Spot on Charles. Though how they will ban IP TV from outside Australia is a bit beyond me. However the good thing I suppose is that Australians won't be watching Australian produced programs with Australians in them on IP TV. And of course we won't be gearing up to compete on the international market for IP TV(where our native English is a distinct comparative advantage), far better to just stick to digging up rocks and sending them overseas. And using the foreign currency earned to download overseas TV.

The odd paradox in all this is that the highly protected Free to air TV in Australia could be a lot better, if we had smarter policitians with clever policy. The oligopoly proftis that have been legislated to Packer and co for years have never been used to leverage much in the way of content or production in return. In fact things have got progressively worse for the last 30 years, starting when the ALP took power in the 1980s. That bright ignoramus, Paul Keating, really hammered in some nails while doing the media barons a host of favours. Moreover progressive increases in "self regulation" have largely meant freedom to fleece the audience in terms of content and take more of the effective taxpayer subsidy.

Incidently I now note Channel 9 has plunged even further into bottom of the barrel programing to produce an up late "game" show that makes Channel 10's effort look like almost a Sale of the Century standard. God knows if this garbage running week nights for several hours after midnight, followed by infomercials, is allowed to count as Australian for quota purposes. And just why is something that would bore a half smart 10 year old running that late anyway? Thank god for bitorrent and PVRs. The demise of free to air can't come soon enough.

I do find it astonishing how quickly Australia has regressed to the culturally cringing backwater it was in the 1950s, much of this work has been done in just 10 years. At least we still have migrants coming in to supply some sense of cultural awareness that is not American or British. And Johnny Howard has at least increased annual migration by about 50% since 1996, though of course he was happy to keep misleading his supporters on that one. And now the foreign influx is going up even further with the government's de facto guest worker policy, so necessary to keep the lid on wages, ie Australians' standard of living.

Indeed migration policy is about the only cultural policy the government produces! And even that is tempered with routine human rights violations. I better stop now before I utter the words bah humbug, oops, too late.

Sigh. One step further behind the rest of the world we go.

Now I know why those Americans hold up in mountain fortresses with rifles and cans of beans.