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Allowing the telemarketing industry to self-regulate the Do Not Call Register and identifying more ways to reduce industry red tape are among recommendations for transforming the media and internet regulator.

While the Australian Communications and Media authority has performed its regulatory role "efficiently and well over the last 10 years", the Department of Communications' review found its governance should be restructured to include five full-time members, including a deputy chair as chief executive, rather than two part-time members and a chair and deputy.

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An American man sick of getting calls from telemarketers invents a phone robot to waste their time.

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One of those to be charged is the son of the Australian Taxation Office Deputy Commissioner Michael Cranston, who will appear in court.

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The families of the victims of the Lindt Cafe siege are scathing of the police decision to delay storming the cafe. In an interview with ABC's Four Corners, they say they were devastated to hear during the inquest that police only planned to enter the Lindt Cafe if gunman Man Monis killed or seriously injured a hostage.

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Key crossbench senator Nick Xenophon has made his support for the government's new bank levy conditional on the tax applying to foreign banks.

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Unveiling a $400 million donation to charities and cancer research, mining magnate Andrew "Twiggy" Forrest stood with politicians in Canberra to celebrate the biggest private donation in Australian history.

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Some of the statements made by Commissioner Andrew Scipione and his deputy Catherine Burn at the time of the Lindt cafe siege in 2014.

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Survivors of the Lindt Cafe siege reveal how they managed to escape the terror of being held by Man Haron Monis.

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Fourteen people are taken to hospital after dozens of passengers were injured after a truck and a Melbourne tram collided Monday morning.

An American man sick of getting calls from telemarketers invents a phone robot to waste their time.

The ACMAhas not had a permanent chair since Chris Chapman left in 2016, with Richard Bean acting as chair for the past 15 months.

The review was commissioned in mid-2015 by Malcolm Turnbull when he was communications minister. current Communications MinisterMitch Fifieldsaid the government supports all 27 recommendations.

Having a five-member full-time authority will "ensure that the ACMAis equipped for the complex task of regulating a dynamic and increasingly integrated communications sector", Senator Fifield said on Monday.

Among the 27 recommendations are that the ACMAexamine whether four roles it currently provides can be referred to industry for self-regulation, including the Do Not Call Register and taking action on spam.

The Do Not Call Register is 10 years old and holds about 10 million landline and mobile numbers. It is managed by Salmat under contract to the ACMA, which investigates complaints. The review suggests compliance is high enough that the telemarketing industry could take over management of this register with the ACMA staying on as regulator.

It is recommended that enforcement and investigation of breaches of the Interactive Gambling Actbe given to the ACMA. Currently the ACMAcan only referbreaches. It has referred more than 120cases to the Australian Federal Police, which has previously declined to investigate complaints.

Interactive gambling is illegal in Australia, it includes activities such as placing betswhile a game is in playand online casino-style games.

The authority may take control of classification from the existing Classification Board. The current scheme is fragmented and split between too many bodies, the review found. The Tax Office may be given responsibility for collecting spectrum and licencefees.

However, the ACMAmaylose its cybersecurity programs, which the review recommends be transferred to the Attorney-General's Department, where the Australian Cyber Security Centre is located.

The report also recommends the ACMApublish a report every two years on "initiatives undertaken to identify and reduce regulatory burden on industry and individuals".

Labor's communications spokeswomanMichelle Rowlandcriticised the department for taking so long to release the report, which she said was "of such modest and unremarkable substance".

She said the ACMA needs to be properly funded with capacity to promote principles-based legislation so laws are not outdated too quickly.

"The underlying problem was that this government never really knew why it commenced theACMAreview in the first place, and neither did stakeholders," she said.

More:
Telemarketers may be given control of Do Not Call Register in regulator shake-up - The Sydney Morning Herald

Politics

19:38 19.05.2017(updated 19:39 19.05.2017) Get short URL

Speaking toRadio Sputnik onthe sidelines ofa forum forRussian-speaking broadcasters, Kosachev said that unfortunately, many Western countries' information policy today is broadly aimed atdiscrediting Russia and limiting its opportunities inthe international arena.

The senator explained that today, ordinary Western readers, viewers and listeners are bombarded byan information policy developed and implemented bytheir states. "It is a policy they accuse us ofpursuing, butwhich they themselves implement withoutany inhibitions. This is a policy ofdiscrediting Russia, a policy ofeliminating, or atleast restricting Russia's opportunities asa competitor inthe international arena," Kosachev noted.

Photo: RUSSIAN FOREIGN MINISTRY

At the same time, the senator said that attempts are being made tocut readers, viewers and listeners offfrom objective information, "of the kind that comes tothem fromSputnik, throughother authoritative broadcasters operating inRussian and withRussia."

"This is a very unfortunate situation, and it has nothing todo withthe freedom ofspeech or the freedom ofinformation," Kosachev noted.

The senator said that the current drama surrounding Russia inthe American media was a perfect example ofthe kind ofgross distortion ofreality that's being manufactured.

AFP 2017/ POOL / Kim Hong-Ji

"The US media is not any sort offourth estate. They are governed bythe first, second and third estates inthe interests ofthese authorities. And US authorities today are openly divided and disjoined; we see what is being done withPresident Trump, and just how much this manipulation ofpublic consciousness throughthe media contradicts what Americans themselves and the world asa whole are accustomed toassociating withthe 'American values' offreedom ofspeech, democracy, freedom ofthe press, and so on."

In the senator's view, US information policy went overboard oncensorship some time ago already.

"All that remains forthem todo is resort tothe Soviet-style tradition (which we see inthe US, and inUkraine, incidentally) ofsimply cutting offaccess toalternative sources ofinformation, and thus preventing people fromunderstanding the essence ofwhat is really going on," Kosachev said.

Visit link:
Russian Senator to Sputnik: 'West Using Soviet-Style Methods of Media Control' - Sputnik International

On Thursday, the NBA will reveal its all-NBA first, second and third teams for the 2016-17 campaign, and with the unveiling, the futures of both the Utah Jazz and the Indiana Pacers franchises hang in the balance, and to me, the overarching media control over professional athletes contract salaries and franchise roster flexibilities is absolutely baffling in the modern NBA.

Essentially, the whole issue stems from the newly negotiated NBA Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) that details a new class of player contracts dubbed the Designated Veteran Players. The qualifications for this new category of players center around two main subjects; first, the upcoming player must either be entering their eighth or ninth NBA season (or just completed his ninth in the case of free agents) with the team that drafted said player or acquired said player in a trade within his first four years of NBA experience.

Secondly and more contentiously, the player must either have completed one of the following performance qualifications:

1) Made one of the three all-NBA teams in either the previous season or the prior two.

2) Won Defensive Player of the Year in either the previous season or the prior two.

3) Won MVP in one of the previous three seasons.

Outside the theoretical and regarding the real-world implications, this new category establishes another tier of max contract for the top NBA players up for contract renegotiations, increasing these players potential salaries up to 35 percent of the salary cap from the prior tier two player salary cap of 30 percent.

Ultimately, this means that in this upcoming free agency, Jazz forward Gordon Hayward and Pacers icon Paul George are waiting to see whether the two will make substantially more money. ESPN senior writer Brian Windhorst wrote earlier this season, If a player is voted to the all-NBA team and has eight or nine years of experience, then he qualifies for a special exception to sign a massive contract with his team for about $75 million more than any other team can pay him.

Beyond the players financial future, the special contract intricacies affect the franchises who now are at the mercy of these qualifications and ultimately shackling the teams front office who face a choice between a rock and a hard place when considering the impact of resigning these specially designated players.

For instance, Utah failed to renegotiate a long-term extension for their biggest offseason pickup last season, guard George Hill, due in large part to concerns about the teams roster future if the organization decides to lock down over $80 million in cap space for the upcoming season. With Hill being offered max contracts from teams with cap room to burn (i.e. the Brooklyn Nets and the 76ers), the Jazz now are locked in a conundrum created from the very rule aimed at helping small market teams retain superstars.

And if the player, such as Gordon Hayward this offseason, fails to make the All-NBA team, then any team with the capability around the league can match Utahs max offer sheet at 30 percent the cap space. Essentially, if Hayward doesnt earn this relatively innocuous award, the superstar youngster will surely opt out and test waters in unrestricted free agency, where an exit for nothing in return would surely cripple the Jazzs future situation.

Whats baffling to me then is, with all the money and organizational future at stake, why the NBA both league offices and players union allows these monumental league decisions to be decided by a panel of sportswriters. Who in a right and sane mind would allot so much control to the media?

Honestly, any other resolution than the external media outlets controlling these arbitrary-turned-critical end of season awards that essentially decide large-scale changes in the future. From making the all-NBA awards computer automated and entirely statistically based to an unbiased committee impervious to connections with teams, literally anything seems better than resting this power amongst a group of media affiliates.

I immediately am remembered of a story from the former TrueHoop podcast in which NBA analytical writer Tom Haberstroh recounted a story of a player literally asking him for recommendations on his game after the ESPN sportswriter kept the player off his article featuring an early midseason ballot for the awards.

Let me repeat that: A professional basketball player, one of the best in the NBA (the highest echelon of basketball competition in the world), asked Haberstroh for tips on his game in order to make sure that Haberstroh voted for him for all-NBA at the end of the season. I guess $75 million in potential contract value would make me do the same.

Ultimately, this story shows just how ridiculous this process has become. While Im definitely in the analytical camp of basketball fans and would enjoy a purely statistical representation of the all-NBA teams, any change in this rule honestly seems less ludicrous than whats in place now. But until then, Thursdays selection will see some organizations exalting with joy while others miss out on a chance at a superstar.

Contact Lorenzo Rosas to congratulate him on the Lakers drafting Lonzo Ball on June 22 at enzor9 at stanford.edu.

Read more from the original source:
Rosas: Let's move past the media control in Designated Player ... - The Stanford Daily

Fairfax Media appears extremely close to being declared 'on the market'as a new bidder,Hellman & Friedman, entered the auction room on Wednesday night with an indicative offer thattrumped the TPG offer already on the table.

This could easily mark the start of a bidding war between two US private equity groups, likely to move the 176-year-old media group into foreign hands.

In a strange historic twist,Hellman&Friedman -which lobbed a prospective price of between $1.225 and $1.25 a share - is no ordinary bidder: It was part of Tourang - a consortium of investors including Canadian media baron Conrad Black andthe late Kerry Packer, whichbought Fairfax out of receivership in 1992.

Hellman's current Emeritus chairman, Brian Powers, was once thechairman of Fairfax and later became Kerry Packer's right-hand man.

The private equity firm's emergence this week is no accident.

Since the board became aware of TPG's interest in Fairfax, it hadbeen actively canvassing other potential bidders - among them Hellman & Friedman. TPG, which is currently offering $1.20 per share for Fairfax, and Hellman & Friedman have now both been given the green light to undertake a close look at Fairfax's books.

Both Fairfax chairman, Nick Falloon and its chief executive Greg Hywood are considered close to Powers.

During Powers' chairmanship of Fairfax, Hywood was editor in chief of the Sydney Morning Herald.Falloon was the head of Kerry Packer's television group then called PBL, while Powers was head of the Packer's Consolidated Press.

Back in 2010, Falloon also (but unsuccessfully) approached Hellman & Friedman as a potential buyer for Canwest's stake in Ten Network.

The Fairfax board had been aware for a while that Hellman & Friedman had been sniffing around, but did not know of its intention to bid until it received notification on Wednesday evening.

While Powers will be taking an active interest in the current bid for Fairfax, the executive running the process for Hellman & Friedman is itsdeputy chief executive, Patrick Healy.

The private equity firm has plenty of experience in the digital classified property arena as part owners ofGermane-commerce group Scout24, which is led by Greg Ellis - who himself was instrumental in setting up and running REA Group, the arch competitor to Fairfax's property website Domain.

TPG, on the other hand, has Domain boss Antony Catalano in its corner. He appears to have tied his fortunes to TPG, having already been nominated to run Fairfax under TPG's ownership.

If TPG issuccessful, it plans to keep the major newspaper titlesalong with Domain and sell off the remaining assets, including radio, Fairfax's New Zealand newspapers and its 50 per cent stake in video streaming business Stan.

Despite Hellman & Friedman's connections with Fairfax, the board will need to decide whether either offer will be enough to satisfy its major shareholders, who at this stage have mixed opinionsabout the price.

For some shareholders, a price of $1.25 a sharewould be enough to garner support, while others would prefer more and would rather take their chances with Fairfax's own proposal to spin off 30 per cent of Domain into a separately listed company.

But the Domain spin-off is increasingly looking like a fall-back position. If Falloon can extract a fair offer price, the Foreign Investment Review Board would be the only thing standing in private equity's way.

With the Fairfax share price punching above $1.23 on Thursday morning, the punters are calling it 'game on'.

Read more here:
It's 'game on' in the battle for control of Fairfax - The Sydney Morning Herald

Time-after-time, the NewYork Times and other publications have repeated the same false claim that concealed handgun permit holders are dangerous.

This claim will continue to be made as debate heats up over reciprocity, which would allow concealed handgun permits to be used across states like drivers licenses.

With 192 co-sponsors lined up for the reciprocity bill in the House and 36 in the Senate, Democrats are already threatening a filibuster.

Of these deaths, 314 were suicides and 17 were the result of accidental shootings. In all, 324 permit holders purportedly killed people.

Looking at the VPC numbers for 2016, they claim that 26 permit holders supposedly committed 29 homicides. With over 15 million permit holders nationwide last year, those deaths amount to 0.2 homicides per 100,000 permit holders.

However, there is an arrest and investigation virtually anytime a permit holder uses a handgun in a public place. Almost all of the 2016 cases are listed as pending, and most of the defendants will be acquitted on account of self-defense.

The tally of 969 deaths is the result of triple and even quadruple counting. Michigan by far the worst state according to VPC numbers supposedly suffered 78 homicides and 390 suicides. Supposedly, Michigan was the site of over 40 percent of all deaths attributed to permit holders.

The main problem is that pending cases are counted in the same way as convictions. The Michigan State Police report the number of pending cases and convictions each year.

But since most cases never result in a conviction and many cases can be listed as pending for two or three calendar years, this results in massive over counting.

An additional 30 cases are added in, as a result of news stories. Apparently, no effort was made to check if these cases were already accounted for in the state police reports.

A case that ends in acquittal will, therefore, be counted four times if it is covered in a news story and is pending for three years. Over the past 10 years, 17 Michigan permit holders were convicted of homicide, not 78.

That comes to 1.7 cases per year, out of 560,000 permit holders in June 2016.

Michigan doesnt collect information on how or where suicides took place, just that permit holders committed suicide. The Violence Policy Center just assumes that all of these suicides were committed with guns, and specifically with their own permitted concealed handguns outside their homes.

In any case, permit holders committed suicide at just 38 percent of the rate of the adult Michigan population as a whole.

Concealed handgun permit holders are also much more law-abiding than the rest of the population.

In fact, they are convicted at an even lower rate than police officers. According to a study in Police Quarterly, police committed an average of 703 crimes (113 firearms violations) annually from 2005-2007.

This is likely to be an underestimate since some news reports may have been missed and not all police crimes receive media coverage.

With 683,396full-time law enforcement employees nationwide in 2006, there were about 102 crimes by police per hundred thousand officers.

Among the U.S. population as a whole, the crime rate was 37 times higher 3,813 crimes per hundred thousand people.

Now let's look at permit holders.

Between January 1, 2015, and April 30, 2017, Florida revoked 958 concealed handgun permits for misdemeanors or felonies. This is an annual rate of 23.4 crimes per 100,000 permit holders less than a fourth of the crime rate among officers.

In Texas, 108 permit holderswere convicted of misdemeanors or felonies in 2015 the last year for which data is available.

This is a rate of 10.2 per 100,000, scarcely more than a tenth of the rate for police.

Among police, firearms violations occur at a rate of 6.9 per 100,000 officers. For Florida permit holders, the rate is only 0.31 per 100,000. Most of these violations were trivial offenses, such as forgetting ones permit.

The data are similar in other states.

The media is doing an injustice by inaccurately reporting about an issue with such immediate relevance to public safety.

Counting legitimate cases of self-defense as tragedies sometimes three or four times is clearly not legitimate.

If gun control advocates arguments were on solid ground, they wouldn't need to make up numbers.

John R. Lott, Jr. is the president of the Crime Prevention Research Center and the author of The War on Guns.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.

See the article here:
How gun control advocates play the mainstream media for suckers - The Hill (blog)