopolies, actively suppress competitors, reduce diversity and multiply costs to consumers.
They may be 'private', but they are anti-competitive and economically disastrous for the markets they hold captive.
Think "Too Big to Fail" and the 2008 global financial crash to understand it's more than just goods affected.

Open Source actively prevents the worst outcomes & encourages the best that Capitalism has to offer: competition of ideas, sharing of Information and knowledge and building on the work of others.

Open Source scales, encourages invention, diversity, novelty & rewards innovation, hard work & risk taking.
It actively prevents asymmetric rewards and 'winner takes all'.

This is capitalism in action. It's mass competition within truly free markets.

Open Business _is_ risky: you can't be complacent or stop Putting the Customer First.
A simplistic analysis might brand Open Source "socialist", but it is the precise opposite.
Open Source underpins fierce, wide-spread competition, while allowing customers needs to be met.
Open Source truly levels the playing field, allowing anyone to earn money based on merit not an inherited position or privilege.

Open Source is an unfamiliar model to many:
  it's fierce competition, that embraces sharing, egalitarian market access and equitable rewards for work.

It's the Epitome of Adam Smith's Free Market, not anything else.
Sharing source code removes information-based market distortions: all sellers and buyers have full market information.

Google, Facebook and Amazon got huge on the back of Open Source and actively contribute their work back.
Notably, not _all_ their work, but key parts.

These big Internet companies have huge turnovers, have made their shareholders rich and are known for being fiercely competitive. Their success is based on Open Source & they know this: actively supporting developers & projects.

To characterise their commercial success as solely due to Open Source, or within the reach of every 2-person start-up is wrong. For every super-large Open Source business, there are tens of thousands of failed startups, thousands of short-lived businesses, hundreds of sustainable mid-scale businesses and a large community of individuals that share and benefit in the work over time.

Open Source is driven in the short-term by profits or altruism funded by research grants or personal interest and exertion.

In the long-term, we know from Google, Facebook et al (& foundations like 'Apache' and 'GNU'/'FSF'), that money is the fuel for Open Source development: and it's mainly contributed 'in kind' by big corporates acting in their own commercial interests.

IBM, HP, Redhat & Canonical/ubuntu, even Intel and Microsoft, collectively spend billions each year on software & testing they seemingly 'just' give away. For them, this is not philanthropy, it's a hard-nosed business investment that repays itself many-fold.

If large Corporations at the heart of the US economy think Open Source makes financial, business and marketing sense, then what is everyone else missing?

Money makes the world go round and Open Source generates stunningly large sales and profits for those smart enough to embrace it and realise it confers a competitive advantage.
It's just good business.

2021/01/31

Scott Morrison vs Google

Let's not beat around the bush, this latest draft legislation is a "Fox News Tax", nothing less.

Consider:
  • The Flow of Value
    • Google, even with 96% share of "Search", gains no revenue from collecting, indexing, curating & presenting "news" content. It's a Free service, a true 'loss leader'.
    • Aus Media sites, esp newspapers, gain significantly from the massive amount of traffic flow ('clicks') driven to their sites.
  • Google & Facebook do not compete in the Advertising segment, Classifieds, where Aus newspapers lost 92% of their revenue since 2002, when Google entered the new segment, online advertising market.
  • The impact on Aus Newspapers if Google withdraws from Australia, or simply stops indexing Aus Media sites.
    • Newspapers will lose traffic (= page views = revenue) immediately, until perhaps, other search engines take over.
    • No Media or newspaper will increase their revenue from Display or Classified Ads if Google withdraws. 

Foreign Political Interference

Rupert Murdoch is a Foreign citizen, yet isn't just allowed to own media all across Australia, isn't confined to one media type, print, he's allowed to dominate - even monopolise - large media markets: News Ltd are the only daily newspapers in multiple Capital Cities and along with Nine-Fairfax come close to an effective media monopoly with 80-90% of readers/viewers in most media markets.

Murdoch's holdings alone account for at least two-thirds of Capital City and National newspaper "circulation", the most politically influential market.

Since 1972, Murdoch's media holdings have taken a vociferously, even violently, anti-ALP stance. In a global media empire with a decidedly Extreme Right bias and a reputation for editors being fired for not toeing "the party line", protestations of "Editorial Independence" are meaningless and hollow. All Murdoch's media holdings operate as his personal mouthpiece, even anonymously publishing his opinions.

In his personal tweets, Murdoch is uncompromisingly anti-ALP, anti-"left" / anti-"progressive. The editorial stance of News Ltd and Sky News is consistent with Murdoch's personal views.

Murdoch's father, Keith Sr, was a founder of the highly secretive, ultra-Right Wing lobbyist grop, IPA ("Institute of Public Affairs", self-styled as "the voice for freedom since 1943"). Murdoch continues to be closely associated with the IPA, who use their platform to directly, or via the media, influence politicians at every level, even openly "suggesting" 100 policies (first 75, another 25) for Tony Abbott as PM, to reverse Gough Whitlam's policies from decades earlier, now part of bedrock of Australian society. The number of IPA policies Abbott "ticked off" should concern anyone interested in an Open & Transparent Democracy, unpinned by free and fair elections, not run by shadowy, "faceless men" in back rooms, doing deals with mates.

There were strict "Foreign Interference" laws introduced for elections, but seemingly don't apply to a Foreigner with effective media monopolies across Australia, who's blatantly and unabashedly pushed hyper-partisan Right-Wing editorial policy for the last 16 federal elections on the trot.

Just for good measure, Murdoch's media in Australia pays almost no tax here, alone has had multiple multi-million grants, without public reasons, from the Federal Government to support it. While in 2014, the Abbott Government directed the ATO to "rebate" News Ltd $882 million after a long running $2 billion law suit.

Problems with the Proposed "Tax"

The idea of taxing somenot all, online advertising businesses and arbitrarily transferring those taxes to some (large) private companies should ring alarm bells. There is no precedent for this type of anti-"Robin Hood" tax transfer in any Western Democracy.

Once this tax transfer mechanism is established, where does it end? Will Gerry Harvey ask for a cut of Kogan, e-Bay and gumtree revenues? 

How is this even legal, taxing selected entities for the enrichment of particular commercial concerns?
There seems no basis for selecting recipients, other than "Have a Go, Get a Go".

There's two other elements that the current draft legislation does not address:
  • the mechanism limited to "news" by journalists, does not scale to other content creators who have no means to charge fairly for their work. This should be a universal micro-payments scheme, open to all content creators equally. 
    • The Copyright Council already collect and distribute fees for use of many types of copyright material. The concept of "fair compensation" for Intellectual Property is already well established & tested, yet ignored by this highly targeted, highly selective and asymmetrical proposal.
  • The scheme does not recognise Copyright or help to enforce any sort of Content Classification system. There is no way to discern "original news content" from "newswire material" or "edited media releases", let alone opinion pieces, sports or entertainment commentary. Or various types of restricted material, including pornography.
    • HTML has "meta" tags, meant for exactly this purpose.
    • The obvious technical implementation is for Content Creators to "tag" their pages, allowing Aggregators and Search Engines to automatically process it, and if required, pay for "using" it.
    • The same technical solution of tagging content, especially "Adult Material", would make the operation of a National "black list" trivial - all untagged content is assumed to be "restricted". In parallel, it'd be possible to provide specific User X.509 certificates allowing access to "Adult Material" in Australia.

Just the Facts

Google didn't steal revenue from newspapers

There's any amount of hysterical 'reporting' in the mass media proclaiming, with no basis in fact, that if Google & Facebook don't acquiesce to this tax, it will be "the end of democracy" as we know it.

The economic analysis firm, AlphaBeta, has released a comprehensive report on the "Australian Media Landscape", specifically addressing the evolution of Google's on-line advertising versus print advertising from 2002 to 2018, plus 2017-2020 data for preferred method of consuming news.

Since 2002, when Google entered the advertising market here, the whole market has nearly doubled.
So what could News Ltd and friends in print media stand to gain, if their business had grown commensurately?

Which is the point. 
News Ltd advertising revenue has collapsed and they are looking to the Government to tax Google for them.

While the rest of the Australian Advertising Industry has gone ahead in leaps and bounds, newspaper revenues have declined by ~30%.

But this wasn't Google "eating their lunch".

92%, $1.3B of $1.4B, of the collapse of Australian newspaper revenues is in an advertising segment that Google (and Facebook) don't even participate in: 

Classified Adverts: the sort that individuals use to advertise their car, boat, old computer or house.

The same revenue stream that Murdoch himself once referred to as "Rivers of Gold", yet collapsed under his stewardship.

Google invented a whole new class of advertising:

tied directly to the content, selected and served in real-time and often finely targeting the individual.

Mass media - radio, TV and print, by definition "fixed" and "uncustomised", have never been able to come close to this level of targeting or reporting outcomes to buyers of advertising.

It's irrational and faulty logic to argue that "Google increased their advertising revenue and newspapers lost out, therefore, Google 'stole' their business". That's false attribution.

In 2000, the mass media companies understood that "The Internet" was going to change Sales and Advertising from traditional "physical" or off-line models. Online Sales have boomed and alongside that, so has the new online Advertising.

Australia Post has ridden this boom in Online Sales, vigorously competing with other private courier companies. It's proof that "Old" model businesses are able necessarily to transition to new business models.

In 2000, those mass media companies were flush with cash. They had all the time, money and resources to not just participate in these new markets, but to leverage their existing customer base and their loyalty, into the new on-line world. There is no good commercial reason for Mass Media companies to have not translated to the new, online advertising world and to fail to leverage their existing customer bases.

If Newspapers are owed restitution, then by whom?

The bias and irrationality of this proposal is clear when looking at the segment that lost everything over the last 15 years: print directories were $1.2B segment in 2002 and have since disappeared.

Why hasn't the government, Productivity Commission, ACCC or News Ltd & Nine-Fairfax mentioned fair restitution for print directories? If any industry segment is deserving of compensation, it's the one that's been obliterated by online services.

The AlphaBeta data & analysis clearly shows that Newspapers over the last 15 years presided over the collapse of their own business. They had the Means, Motive and Opportunity to translate from major players in "Old" Advertising to being the major on-line Advertisers.

The collapse of the Print Media business model is solely due to their failure to compete in an open marketplace. The disruption in their business model wasn't due to a change in licenses, like the Dairy or fishing industries, others ignoring the law, like ride-share, nor leveraging a monopoly, like Windows, but the very definition of competition on a level-playing field. This is no precedent for businesses, large or small, to be compensated for failing to be competitive.

Contrary to assertions in government reports to the contrary, in 2002 Google was not the dominant online advertiser. In 2002, Google was a young upstart business with little revenue and zero profits. Google's business and future in 2002 was anything but certain, against the Big Media Players, who had always been very good investments, with deep pockets and a seemingly certain future.

It is simply incorrect to characterise Google, who worked hard to attract 96% of search requests in 2018, as a dominant and highly-funded operation in 2002, or even the decade leading up to 2018.

The majority of lost print media revenue came from the move of Classifieds from print to online. If anyone had the foresight and capability to build a comprehensive Online Classifieds system for Australia, it was the Trading Post and the large print media operations. Yet they sat on their laurels.

We've seen Shareholder Class Actions for lesser reasons in Australia. Perhaps those who've been suckered by the indolence and incompetence of the Mass Media companies might now take a renewed interest.

I'm at a loss as to why Print Media, who sat idly by as their self-described "Rivers of Gold" were taken from them by Cheaper, Better, Faster on-line alternatives, are owed anything. Why should Google and Facebook be targeted when they don't even compete in that market segment?

Since when do businesses in a Free Market Capitalist system have the right to a tax or levy on competitors who've beaten them fairly & squarely in the market place?

Irony upon Irony

It's more than a little ironic that the heroic supported of The Free Market, Rupert Murdoch - as we know from his association and accolades from the IPA, has somehow contrived to create a law that penalises those who win in equitable deregulated market competition and rewards Murdoch's businesses for failing to compete.

The ultimate test of the "Google stole my lunch" theory is if they leave Australia, will Print Mass Media fortunes be magically reversed? Absolutely not - because Google & Facebook didn't take their Classifieds revenue.

I guess this is the central question to ask Murdoch and his Political Allies:

What does "the Free Market" mean if the Government can swoop in and tax legitimate winners who's only crime is out competing sluggards, then transferring their hard won profit to those who lost?

Google wasn't issuing a threat when it said its business model could not support paying an unfair, unjust and undeserved tax. It was stating a business reality. For anyone without full access to its books and Business Plans to say otherwise is being presumptuous, disingenuous and mendacious.

Nobody but Google knows their financial position and the strength of their position. Any politician or arm of government to presume this was a "threat", not a statement of fact, is being foolish in the extreme. The stakes for Australian business are very high and should be idly disregarded for some imagined political benefit.

The only people issuing 'threats with menaces' and attempting to bully others is Morrison and his band of unaccountable ministers.



Graphics from AlphaBeta Report

Australian media landscape trends

Newspaper revenues have declined



Online search revenues have grown

Australian newspaper revenues 2002-2018


Australian newspaper revenues 2002 vs 2018

Australian advertising revenues 2002 vs 2018


Classified advertising revenues, print newspaper vs online

Online search, display and classified advertising revenues totalled $8.5B in 2018

Online search advertising revenues - estimate of sources

Net readership of Australian newspapers 2002 vs 2018

Preferred method of consuming news in Australia 2017 - 2020





2018/07/23

FMAA s44, now PGPA s 15, 'proper use':

The Financial Management and Accountability Act (FMAA) was replaced by the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act  (PGPA)

Department of Finance administers the Act.

Resource Management glossary - proper use

Efficient, effective, economical and ethical use or management of public resources.
For the accountable authority of a non-corporate Commonwealth entity, proper use and management of public resources means behaving, taking action and making decisions in a way that is not inconsistent with the policies of the Australian Government in accordance with sections 15 and 21 of the PGPA Act.
Related glossary terms
Last updated: 13 January 2016