SEOSEM in OZ

Impressions: SEM in Ozland

2007-01-26T00:12:05-08:00

Helping a friend put together a business plan in a determined effort to salvage his struggling business, I rummaged through some boxes of old books. These things had been gathering dust for a few years and were due to be dumped or sold off somewhere, but you never know what insights you'll find in old books.
What I found was instructive, if not encouraging: an old copy of "The Australian Internet Book" from 2000. If I'd read better, instead of dismissing the discouraging tone of the writing as the author trying to sound knowledgeably disdainful, I'd have had a good insight into the realities of the Internet in Australia, and Australian culture and society.
Under the title, "What is worth buying?" are the words:

"Online shopping is easy but solitary. It is price effective but hands off. You do not get to try before you buy.
As a result, things that are difficult to find, vary greatly in price, or that are not considered fun to buy, sell well online.
The items that score top in the online shopping surveys are books, music CDs, and computer software. Likewise, travel, employment and investment services hae been building for some time."

I remember commenting on the negative tone of this book 5-6 years ago. It's probably why it sat in a box for years, too. But the authors - Geoff Ebbs and Maryanne Phillips - had a very good grasp of the society and the state of technology. I just refused to believe it because of my own intellectual stubbornness - and the forced anticipation (read: "irrational expectations") of a lucrative new market for my skills.
After all, 2000-2001 in the US was still the rising tide of the dot-com bubble. There wasn't even a hint that it would burst back then.
In order to hang onto that happy anticipation, I had to ignore the comparison of statistical realities between Australia and America:

In America, nearly 40% of households had access to the Internet;
and more than 35% of those households had purchased using credit cards off the Net;
broadband of any form - cable, ISDN, or DSL - was a hot demand across the country.
In Australia, less than 15% of the nation had access to the Internet;
and it was stretching reality to find 15% of those who were willing to buy anything off the Net.
Internet banking was just being introduced in Australia;
I'd been paying my bills via the Net for nearly 5 years in my rural California town.
Americans saw the Internet as a new medium for free speech, entertainment and commerce;
Australians were wary of putting any personal details, especially financial, onto this frightening new means of intrusion.

Amazon and Google had only risen to prominence, - supplanting smaller, less-technical services. America was still waiting to see if these "great new ideas" were going to work. Australia didn't want any part of these untested technologies.
The phrases from that old book may seem silly now, but only to some. Even now, 7 years later, Australia is about where America was then, but with all the resistance and baggage of the dot-com collapse. Australia is still being dragged - kicking and screaming - onto the Internet by government, banking and telecomms.
A solid 20-25% of Australian households and businesses simply refuse to have Internet access because they "see no need".

The Rough Barren Landscape
One good thing about a rough landscape is you can pick out the landmarks. There isn't a lot to distract from them. A long look across the Arizona desert will tell you it's going to be hard going, but you can always see the mountains day or night. And a rough land has a beauty all its own.
That's a fair simile for the state of the Internet in Australia still.

There are few markets where a little research can reveal an almost comprehensive view of the resources for search engine marketing in the US or Europe. It's pretty much possible in Australia.

SEO is an almost unknown term. In fact, it seems to be a rejected foreign term in the aussie vernacular. The standard of website development is strikingly low. Nationally familiar sites are only moving to accommodate standards in the last year or so. Many can still be quickly flagged as loose or just plain sloppy.

Mountains in the distance
Government and academic institutions have taken the entrepreneurial role from small companies, and are squashing them, suffocating innovation and creativity. Government and financial institutions dominate ecommerce activity. Government-subsidized enterprises, partially-privatized vendors, offer more than just supporting services. These institutions have become enterprises competing with the growth of individual or small enterprise.
It's fairly easy to find the majority of directories and search engines for listing: look for links from these institutions. Every TAFE and university has one or two for training students. They represent the mountains in the distance used for triangulating position.

A very small number of specialized directories are privately held, and they service distinct industry segments. Predictably, since many industries are economically shallow in Australia, only primary industries like mining have successful, effective topical directories.
Small entrepreneurial efforts to develop search engines and directories exist, but are lonely anomalies in the landscape. Still worth supporting, their relative worth to the cost involved is difficult to judge.

New pathways are not trusted
Even fewer are the blogs and free publication sites.
Free speech is a guarded thing in Australia, and the concept of blogging - citizen journalism - is still foreign and distrusted in the aussie mindset. The Australians' reticence to reveal their contact details and credit cards has some validity since the government is not bound by constitutional limits. Insightful statements are kept to guarded conversations in private; not put forward for the broader public to read. I've been warned not to say too much in telephone conversations about my real opinions, which left me speechless.
Even revealing technical or business expertise is considered "bad form."
It's a guilt thing. The sensibilities of those who are not technically savvy are offended because they know they should know more of this stuff. It's just rushing past them, and they resent it.

New ideas are not trusted. Blogs are new ideas. It's really that simple, compounded by a weak education system that produces a society-wide sense of inadequacy and insecurity.
Heading off on an unknown path, trusting to a knowledgeable guide, is not done. There is a childish petulance that arises. This petulance literally will take years to overcome.

Free publication articles to illustrate expertise is considered "bragging", even after it's been demonstrated as a common business practice, and a valuable means of driving traffic to a site while establishing links.

The stubborn reticence is being overwhelmed by pressures from government and social expectations, but manifests itself in silly ways. Despite the national push towards broadband, where the computer stays connected to the Net all the time, more than 50% of those computers have no firewall, ineffective if any antivirus protections, and no spyware protection. Tens of thousands of expensive new computers are grinding to a halt because they're simply overwhelmed.
Yet the owners seem happy to continue to expect a computer to run like a fridge.
This sort of reticence to understand and work with computers builds on itself into a sort of boogeyman. It may mean that more money moves around in the economy, but it also hampers economic growth and the independence of individual productivity.

It's not the dark nights really
When you add into this mix the fact that 2.3 million, or 96.4% of registered businesses, - and the employers of 85% of the working people in Australia - are small businesses with gross incomes under $2 million a year, the outlook and present state of ecommerce and SEM becomes clear. Less than 10% of these companies are using the Net for commerce. Of those, most are using secondary webpages offered by directories; not their own hosting and domains. Many, even companies that are involved in technology, are using what is considered outside Australia as unprofessional contact methods such as email addresses from hotmail and Yahoo.
For these reasons and many others, it will be years before Australia lives up to its market promise, if ever.
If the amendments to copyright law are strictly enforced, it will never happen. Australia will become a dark corner of the Internet, vulnerable to attack, and with shrinking future.
As if the mountains never got any closer.

Looking a little closer

2007-01-11T17:50:04-08:00

In Just the Basics is a short checklist to illustrate the steps to making a website visible to the larger web and drive traffic to it. Let's take a closer look at the steps, one by one.

Attract new visitors
Get your site listed in search engines and directories:

Submit site to Google and other search engines

Submit site to Yahoo! and other directories

Revise site as needed to improve search rank

People use Google every day. Customers expect a business to have a website. Every website owner wishes wants their website to bee seen. Yet many never realize that unless they tell the search engines and directories the site exists, there's a good chance it will never be found.
In fact, more than half the webpages on the Net are not listed anywhere.

Did you notice the change? Websites were the topic, then in the last sentence, webpages.
That's an important distinction for a business since most businesses offer more than one service or product. And each product or service commonly goes on a different page.
Search engines and directories need to know not just that your website exists, but the webpages where your services and products are described. Every webpage on a site potentially defines a different marketing goal because the product(s) or service(s) on the page have different competitors, customers, and goals for the business.

Search engines and Directories
What's the difference?
This is where borrowing prose from fantasy novels becomes appropriate somehow. Quote:

In the beginning, in the time before time, there were no search engines. There were a few secretive lists of places to find information. These were the first directories.

When the Internet began, there were so few that the best place to look for something was to look where others with similar interests were sharing what they'd found. These were called bulletin boards or newsgroups. Finding them was a never-ending quest.

It does sorta sound like a fantasy game, doesn't it?

In time, some websites made lists of resources on a topic. These were the first directories.
Other websites made lists of lists, listing the topics. And then some made lists of the lists again, categorizing the information by regions, topics, and categories.
But unless you knew where to start, you could think the Net was empty.

Then came archie. archie was the first well-known search programs on the Net. In fact, it was a web protocol, not just a program. Searching the web has been intrinsic to the web from the very beginning.
What archie would return was a list of sites and lists as links. archie would read what the sites and lists said about themselves, and if what you were looking for matched, archie would let you know.
archie was a vast improvement over having to keep long lists for yourself, but archie was not very efficient since archie was not very loquacious. archie only looked for what you told him.
If you wanted to look for 'program', archie would return a list of every type of program - any programming language, any program for dieting, exercise, school programs, and on and on.
Before archie disappeared from common usage, programmers made him more discriminating, but then came search engines.

Search engines did not just look for things on the Net when you told them to, like archie, but kept looking all the time. Search engines sent programs out to follow links from one site to another, and send back information about all the sites it found. The programs were called robots or spiders.

The really good thing about search engines though was not just all the sites they found, but that the information that was returned was indexed and analyzed. Search engines let you distinguish between programming a computer and programming a concert.
How?
Remember the directories? Search engines would follow the lists of lists on directories, and use the categories to organize what was found.
Even more, search engines looked at how things were categorized and realized that different words could be used to mean the same thing - and could use those other terms to give more results for a search term. They indexed the results based on the terms and other similar terms.

Then search engines started doing a very smart thing: they kept track of the stuff, which meant you didn't have to search the whole web. You just had to search the search engine's database.
There's a snag here, of course. If the site isn't listed on the search engine, either because it was on a directory or found from some link, the site simply didn't exist for anyone who used the search engine.
Remember, more than half the webpages out there have never been found.

The categories became keywords. Websites found a way to put keywords and descriptions on their webpages invisible to those who viewed the webpage - called metatags.
Combine the keywords with links from other sites, and search engine marketing was born.

Links can be compared to votes. The more people link to a site, the more popular it is. The more ways the spieders can find it. This went into the search engines' databases, too. The more visitors a site has depends a lot on the links. Combine traffic on a site with the number of links to the site, and that is the beginning of how to index the popularity of a site.
Not only does a site want links, but the owner wants people to see it.

Sudden Silence continues

2007-01-09T22:22:02-08:00

The dearth of commentary on the new copyright laws continues in Australia.
For nearly a year, Kim Weatherall was filling her blog posts with important commentary on the subject, along with a number of other blogs and news outlets around the country, but suddenly - silence.
YouTube continues to be under fire, - It may be directed indirectly at Google since they own YouTube. - with a diminishing number of comments from any media. Considering the potential for public harm and expense from the Cooper decision, it is hard to believe that nothing has happened in over a month. I mean, this stuff even had Australians working and reading until late December. Even the Attorney-General wanted to go home in mid-November, but stuck around to deal with the crisis.
And now: nothing.

This is the sort of thing that evokes a nationwide sense of helplessness borne on a fear of conspiracy.
Never have I seen a nation so certain of conspiracy. Conspiracies are so ubiquitous in Australia that even people who have shared the same experience cannot trust one another. There is such a morass of real and imagined conspiracies as to hamper any expression of thought, even between 'friends.'
And the sad thing is most of the conspiracy fears prove true.
It's a morass of lies and silence; half-lies and silence. A tangled web no one understands, but everyone fears - even those involved in it.
John Howard has publicly lied about so many things, you have to wonder if he has any idea what reality is anymore. But he'll probably be re-elected next election.
There is this image in my mind of a Jabba-character sitting rudely on the whole of Australia with John Howard's face on it.

Has some government cabal put out the word that no one is to mention the copyright laws until they find a good spin on what's happened? I hate, literally hate, saying it, but: Yeah.
The next time the public will hear about the stupidity of the Cooper judgment, they won't.
Politicians do not appear on the scene unless the scene has been properly prepared and vetted. Judges don't appear until after they have made mistakes and the errors can't be fixed. And lawyers lurve that sort of error. It means lots of money for them.

It isn't hard to figure out what will be the next thing the public hears about copyright laws and Cooper. It will be a small article on the edges of the news section, easy to overlook, which will report dryly how much Cooper has to pay MIPI in costs.
Considering that MIPI and its four deep-pocket clients investigated Mr Cooper's site for more than 2 years - employing a small army of private investigators - and then the court case ran 18 months, Mr Cooper's grandchildren may be paying off the debt.
He may was well organize a pool on how many grandchildren he'll have. It might alleviate some of the expense, but it'll never happen unless the story gets out to the public. - And it may never get out.

Complaints about infringement are sent to the website's ISP. Copyright infringement notices are sent by the copyright holder to the user's ISP. IP addresses identify infringement. Before the new law was in effect, this was usually just a notice and warning. There is no provision for warning in the new law.
The efforts have already become overzealous. One user reports he was sent a notice for downloading a game which was freely offered.
Downloads are tagged with special code segments to identify illegal ownership. That's not new. There have been confirmed reports of copyright owners posting to P2P sites, like Limewire, copies with known worms in them - which would notify the copyright holder of the name, IP address, and email of illegal copiers.
That was declared illegal in the US. It isn't illegal in Australia.

The problem is knowing whether the worm is reporting you for an illegal copy, or using your email address book to spread itself across the Internet. At least one of MIPI's clients, Sony, didn't think it mattered.
They got sued for including code in some CDs which damaged computers, too.

Australian law is already prejudiced, in both word and administration. And in a form that would have been antithetical even to Gutenburg.

One of the quirks of globalization that creates a distinctive hypocrisy when an Australian court attempts to make its judgments affect rights in other countries is that when Australia ratifies a treaty, or signs onto a UN Resolution or Agreement, it is legally meaningless within Australia.
When the US, UK, or most of the nations of Europe ratify a treaty or Resolution, it becomes the law of the land. It has the force of law, meaning the courts and police must enforce it.

Australia's constitution is configured so that ratifying a treaty only truly binds other countries to enforce the treaty (or Resolution, since UN Resolutions are treaties). Within the borders of Australia, treaties with other countries have no legal meaning. (This little-known fact makes the complaints about Free Trade Agreements a legal joke, and must provide a lot of humor for lawyers.)
The only enforcement mechanism for international treaties and resolutions within Austraila is the media, if the story can be explained to a cynical, apathetic public.

Schools and universities are going to great lengths to protect their students and faculty, and themselves, from infringing under the new laws. Monash Univ, for example, has a series of documents on a subdomain - a separate server just for copyright issues. But they appear to have a hard time practically incorporating the new law. There are 17 copyright advisors listed with contact information. In the irony of reality, the Arts department has not appointed an advisor.

Older aussies will tell you Australia has had a "For Sale" sign on it for a long time.

Just the Basics

2007-01-06T15:20:31-08:00

When I conceived this blog a few weeks ago, it was intended to illustrate the special circumstances of search engine marketing and search engine optimization in Australia. I picked up a few books on SEM and waded through them, bookmarking handy sites and lists of sites, all along comparing them with the clients and their marketing goals.
It wasn't long before I had lists on lists all over Australia.

I planned to do a few test projects to get me started. Each site could be representative of small business in Australia.

Because Australia has taken to the Net so quickly, and with the advent of real broadband speeds, this project looked to be fun - a case study in globalization that might track well as other small countries move onto the Net.
I felt kinda lucky to have found them, since each plan appeared to apply to thousands of businesses.
The real surprise after doing the research across the country to prepare for these projects was the restrictions of the new copyright law in Australia, but nuff said about that for now.

Small tech company
Because his business involved computers, his clients expected him to have a website. The business is home-based, which limits the service area to a few suburbs on the east side of Melbourne. He said if it weren't for his customers wanting the address of his website, he'd probably not bother with one. His business was based on referrals. Like nearly all Australians, he had no idea what purpose a website served other than a brochure.
His naivete was striking because he had worked with computers all his adult life, and was one of the first to get an Internet connection.
His niche services are to troubleshoot broadband connection issues, then to set up a network to share the broadband connection; maintenance and repair of computers or notebooks. In a developing market where broadband connections are increasing rapidly, many consumers were unaware of the service gap when they get a computer.
The special issues here call for an entrepreneurial approach to this website; focus on the limited geographical area; and a need to brand - within that geographical area - his niche specialty.
The usual SEM tools don't meet these requirements easily.

Barcode Designer
It may sound a little odd to say "Barcode Designer", but it's warranted when you consider the many technical aspects of barcodes printed on various materials.
This is another home business, but with a national and international market. Barcodes are regulated by international organizations and standards. There is no real branding involved because of the capacity of the business and its broad market. The market is extremely competitive from the business' viewpoint: 1) many consumers have moved to making their own barcodes; and, 2) barcodes are often built into the package design process for large consumers. What the company is seeking is those businesses who require small numbers of barcodes delivered quickly and efficiently - within a few hours usually - that will scan on their packaging.
The usual SEM tools may work well to get wide exposure, but may fail if the service is not clearly defined.

New Weight Loss site
This project is actually to support the efforts of the wife of one of the owners of the other sites. This site has paid another company for SEM. All efforts will only enhance the chances of success. Although the project is hampered because there is no coordination between my efforts and the other company. That was the choice of the owner, who felt they would not get all they could for their money if the other company knew someone else was working on marketing the site.
Realistically, I shouldn't get involved in this mess, but a friend asked for the favor. And since I am still researching and learning the tools of the SEM trade in Oz, I might learn something useful.
I'm free of the SEO responsibilities here (other than carefully timed suggestions possibly).
The site will be marketed initially to Australia and New Zealand, then when the kinks are worked out to the rest of the world - or at least that's the plan.

Getting things started
To get the projects rolling, I tracked down a short checklist of the basics. It would also serve as a starting point to introduce the clients to the SEO-SEM process.
As a programmer, you learn a simple maxim: "Good programmers write code. Great programmers steal code." Or, put another way: "Don't reinvent the wheel...

How will you increase traffic?

Wish you had more traffic to your web site? Well stop whining and do something about it. This methodical approach—attracting new visitors, increasing the length of visits, and bringing visitors back more often—works every time.

Attract new visitors
Get your site listed in search engines and directories:

Submit site to Google and other search engines

Submit site to Yahoo! and other directories

Revise site as needed to improve search rank

Try other strategies:
         Strategy                                  Did it       Not gonna do it

Solicit links from other sites

Advertise online

Advertise in other media

Start a "tell-a-friend" program

Buy an email list

Bring visitors back more often
Craft an email strategy to bring users back:
               Task                                                 Done?

Start collecting addresses (membership)

Integrate email sign-up form on home page

Send first round of email messages

Experiment with approaches to email

What are your other strategies?
            Strategy                               Did it          Not gonna do it

Update site more often

Run promotions & sales

Add community features

Become the user's home page

Increase length of visits
Improve site design
                        Task                                     Done?

Make choices intuitive

Make navigation consistent

Un-bury site features

Clearly label site features

Integrate site search

Make sure site search returns good results

Test site with users

Test site with users other than Mom

What are your other strategies?
                  Strategy                                  Did it       Not gonna do it

Encourage participation

Break articles into multiple pages

Give "more" (suggest related links)

Integrate site search

improve site speed

I have read and understood
true false

A short checklist like this is deceptively simple. It's so short it's not intimidating. Everything is really an open question. You learn a lot about the client in a few minutes. And you get a chance to discuss many areas quickly.
The details you leave for later. Even a small site often requires a lot of work.
And clients will always surprise you.

Links to your site

2007-01-05T13:48:15-08:00

One of the more interesting reactions to the new copyright laws in Australia is on links and law, titled "How to stop links to your site".
There is a whole page on how to avoid being "framed", as if that were a real concern. What their on about is best demonstrated by choosing a link from any article on About.com. The page will appear under a wide About.com banner. About.com uses invasive Javascript to inject the code for their banner into the new page if it won't open in the frame.
It's not hard to overcome such programming. Just right-click anywhere in the new page and choose 'Open in new window' (or 'Open in new frame' if you're using Firefox.)

There is code that can be inserted into a web document to prevent being "framed"; and code that can prevent injected Javascript.

Thing is, this is the Internet. The whole idea of the Net is to get links to your site, blog, or page.

Not being "framed" has little or nothing to do with the dangers of the new copyright law, whether you have links to offending material or not. Your code may prevent someone from using a link to your page, but that doesn't mean they won't be able to copy the link and use it in a new browser window.
All the code does is force your page into a new window.

If the idea is to protect yourself from being visible to Australians, you've failed.
There is better technology for that on every server. Just set the server exclusions to Australian IP addresses. Not only will your site not be "framed" and exposed to Australia's restrictive laws, but it will not appear at all. You just redirect the user to a customized error page to explain.

Some servers will allow you to do this on a page by page basis, leaving parts of your site available while any offensive material is blocked. If the server doesn't have this facility (or you don't have access to it), there are Python and Perl scripts that can be employed.
This sort of scripting can be used on blogs, too.
Savvy webmasters will redirect the visitor to a customized error page for a few seconds, then back to the main page for the site. There's no sense in losing a visitor.

Sudden Deafening Silence

2007-01-05T13:08:46-08:00

It's as if a silent hand reached out across Australia. You can even mark the date: December 20th.
From all the sources listed on the right under "Australian Copyright Law", there was an intense debate examining the new law, then suddenly - silence.
As if someone said, "Enough", then, "Stop dissecting and criticizing Australian law. Write about the rest of the world." The Word was spoken, and The Word was heard.
The last comments from Kim Weatherall and LawFont were on 20 December. The Sydney Morning Herald is focusing on YouTube. The last critique on Boing Boing was 25 December. TechDirt's last article was 18 December.
The ITWire from 12 December quotes Attorney-General Philip Ruddock's amorphous reassurances:

"Everyday consumers shouldn't be treated like copyright pirates. Copyright pirates shouldn't be treated like everyday consumers," Ruddock said. "In fact, anyone who uses iPods, DVDs, CDs or records television programs will benefit from the changes."

"Tonight countless Australians will no longer be breaking the law," he said, even though the new law doesn't come into effect for two weeks.

On the 18th of December, the Cooper judgment was handed down by the High Court making Mr Ruddock's reassurances sound hollow.
Why the sudden silence? If there was some official or semi-official word that went out, why aren't Australian experts writing about it? If there was no word, then why the silence?
Or is this just the infamous aussie holiday break?

The full law doesn't come into effect until 8 January. The Cooper judgment was handed down nearly a month earlier, and redefined the law and the terms on which it will be enforced.
Note the date of Mr Ruddock's comments. Australian lawmakers scrambled for more than two weeks to rewrite portions of the law.

There were a few articles which declared some things clearly outlawed in the first passage of the new law to be legal: making a copy of music onto an iPod; making a copy of a television show, but these are still outlawed acts. There is really only politicians' promises they won't be prosecuted.
For example, making a copy of a television show is now - supposedly - legal.. so long as the copy is destroyed in at "the earliest possible" time - in plainer English: ridiculous.

Australian politicians and lawmakers are going to be scrambling for years trying to explain why these laws are not draconian in the most literal sense. The authors seem to be ignorant of the changes in technology and especially information distribution on the Internet for at least 10 years or more.
Australia sough to establish itself as leader in copyright law for the world.
What has been shown is how not to right a copyright law, and how not to administer that law.

Law must either learn or become itself archaic
Governments appear to have forgotten the philosophical concepts established in the 18th and 19th centuries. The first fact of law is simple: Law is brutality.
At best, law is enlightened brutality, an ordered brutality, but nothing reduces the element of brutality in law.

Law is limited by language to terminology and definition. The careful definition of terms by lawmakers is one attempt to reduce the apparent brutality in law, yet most often results in sometimes comical redefinitions. Law quickly becomes "Right-Speak" from the book "1984".
Twisted definitions usually known only to the practitioners of the law.
The result is the attitude of lawyers to their clients as "wards of the state", as lawyers are trained to consider clients. Clients treated as too ignorant or mentally deficient to understand. These increasingly arcane meanings support the superior attitude of lawyers, lawmakers, and the judiciary towards ordinary citizens - and provides an income for the interpreters.

The failure of law is that terms change in meaning over time in popular use, and more significantly in the application of law. Judgments redefine these terms into obscurity and arcanity. The High Court seems to have gotten the jump on the world and even Australian lawmakers. The only leadership that's been shown is to take the law quickly into inanity and uselessness.
Australia already has thousands of archaic laws on the books, too racist or petty to be enforced, but still there. Let us hope, or pray if you're so inclined, that these laws join them in the dusty shelves soon.

Weatherall's Law
This must be Kim Weatherall's day in the sun, truly. She is remarkably well-educated, a practicing lawyer in Australia with a specialty in Intellectual Property, and an active, independently-minded blogger. If she isn't one of the key advisors to the lawmakers working on the new copyright laws, someone is missing a tooth.
Still, she is a trained lawyer, and schooled in Luddist thinking. I read a treatise once about the pattern of luddist thinking, which began with a grand statement promising a wide clarifying view of an issue, then stopped when the criticism and rationale was incomplete to come to the desired conclusions. It is the tool of lawyers the world around because such unfinished syllogisms are very difficult to unwind in a timely manner. Ms Weatherall's critique of Creative Commons licensing models are too good an example.
I would never place Ms Weatherall in the same class of Luddist as Rob Hulls or Tim Holding, however. Her blog, "Weatherall's Law" is not narrow minded or reactionary. Her passion for blogging drives her beyond her training - even if you can almost feel the conflicting threads of thought in her words.
"Creative Commons is more a social movement", for example, misses the larger fact that Creative Commons does not pretend to be anything else; and that all law is a "social movement". In fact, most bad law is known by better phrasing: "social engineering."
Social movements come about when government and law fail to respond to the direction of society. They are bad when the movements are reactionary; Creative Commons is not, unless the tenor of a social movement is taken as defensive. That test has already failed since Creative Commons licensing is on the offensive. It is inadequate law and its myopic proponents who are on the reactionary defensive.
It's interesting that despite Ms Weatherall's criticisms, LawFont chose to install a Creative Commons license.

New stories
From previous analysis, it looks like the aussie High Court intended their judgment to have effect beyond the borders of Australia. Disregarding for a moment the obvious arrogance of this attitude, and the technical ignorance illustrated, recent international judgments are already overturning the attempt to establish this silly legal principle.

The French seem to want to take the limelight from Australia on regressive laws. The new French copyright law will make Open Source illegal, it appears. Open Source software has a legally defined position that has stood well internationally for decades, yet the French lawmakers want to disregard the law and the rights of the producers.

Brazil wants to force YouTube from showing a racy video. First, the court tried to force the video to be removed from YouTube; now they want it blocked from Brazilian viewers. Wasn't it the purpose of the courts to provide the truth? or access to the truth? ... That increasingly ridiculed phrase: "The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.." must not be a part of Brazilian jurisprudence and practice.
The courts should be enforcing the public's right to information. In the grand ideal, freedom of information is a bulwark of freedom.
If Australia, or any country, truly wants to take a lead, let it step forward in this direction.
Frankly, who cares if Ms Cicarelli and her banker friend had a good time on a Spanish beach? If the couple wanted privacy, maybe they shouldn't have given a pornographic show on a public beach?
And why does it make a difference if they show a little passion? That should indicate their ability to do their jobs better - more relaxed, intense, and energetic.

The US is even getting into this act. China and many southeast Asian states have been the wild card in technology piracy for decades. Any sort of contract with China has always been a gamble. You never get paid up front; and getting paid at all was like trying to roll three 7's in a row at times.
It's hard to criticize the attempt though. There can't be two people in Australia who haven't seen pirated first-run movies from China or Vietnam before the movie hit the cinema. Personal ethics aside, it's hard to resist. The theaters are just too expensive. The price takes away from enjoying the movie.
There is no question that protecting creative industry against such blatant classic piracy is necessary. Although the availability of such pirated works is one of Australian society's appealing characteristics.

And...
How the law will define society in all this is yet to be answered, not only in Australia but around the world. Western society has been an unending struggle for freedom, often hampered by those chosen to defend those freedoms because of their fear of losing control and power.
There are legitimate arguments on all sides.
At times the most specious arguments stand on the side of freedom; and the most powerful and concise on the side of control and fear. Freedom is the only real antidote to fear, yet few governments have realized that without struggle, sometimes armed struggle.
These laws may be the real test of the will for freedom for both leaders and citizens.
There is an element of danger in freedom. Those who believe in fear want everyone to live in fear. There will always be those who seek to abuse freedoms. That is the price of freedom.
Let's hope that the debates are kept intense, honest, passionate, and in the words of all are respected and considered.

Australian Copyright Law - Images

2007-01-01T17:50:02-08:00

Nearly every website, blog, or webpage on free hosting has a few images or links that could be construed under the new Australian Copyright Law to be infringements. Small businesses frequently use images from Google to provide information about their services or products. Technically, most of these images are Intellectual Property.

A picture of a product can be construed as theft, or it may also be seen as a source of free advertising - not just in a conventional marketing sense, but also - if the web designer links to the product description on the manufacturer's site - a means to increase the visibility and page rank of the product, and manufacturer.
This would be an example of a "deep link" and an "external link" - a link that points to a page other than the homepage without a reciprocating link from the indicated site. Search engines give special consideration to such links.
Even if there is no link, the image is still free advertising; like someone passing out pictures of your product for free.

Professional Ethics
Often, a client approaches a web designer with a list of links to sites that they like, or chooses a template from the designer's portfolio of templates.
A professional web designer will discuss with the client the costs of obtaining licenses to use the images, but too often will accept whatever images a client presents as licensed. If there is some question about the ownership of images the client wants on the site, the designer will discuss the risks and ask the client to be aware of them.
Most professional web designers, large and small companies, have purchased licenses for libraries of images. They use these images to construct the templates.
The licensing of images can get a little complicated though.
There are very few good images available for free and in the public domain.

Ethically, the designer would explain the concepts of copyright, ownership and fair use. And that the client may be stretching the concept of fair use by using the image on a for-profit site. For small businesses, the concept of fair use was played pretty loose across the Net. If an the owner received a complaint about the use of an image, they would have it removed.
Often, after the initial hard line complaint, the site owner could ask if they could use the image. Most often the answer was, "Yes, for a small fee."

Only Practical
Even moderately-sized companies have thousands or even tens of thousands of professional images of their products. The small fee helps them recoup some of the costs for nothing more than the exchange of a couple of emails.
Larger companies have departments set up to deal with this sort of thing. It's become a little-known cottage industry for some companies.

Some companies short cut the whole process by sending an email containing a stern warning about the costs of copyright infringement with an expression of gratitude for the free advertising, and a form to be sent in with a fee. The website owner receives a license in return.
Often the licensed image is not the one that has been used though. The copied image is often from an ongoing marketing campaign and central to the marketing concept. A few choices are offered from images unused by the campaign.
The license almost always requires a link and/or a caption stating "Courtesy of XXX Corporation 2006".

More than one website has become a licensed dealer by stretching the concept of fair use.
The goal for business is not to get involved in expensive litigation, but to find a win-win situation for all concerned.
This may be the most important reason for leaving copyright infringement to civil law. Once criminal law is involved, neither side really wins.

Another source for product images is the original photographer. He or she will take hundreds of shots, but the company will only buy a few of them. The contract may allow the photographer to resell the remaining images. It's a negotiated point to reduce costs. If the company maintains control of all the images, the photographer will charge more.

Image Catalogs and Libraries
What happens to all those unused, unlicensed images? Often, the photographer will set up a website or find an online cataloger site to sell them.
The same caveat has to apply to every image: Check the license.
Be careful, no matter what the published license, of any image that contains an identifiable product or logo. The seller may not have the right to sell rights to these images.

Public domain
A lot can be done by combining (public domain and licensed) images using an image editor like Photoshop. One mundane image can be combined and edited with another, producing striking results.
Don't make assumptions about Creative Commons copyrights. Look at the terms of the No-Derivs version.
Watch out though.There thousands of sites which advertise "free images". For the most part, it's not quite true. Even if the site offers public domain images, they will charge for the download.
One advantage of purchasing public domain images is that they can be edited. The site isn't selling a license to the image, only charging for cataloging and downloading.

Some large companies have placed thousands of clip art images into the public domain, such as Microsoft.
In another example, Microsoft has public domain logos which can be used by anyone, and logos which indicate a relationship with the company - such as a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) a Microsoft Certified Trainer - which can only be used by those who qualify.

Catalogs online
There are a wide range of licenses available for image libraries and collections:

Some sites sell licenses on an image by image basis. Other sites will sell a license to a catalog or library suited to a particular purpose.
Many web designers purchase general purpose libraries to construct their portfolios. Often, the catalog will offer all the images to be used to construct a portfolio, but will charge when the image is used on a website.
The same license will often allow the use of the image in other promotional material.
Some companies will sell a license to use a collection of images on a website or limited promotional material.
Others will offer the use of the collection free on a non-commercial website or portfolio only if a prominent link to their website is displayed. Sometimes, the collection can be used on commercial websites.
There are a few sites which offer their images free for any use. However, you do get what you pay for. There are also a few sites which are committed to the free exchange of information philosophy of the World Wide Web where good images are really free, such as the Morgue.

Pricing
Licenses to use images are offered on an image-by-image or collection (library) basis.
Sometimes, the image is sold based on the size or resolution the buyer chooses.
Rather than limit choices to collections determined by the seller, some sites sell 'credits' which allow a number of images for the user to combine.

A license to use an image may cost anything the seller wishes. Pricing may be as low as $10 per image to a few hundred dollars. Prices for Australian lifestyle images have increased dramatically over the last year, for example, anticipating the more stringent requirements of thousands of websites.
The more expensive images are those that are considered 'Art' by professional photographers. These images may cost a few hundred dollars each, but the effect can be worth it.

Summation
For a relatively low cost, a web designer or owner can find images to make their site attractive and professional. Without trying to wade through all the possible options and pitfalls, the caveat remains: Check the license, and be sure you can do what you want to do.

The sad fact is that most of the facts, practice and ethics described in this article are not understood by those who crafted these laws.

There is no question, however, that the new copyright law with its harsh penalties which allow no provision for warnings or a grace period, will cost owners of Australian business websites to more, and force ISPs into an enforcement role which is beyond their moral and ethical role. As has been noted repeatedly, there is no 'Safe Harbor' provisions in this new law.

The strictures of 'Fair Dealing' are not in keeping with the patterns of ethics and practice already in place on the Internet, for commercial or non-commercial uses, and attempt to redefine these roles throughout the world into the arcane - indeed archaic - Australian meanings and model. These arcane definitions in use in Australia are not understood by the broader Internet and should not be forced upon it.

These issues will be just one more thing that every small businessperson in Australia will have to learn to manage. For many, the burden of skills required to be a small or home business is already too great, in financial and in terms of what they must learn and master. The requirements of this law will diminish the number of small business owners, and reduce their profits. If the fines are imposed, the cost will simply end the business.
Whether those who crafted these laws took any of these facts into account is clearly questionable.
For every small business that goes out of business, 3.4 people will need employment, according to the ABS. If 10% of small business are affected, that will mean 782,00 people who will need jobs.

Throughout this article, I've tried to offer links to some examples I found by searching on Google for "free images". The search returned about 10 million results. I've added the perspectives of my own experience in over 10 years doing web design and corporate training.

Well, here it comes

2007-01-01T14:31:43-08:00

Here it comes
For a nation that is pushing people onto the Internet faster and faster with new programs being funded all around, there had to be a plan to recoup the generosity. New taxes in Canberra (ACT) will increase the costs for providers that will be passed on to consumers. It's not hard to see this is a pilot program that can easily be copied by other states and territories.
Still the biggest money maker looks to be fines and legal fees generated by the new Copyright Law.

Cooper was investigated secretly for over 2 years at the expense of MIPI and its deep-pockets clients. Then the court case took 18 months. As a penalty, Cooper and Comcen were ordered to pay MIPI's costs. Those costs haven't been determined yet, but they must have been significant.
Even the High Court didn't feel it fines were necessary as punishment. At $6600.00 a link, the fines would have never been paid.

From a few conversations, it's obvious to ordinary Australians that courts and laws are made in Australia to generate revenues for the government and fees for lawyers has not escaped the general public. The general public has no idea what to do about it though.
Any conversation along these lines brings out a couple of terms from Australians they truly despise: "hillbilly" and "banana republic".

Whole websites are being torn down. Some rebuilt with great care. From my continuing informal survey, many will just leave the site blank.
Companies wishing to have a web presence will have to factor in the costs of copyrighted images and new taxes, even before the website has a chance to prove it can pay for itself. It won't be long before all states and territories enact taxes following the lead of the ACT, and probably adding a few more just to prove their independence.

Given the cost of access in Australia for second-rate broadband services and the absolutely low cost of providing it, Telstra should be able to quarantine profits from these services for its upgrade and maintenance strategies.- Michael Harris, Tapping, WA (from comments published on Australian IT News)

Walking is Important

2007-01-01T13:36:24-08:00

I have a friend who is new to the Net and cannot resist passing on all the words of wisdom that have been circulating for years - but she just found! The woman is becoming Henny Youngman.
Ergo:

Importance of Walking

Walking can add minutes to your life. This enables you at 85 years old to spend an additional 5 months in a nursing home at $5000 per month.

My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was 60.
Now she's 97 years old and we don't know where the hell she is.
The only reason I would take up exercising is so that I could
hear heavy breathing again.
I joined a health club last year, spent about 400 bucks. Haven't lost a pound. Apparently you have to go there.
I have to exercise early in the morning before my brain figures out what I'm doing.
I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me.
I have flabby thighs, but fortunately my stomach covers them.
The advantage of exercising every day is that you die healthier.
If you are going to try cross-country skiing, start with a small country.

And last but not least: You could run this over to your friends but why not just e-mail it to them!

I doubt there are many who will read this yet. Someday, hopefully, between all the doom-and-gloom about the copyright laws and their effects on Australia, it'll give a smile.
For those of you who don't know who Henny Youngman is, too bad. He was the king of Vaudeville-corny one-liners in the US about when John Kennedy was President. Gawd, do I feel old now.
I saw Youngman in person in Las Vegas as a kid!

Australian Copyright Law - SEM in Oz

2006-12-31T00:23:05-08:00

The ABS (Australian Bureau of Statistics) says there are 860,000 small businesses with Internet access, from a total of 2.3 million businesses with gross revenues less than $2 million AUD. Less than 10% of those small businesses have websites, and far fewer have monetized their websites.
At first glance, that would seem to be a tremendous opportunity for web designers and search engine marketing - the ground floor of a market.
The ABS figures seem to be based on registrations of Australian TLDs: '.com.au' and '.net.au'.
According to Webhosting Info, the registration of international TLDs - .com, .net, .org, .info, and .biz - is already declining dramatically.

Total Domains in Australia : 1,466,852

Rank	TLD	Total Domains	Market Share	Net Gain/Loss
1	COM	1,265,472	86.2713 %	(2,116)
2	NET	92,295	6.292 %	(111)
3	ORG	54,563	3.7197 %	(549)
4	INFO	35,171	2.3977 %	(249)
5	BIZ	19,310	1.3164 %	(357)

I have to admit that these figures coupled with the amendments to Copyright Law and the Cooper case, are disheartening. Considering the debate over amendments to Copyright Law in Australia has continued over the last year, it seems the new laws are already having damaging effects. Although the 59,914 domains in New Zealand is much smaller, at least the numbers are increasing.
It looks like I am just a little behind the times. The optimistic perspective that drove me to study and plan to add SEO-SEM to my skillset is better reflected by industry posts from 2004-2005. The Internet community is nothing if not responsive.
This is globalization in reverse for Australia.