Br3nda Wallace has noticed something strange. A press release from Judith Tizard on 16 October barely registered before it vanished. I didn’t see it come through on my feed from the Beehive site, nor on the newzealand.govt.nz feed. And it seems that it hasn’t been taken down, but permissions have been changed so that it gives back a 403 – Forbidden response, to which I say WTF? Fortunately Br3nda was able to track down the Google cache (which is still kinda weird – it hung around long enough to be Googled but not to be fed out on RSS) and links to it. She’s also preserved the text in case that disappears.

(more…)

Just spotted in my RSS feed from the Government portal – newzealand.govt.nz, in case you didn’t know – is a post from MED about the latest round of ACTA negotiations ACTA Negotiations: Report on Round Three, 8-9 October 2008, Tokyo

Of course, it says bugger all of substance, as expected after the last round report, but the interesting thing is that it’s there at all. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think it’s the first time I’ve seen anything in the feed about ACTA. This says 2 things to me: 1) they know we’re watching and 2) they have decided to be a little more proactive about publicising the negotiations.

Apparently, “participants in the discussion included Australia, Canada, the European Union (represented by the European Commission and the EU Presidency (France)), Japan, Korea, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland, and the United States” (Morocco?? O rly? Mind you, they’re probably saying “New Zealand? WTF?” so it evens out). (more…)

I forgot one of the key things he said which shows how ridiculous the whole business is.

“there was a thing the other night on the news about people stealing other people’s wireless connections and things like that, the technology’s there , you can, you know, your umm your number that you have for the internet , it’s not a confidential thing, they can track pretty much everything that’s going on”

If someone “steals” your wireless connection and infringes copyright, how will they know it’s not you? This has been popping up as a key defence in the US – not being able to prove exactly who might have infringed.

He’s parroting talking points. If he sticks to the music side of things, I’ll listen to him. But not on the technology side, He doesn’t have a clue.

I just watched TV3’s Sunrise segment with Chris Hocquard, an entertainment lawyer, wobble on about section 92a. He’s a director of amplifier.co.nz (which I’m pleased to see he wasn’t plugging, so kudos for that) and chair of bFM, which gives him some skin in the music game, but I wasn’t too impressed with what he had to say. Judge for yourself.

Transcript (caveat – best efforts only, based on material copyright TV3 2008):

DRIVER: What’s at the heart of Section 92a?

HOCQUARD: It’s something that says, if you know it’s going on and we point it out to you, we want you to stop it. So it’s just aimed at the ISPs saying we think you know how to do this, can you stop doing it”

(more…)

According to PM Helen Clark on TV3’s Sunrise (about 3m21 in) this morning, Judith Tizard is working on a new business model for online copyright. Yeah, right. Full marks to Ollie Driver for pointing out that the Act only requires allegations, not convictions, to trigger enforcement (and a hat tip to Nat Torkington for picking it up)

When Don Christie and I spoke to her last month, Tizard said that she had been waiting for the music industry to present a model and that they had promised her one during the last round of copyright negotiation, so that’s 2+ years and counting.

Hands up all those who have faith she’ll deliver anything?

(more…)

On September 17, I emailed all the parties I could find from the Elections Website to ask what their policies were regarding the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. I looked at their websites first – nothing at all

[UPDATE: as xurizaemon points out in the comments, the Greens at least have a tech policy statement that covers the general area that ACTA covers, which does make them ahead of the pack there].

I selected those individuals who were listed as spokesmen on trade matters. If there wasn’t one specified, I sent it to the party leader or to the general contact address, if that’s all they had.

I think 3 weeks is long enough to wait for a response, so I have amended my ACTA wiki with the results

(more…)

There’s now a Facebook group for supporters of change to section 92a – if you’re part of the insidious New Social Order (and, for my sins, I am), go there, join up and tell all your friends.

Earlier this year Canadian Prof. Michael Geist organised a similar group against the C-61 copyright bill and forced a government backdown. It’s got to be worth a try.

Also, front your local candidates, write to the PM, make a noise. This affects all of us, not just the ISPs

Colin Jackson was incredulously eloquent this morning on RNZ, talking to Kathryn Ryan (speaking notes on his blog) about the farce that is section 92a of the Copyright (New Technologies) Amendment, which is a little like a foretaste of ACTA.

Basically, section 92a says to ISPs, though shalt not allow thy users to download copyright material, and thou shalt have in place a policy to cut off their access if you get a certain number of allegations from copyright holders. That’s allegations, people, not convictions. What ever happened to “innocent until proven guilty” as a foundation for human rights?

(more…)

..over on Public Address System. It started two weeks ago in a post of Russell’s about the Internet Debate on TV and so Russell set up a specific thread to discuss copyright. There’s been some very interesting (if occasionally heated) debate about the origins and future of copyright. Check it out.

I blame two brown people for this blog: Mike Brown of Webstock, and Russell Brown of Public Address. Mike and I were talking in Sydney, back in 2005 after the Web Essentials 05 conference, and one of our takeaways was that all god’s chillun got a blog. And a Flickr account. Mike went on to start Webstock, which I call the hard way to getting a blog, and we both got on Flickr, but I was unconvinced about this whole blogging thing. In one sense, it’s what we were doing back in the 90’s with personal homepages. But, I thought, most of them were lame and many of the blogs I’ve encountered are the same, filling your screen with the minutiae of the owner’s daily life. Did the world really need yet another technologist imparting the ultimate truth to an audience that consists of his mother and siblings? No, I thought, stay in the comments section and participate from there. But a seed was planted. (more…)