A Writer’s Life

This hasn’t been a good period for John Howard. Howard forgot a Tasmanian Liberal candidate’s name on air, and then the ridiculous upgrades to the government’s VIP aircraft were revealed: $100,000 worth of upgrades, including $9000 in silk wall panelling and $6200 in almond-coloured leather added to the ceiling (refits that were later dropped). The problem for Howard is that in a lead-up to a Federal election, with the government lagging behind in the polls, he can’t afford to seem weak. And that’s exactly what’s happening; these slips create doubt in people’s minds about Howard’s ability to do his job, not to mention his ability to relate to the Australian people.

So it didn’t surprise me in the slightest when the government decided to revoke Muhammad Haneef’s visa and detain him, despite his being granted bail by a magistrate. What’s the one issue that Howard has always perceived as his strength with voters? National security, particularly regarding terrorism. It won the Liberals the 2001 election after 9/11. And I’m sure this seemed like a simple decision; Haneef was granted bail, so detain him for his visa - they’ll stop an accused supporter of terrorism from getting back out on the streets, doing the public a service, and making Howard look strong again.

All very good in theory. Except in reality it’s an abysmal abuse of due process and the criminal justice system. What is the point of going through the process of charging Haneef and having him appear before the court if, when the government is given an outcome it doesn’t approve of, it simply detains Haneef in a different way? Supposedly we’re not happy with the treatment of David Hicks while he was at Guantánamo Bay, but in doing this, how is it not the same? It’s hypocritical for anyone who has criticised Guantánamo Bay in the past not to say that.

For me the issue is not whether Haneef is a terrorist. He has been charged with giving support to a terrorist organisation, yes, but he has not been convicted yet, and we won’t know until we’ve seen all the evidence. The issue rather is that the government has created a scenario where if Haneef is innocent, he will be deported and if he is guilty, he’ll be sent to prison. How is that democratic? How is that Australian?

All this is, of course, in the name of protecting Australians. Kevin Andrews says he’s in possession of information that warrants Haneef being placed in the Villawood detention centre. If that’s true, then Haneef should be charged with a higher offence. You can’t just say that because someone is dangerous, you’ll do whatever it takes to lock them away; you have to prove it. That’s what democracy is. And isn’t democracy why Howard keeps telling us we’re in Iraq?

It makes me wonder, when does the time come when you realise you have given away too many of your civil liberties, too much of what makes your society an open democracy, to be protected? Do you even realise it at all, or do you just look back with the distance of time and wonder what might have been? I don’t know. I don’t think we’re there yet. I hope not.

Perhaps the government really does have evidence on Haneef we’re not privy too. But it’s still walking a very fine line, and treading political mileage with it. The memories of 9/11, Bali and London have faded, replaced with fear; fear of attack, fear of the unknown, fear that’s being exploited. That’s our world now, a world where, as Hedley Thomas says, you can buy coffee for a Muslim and “have unwittingly supported a terrorist organisation”. But at least we know one thing: we know what the terms of the 2007 election will be now. And it’s up to us to decide if we’ll accept them.

I’ve never liked reality tv to begin with, but these would be criminal…

5) Survivor: Swimming with Sharks

4) Yippeekayay: The Search for the next Die Hard financier

3) Big Brother with Jerry Springer

2) Senior Citizen Idol

1) Hitman (or: How to kill your competition for $1 million)

I’ve had several experiences with Copyright infringement since my work was first published. The most serious was when a high school in Germany reprinted portions of A Glimpse of the Future without permission. It was a strange situation; on the one hand it was a copyright infringement and pissed me off, but on the other it was a compliment as they were using it as an example for their students. Since then I’ve become more and more convinced that the traditional Copyright system has become outdated as technology has left it behind. We need a newer system which takes into account the technology and interchangeability of the 21st century, a system which protects content creators but doesn’t punish users for taking an interest in someone’s work.

I’m not sure if this is the answer, but in the interim I’ve decided to support Creative Commons Licensing. Under a Creative Commons license, the incident with the German high school would not have occured; I would have allowed them to use a portion of it for non-commercial purposes. Likewise, it allows musicians to let people use their music on MySpace or other sites, photographers to have their photos recognised by more people, gaining publicity without having their rights infringed. Can you imagine if the record companies adopted this, or even Hollywood? It would have a huge impact on piracy, I think in a good way.

So from the release of my next story, Shards of Babylon, my future work will be protected under an Australian Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivs license. It’s a mouthful, but basically it means that I will allow people to copy, distribute and transmit my work as long as they attribute back to me as the author; that they do not change it in any way; and that they make no money off of it. If they want to use it in any other way, they must contact me first; I might still be amiable to helping them out. Right now I’m using it with my photos on Flickr.

I’m going to be posting more on Creative Commons and Copyright over the next few months as it’s something I believe in, so I hope you’ll come back and keep an open mind. I’d be very interested to know what you think, actually. I know it’s not something everyone will agree with, but as a writer this isn’t a small issue for me, it’s part of my every day life. I want to be protected, sure, but I also want to be able to communicate with my readers. Allowing someone to take a part of my story they liked and post it on their website… how does that really hurt me? It means I get new readers, a new audience, more publicity. That’s what Web 2.0 is all about! I still think we need a new system, and in the end Creative Commons might not be enough, but for now it’s a better option than what we have and that’s why I’m supporting it.

If you’d like to know more about Creative Commons, check out the website CreativeCommons.Org or the Wikipedia article Wikipedia: Creative Commons License.

Time to give some recognition to the kind folks at Wordpress; they’re always working tirelessly to keep everything running smoothly for their bloggers. Great job, guys.

I’ve been very impressed with Wordpress since I signed up a year ago. I’ve had experience with webhosting before (I still host www.sci-fimonthly.com), but really it’s been more of a hassle than I want to bother with; between creating designs, constantly changing content and the monthly fees, it’s very frustrating. When I was looking to create this blog, I wanted to find something free but powerful to solve a lot of those problems. And Wordpress was it.

Now it’s completely exceeded my expectations. I set up CJWriter as a blog, but it’s really become more of a website in its own right. I host my stories here, get to talk about writing and other issues - and even more importantly, comments allow me to interact with readers in a way I never could before. I could have done this on my own, yes, but Wordpress makes it so simple that there’s no need to.

There are only a couple of things I wish I could have. One is a custom favicon, something a lot of WP users having been asking for… a few people have said it might happen in the future (so send feedback!). Another is a paid upgrade to ensure that readers don’t see ads. I have no problem with Wordpress running ads (that’s how they can focus on their free features), and they only appear rarely to people who aren’t logged in. But a lot of my readers come off Google and aren’t logged in, so I would be willing to pay for an upgrade to ensure that ads aren’t run on CJWriter… just a personal taste decision (so far I’ve never seen an ad myself), but hopefully that upgrade is in the works.

In the meantime, if anybody doesn’t know about them, I thought I’d draw attention to two great free webstat programs. Wordpress has it’s own stats, but they’re not quite as detailed as some people might like. If you install either of these (or both!), they’ll act to complement Wordpress’s stats and between the two you’ll get quite a comprehensive breakdown of visitors. You’ll need the HTML code for both programs, rather than the javascript code, which means you won’t get all the features… which is why they work well with Wordpress’s stats. To install, just insert the line of HTML in a text widget.

Statcounter
Statcounter is my personal favourite stats program. I’ve been using it for years and it’s completely free; you can keep track of up to 250,000 pageloads and you get a considerable breakdown, from pageloads to country, browser stats, etc. It also has an invisible option.

HiStats
HiStats is a relatively new stats program. It has quite similar features to Statcounter, but it’s graphical layout is very different. It has a great look and if you like interpreting stats through a quick glance, check it out.