The Mandarin: Victoria opens up catalogue of government APIs, following lead of NSW. “The Victorian government has begun a public catalogue of application programming interfaces (APIs) that allow software developers to more easily build third-party apps that pull information from its open datasets.”
Australia
Computerworld: Movie studios unswayed by ‘search engine’ argument in anti-piracy case
Computerworld: Movie studios unswayed by ‘search engine’ argument in anti-piracy case. “Legal counsel for a group of movie studios has dismissed an argument that an overseas-hosted site that links to videos but doesn’t host them does not fall afoul of Australia’s anti-piracy laws.”
‘Lack of goodwill with tech giants’: Labor vows action on Google, Facebook (Sydney Morning Herald)
Sydney Morning Herald: ‘Lack of goodwill with tech giants’: Labor vows action on Google, Facebook. “The likely communications minister in a Labor government has put the tech giants on notice, declaring the party is ready to act on a range of issues including market dominance, use of consumers’ data and harmful online content.”
A smarter comparison: ANU launches new smartvote tool (Australian National University)
Australian National University: A smarter comparison: ANU launches new smartvote tool. “In partnership with Nine publishing, The Australian National University has today launched smartvote Australia-an innovative online tool that lets Australian voters compare their views with candidates and parties during the Federal election.”
The West Australian: Facebook, Google pay $40m in tax on combined sales of more than $1 billion
The West Australian: Facebook, Google pay $40m in tax on combined sales of more than $1 billion. “Facebook and Google paid less than $40 million in tax between them in Australia last year on more than $1.1 billion in advertising sales. Documents filed with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission show Facebook Australia raked in $579.7 million from advertising in 2018 — plus another $696,000 from what it calls “services” — but paid $454.9 million in costs to an overseas subsidiary to arrive at a net revenue of figure of $125.5 million.”
Crikey: How to use Facebook to influence Australian voters for just $20 a day
Crikey: How to use Facebook to influence Australian voters for just $20 a day. “I write this out of frustration with Facebook’s public position to elections in Australia. Facebook will now use their international foreign influence tools, but despite our Prime Minister calling the election, we still don’t have to be certified in order to run ads about issues of national importance. My hope is to demonstrate how gobsmackingly easy it is in Australia to run hyper targeted ads, using Facebook’s publicly available tools, to push a political stance to influence a neighbourhood, a postcode, a key electorate.”
Anne Twomey: National Archives ‘completely dysfunctional’ for serious scholarship (The Mandarin)
The Mandarin: Anne Twomey: National Archives ‘completely dysfunctional’ for serious scholarship. “Constitutional law professor Anne Twomey thinks the National Archives is nearly useless for serious academic and historical research, partly because it is ‘starved of funding’ and takes too long to decide whether to open old government records.”
