The Australian music industry's mistrust of the NBN shows how little it's learned over the last decade.

Music sales are finally on the rise globally, for the first time since Napster shook the industry to its foundations back in 1999. What's most interesting is that it's online sales and subscription music services which came to the rescue -- once the industry started working with the internet rather than against it.

Despite the NBN's potential to open new markets, the music industry still sees it as a threat and is calling on the Government step up its war on file-sharing. The music industry is worried that high-speed internet access for all will make it far too easy for people to steal music.

The fact is that it already couldn't be easier to steal music online. It's been ridiculously easy to steal music online for many years. People were happily stealing music over dial-up, thanks to peer-to-peer distribution networks which were a lot more efficient than legit alternatives (if there even were legit alternatives). Some people are still happily stealing music today, over flaky 1 Mbps DSL connections. They'll keep stealing music over 100 Mbps fibre connections. The only thing that will change is they'll get their songs in six seconds instead of 60 seconds.

Yet something odd has happened since those dial-up days. People have gradually started paying for music online -- because they choose to, not because they have to. It's ridiculously easy to steal music. They're paying because legit services are becoming more accessible, affordable and easy to use. It's finally becoming as easy to pay for music as it is to steal it. As a result more people than ever are paying for music online. They're not going to starting stealing music when their internet access gets faster, or they'd already be stealing it. If anything they're going to buy more music and other content once they're on the NBN.

Some people are always going to steal music. But the better our internet experience gets, the more people will actually pay for music. The latest sales figures speak for themselves, but the music industry is still playing the same old broken record.

Gadgets reliant on web services are living on borrowed time.

Once you buy a gadget it's obviously yours to keep, but it could be rendered a paperweight at any time if it's totally dependent on an online service. My long-serving Chumby touchscreen alarm clock has been living on borrowed time for more than a year. Conceived in the pre-iPhone age, the Chumby is a tiny Linux box which runs various widgets such as displaying weather forecasts, RSS feeds and digital photo streams. Unfortunately these widgets are all totally reliant on the Chumby website. Without the ability to sign in, the Chumby can only tell you the time.

Since Chumby Industries closed its doors in December 2011, a small group of volunteers has kept the Chumby's background infrastructure up and running. Now they've had to pull the plug. Rather than completely abandoning loyal Chumby owners, they've put a basic authentication service in place which still allows the Chumby to start up, load a clock widget and act as a programmable alarm clock. Their long-term hope is to one day restore the full service.

The Chumby isn't the only gadget in my house that I'm worried about. TiVo Australia refuses to return my calls and seems to be dead in the water. Unfortunately the TiVo personal video recorder is completely useless without the backend TiVo servers to provide the Electronic Program Guide. In the UK the TiVo EPG was continued for almost a decade after they pulled TiVos off the shelf, so hopefully Australian TiVo owners won't be left in the lurch too soon.

Then there's my highly cherished Logitech Harmony 785 universal remote control. It's survived more than its share of rough and tumble, but unfortunately it is totally reliant on Logitech's web services when you need to reprogram it. This service actually seemed like one of its strengths, but it looks like a weakness now that Logitech is thinking about selling off the Harmony brand. If the web service is discontinued then the remote will gradually be rendered useless as I upgrade to new lounge room gadgets.

How many of your gadgets are living on borrowed time?

P2P file-sharing such as BitTorrent gets all the attention, but a stream of practically every old TV show is only a Google search away.

There's a growing number of ways to legitimately watch television online, although Australians often need to geo-dodge to access services which Americans take for granted. You won't just find the latest episodes of your favourite shows in the Catch Up TV services such as Hulu, you can also revisit the classics with the extensive back catalogues of Netflix, HuluPlus and Amazon Prime.

Classic TV episodes are only a click away, but a range of legit services just won't take our money.

If you're a sci-fi fan you'll find enough TV shows online to last you a lifetime. Simply Google search for "watch insert name of show/episode online", but unfortunately Australians can't access most of the legit options. Of course the very next search result is usually a free pirate stream which is only a click away, without the need to mess about with a VPN, proxy server or US credit card.

As the war on piracy steps up, it's surprising that these supposedly unauthorised online streams don't get more attention. The quality is often good enough to watch on your television, better than the official Catch Up services, assuming you've got access to a flash-enabled browser on the big screen. Old episodes of TV shows take a long time to download via BitTorrent because fewer people are sharing them than new episodes, but click play on a stream and you'll be watching it in a few seconds -- a tempting option if you don't want to keep a copy to watch again. You'll also find a lot of TV shows on YouTube and Vimeo which seem to have been overlooked by the censors.

Stream aggregators such as tubeplus.me and tvseries.net are useful starting points. They don't actually host the TV shows and full length movies, they just make them easy to find. Surely these aggregators haven't gone unnoticed by the copyright police who previously shut down BiTorrent search engines and BitTorrent RSS aggregators such as FeedMyTorrents. Perhaps they're not considered a big enough threat. Even if these aggregators do get shut down, a Google search will still find the goods despite DMCA takedowns of search results.

Quickflix and BBC iPlayer are paving the way in Australia with subscription video services, but it's still early days. Perhaps if we also had legit access to broader services such as Netflix, HuluPlus and Amazon Prime then the free streaming alternatives would seem less appealing. Yet while they refuse to take our money, everything we want to watch is only a stream away.

Once Telstra chokes file-sharing, what's stopping it choking legitimate competitors to "encourage" you to use Bigpond Movies, Telstra voice and other Telstra services?

Telstra's plans to throttle BitTorrent traffic are back in the headlines this week, plans which you might argue are designed to drive away bandwidth hogs so Telstra can simply milk customers who pay for more than they need.

But when you consider the big picture, plans to throttle P2P could also be another step towards throttling legitimate competitors such as the Apple, Sony and Quickflix movie rental services. Then there are the various VoIP services which threaten Telstra's voice revenues. The backend technology used to implement Telstra's P2P crackdown could easily be pointed at such services and the telco giant has a less than spotless track record when it comes to playing fair with competitors.

Such fears are at the heart of the global net neutrality debate, with supporters pushing for laws which guarantee that the internet is a level playing field without ISPs hampering competitors to favour their own services. Net neutrality is more of a political issue in the US, but expect to hear more about it in Australia over the next few years.

In the past Telstra used its minuscule Bigpond download allowances to create a walled garden without walls for its customers, ensuring they would only use Telstra's unmetered services because they couldn't afford the bandwidth to go elsewhere. Now that download limits are more generous, Telstra is looking for new ways to stop you taking your business elsewhere. The T-Box movie rental box is a smart play, but choking the competition might seem like an even smarter play if Telstra thinks it can get away with it.

The ACCC is unlikely to raise an eyebrow at Telstra's plans to throttle P2P traffic, even though there are many legitimate uses for BitTorrent and other P2P services. But if Telstra introduces it unopposed, is the next step to throttle VoIP traffic or competing video services? Will Australia's consumer watchdog come to our defence? Remember, this is the same watchdog which still seems genuinely surprised when the price of petrol goes up before every long weekend.

As the net neutrality debate becomes more prominent in Australia, all eyes will be on Telstra's efforts to play favourites on its network.

If you're relying on a PVR, your chances of seeing every episode of Elementary in its entirety are slim at best.

The silly season is over and our favourite shows such as The Big Bang Theory are returning to the idiot box, along with a few shows which are new for 2013 such as the highly anticipated Elementary. Of course Elementary started screen in the US months ago and we're already 13 episodes behind. It's only "new for 2013" if you've waited to watch it on Australian free-to-air television.

Going on past experience, watching Elementary -- or any other weekly drama -- on Australian television this year will be a painful experience. Expect to miss at least one episode due to a last-minute schedule change or unexpected double episode. Expect to have the end clipped off a few more episodes when they run particularly late -- not fun when Sherlock is just about to unmask the killer.

Network bastardry is to blame and it was the Australian Communications and Media Authority's job to pull them into line. Instead it let them off the hook and now ACMA's best advice is to simply record the following program so you don't miss the end. Frustrating advice from a government watchdog which was supposed to fix this problem once and for all.

Even with Season Passes and generous padding, your PVR can still leave you in the lurch. For all its faults the TiVo is one of  Australia's most reliable PVRs yet it still managed to miss episodes of Homeland, Alcatraz and Terra Nova in the last few years. Now TiVo appears to be on death row in Australia and it's hard to recommend another PVR as a replacement. Even the Freeview EPG PVRs can still let you down.

It seems the only foolproof way to ensure you see every episode of Elementary is to download it from BitTorrent each week, with the added benefit of no promos splashed over the top and no lost dialogue from an overzealous fade to an ad break. You don't need to be Sherlock Holmes to solve this murder mystery; Australia TV networks are gradually cutting their own throats.