Paul Jacobson

According to MyADSL, the Constitutional Review Committee has recommended that section 192 of the Constitution be amended to reflect developments in the telecommunications industry.  At present this section refers to a broadcasting authority but with the recent Electronic Communications Act, the playing field has changed and ICASA is now both the broadcasting and telecommunications regulator as the communications regulator.  In other words, convergence has rendered references to a “broadcasting authority” in section 192 has no meaning in contemporary South Africa.

The committee’s report says that section 192 of the constitution refers to a broadcasting authority, while the Electronic Communications Act provides for a “converged??? sector, where the different elements, such as broadcasting and communications, will not easily be differentiated.

Committee chairman Manie Schoeman said submissions had been received from a number of academics who argued for section 192 to be changed because the “converged??? industry rendered irrelevant specific reference in the constitution to a broadcasting authority.

If section 192 was amended, this would involve other consequential amendments that could also see Icasa included in the chapter nine institutions that include the auditor general and the public protector.

He said it made sense to entrench the independence of Icasa in the constitution as it was necessary for the broadcasting authority.

Section 192 falls under Chapter 9 of the Constitution which lists the institutions which have guaranteed independence from other organs of government.  This is particularly important in the context of recent reports of how the minister has been looking to exercise direct control over the appointment of ICASA councillors.  This would give her control over the regulator itself and render it little more than a puppet.  Hardly the strong and independent regulator section 192 anticipated in the context of a broadcasting regulator.

Technorati Tags: constitution, constitutional amendment, icasa, ivy matsepe-casaburri, broadcasting authority

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I cam across this site a little while ago.  It is called chicksnbreasts and it doesn’t deal with poultry farming!  Instead this blog consists of “Beautiful girls found on Flickr, YouTube and other Web 2.0 sites”.  The first site like this that I came across was FlickrLicio.us which seems to have more photos blocked than are visible.  Chicksnbreasts, on the other hand, has tons of pretty awesome photos gathered from Flickr and other sources.

Definitely worth adding to your feeds!

Technorati Tags: beautiful girls, breasts, chicks, flickr, nude, sexy girls, topless

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South African Minister of Communications, Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri, recently told Parliament that South Africans will enjoy greater access to broadband in time for the 2010 FIFA World Cup scheduled to be conducted in South Africa.  According to MyADSL:

She also boasted that South Africa would be one of the few countries in the world where every game of the 2006 Fifa World Cup would be shown using DVB-H, which enables TV broadcasts to be received on cellphones. South Africa, together with Finland, Germany, Italy and France, was in the trial stage, she said, adding: “This cutting-edge technology has yet to be commercially launched anywhere in the world. South Africa is showcasing the technologies of tomorrow today!

…

As she introduced her budget in the national assembly, she told MPs that the government had to ensure that the broadband backbone was robust enough to meet socioeconomic development, business and the science and research needs of the country.

The government had decided to examine the contribution that state-owned industries could make to achieve affordable broadband access and a policy decision would be announced soon, she said.

Apparently Sentech, state-owned signal distributor, will be the focal point of this effort to afford South African’s better access to broadband in the near future.

This is all well and good but the minister has been promising broadband for quite some time now and all she need do is crack the whip over Telkom’s (and any other network’s) head and implement changes to the pricing structure of telecommunications services in South Africa to facilitate true broadband.  Instead the minister makes promise after promise which all contain the right buzzwords and yet accomplishes very little.

Technorati Tags: ivy matsepe-casaburri, fifa, sentech, Telkom, world cup

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Telkom is furious at municipalities that have started rolling out their own telecommunications services in an effort to save costs.  According to Business Report:

At parliament’s communications portfolio committee last week, Telkom said municipalities such as Knysna were breaching the Telecommunications Act by providing telecoms to communities.

About seven municipalities out of 284, including Knysna, eThekwini and the City of Johannesburg, hold private telephone network licences.

The act states that a “private telephone network shall not be provided by means of telecommunication facilities other than facilities made available by Telkom or any other person providing a public switched telecommunication network service”.

But last year the minister of communications, Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri, said municipalities could lease spare infrastructure capacity to licensed operators.

Telkom’s fixed-line monopoly has been protected by the Telecommunications Act, but this is coming to an end through the pending Electronics Communications Act, which was signed into law two months ago. Telkom contended that since the Electronics Communications Act was in transition, the Telecommunications Act still applied and should be “strictly enforced”.

This story leads me to wonder if Telkom’s monopoly will ever really end?

(via Buys Incorporated)

Technorati Tags: municipal, telecommunications service, Telkom

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The Austinist has posted an interview with photographer Celesta Dangar to its website.  You may recall from my previous post that Dangar is Hoover’s partner and the photographer behind the photographs that sparked a controversy in Austin, Texas:

There’s been a bit of controversy surrounding Austin High art teacher Tamara Hoover  — maybe you’ve read a thing or two about it. Hoover has appeared on local and national news telling her side of the story, to the extent that her lawyer will allow her, obviously. While we’d read a lot about Hoover’s case, we’d yet to see much information from the photographer involved in the legal imbroglio; so we decided to sit down with photographer Celesta Danger to get her side of the story. We discussed her photography, her feelings regarding Hoover’s dismissal and the role of flickr in the controversy. What follows is our interview with Celesta.

This interview sheds light on an important side of the story, the woman behind the lens who seeks to publish her art and to be appreciated for her work.  Unfortunately there has been so much attention focussed on the nude photographs that Dangar has been branded a pornographer and yet there is little comment on the bulk of her work.  It must be a tremendously frustrating process for her and you can see some of that frustration emerge from the interview:

Were you surprised by the backlash of this pseudo-morality that people have been wearing as an excuse for their anger or whatever?

Not at all. It’s view of the world that I believe things happen because they should. When you look past what people are doing and see what they are really doing, it’s not a big fucking deal. What I find the most disturbing about the situation and what has happened at this moment is that I can’t take pictures like I did [before], of mostly her, every day. It just really sucked all the fun out of it, because I can’t post them right now. People are on a mad witch hunt to find pictures of the “naked teacher.?? And people are ganking my pictures left and right, creating fake profiles, saying they’re Tamara and they’re getting into porn. It’s been very ridiculous, [some] people have been very lascivious and crude. I get a lot of emails and comments about it, like, “where’s the fucking naked teacher??? This is what people are looking for; they’re not going to the site to appreciate the work. That’s very disappointing, because although I’m getting all this attention, I am the “pornographer??.

There is much talk about moral standards and Hoover has been accused of being severely lacking in that department because she posed for nude or semi-nude photographs which Dangar then published along with her other works.  I find this argument to be weak at best and Hoover herself answers this allegation quite well, in my view:

[That lawyer] said that teachers should be held to higher moral standards and they should be role models, and Tamara interjects, “I believe teachers should be good role models, and I believe that I am a good role model. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I’ve never done drugs, I’m a vegan, I don’t talk about my co-workers, and I’m nice to people. I’m a good role model!” And then the other attorney made a very interesting point: she said, “Well, what happens when a teacher has an abortion? Are you gonna fire her because that doesn’t fit in with your moral standards?”

This whole case says more about Hoover’s accusers and their standards than it does about Hoover’s morals and what it says is not good.

Technorati Tags: celesta danger, tamara, tamara hoover

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