There’s been a lot talked about copyright recently what it is, what it isn’t, and I want to use this post to examine what I think it is.

A little potted history first. The idea of copyright arose initially in the 16th century with the advent of a new technology: the printing press. This was a revolutionary period in terms of content creation. What had previously been the province of the individual scholar hand-copying documents suddenly became a lot easier to do and a lot quicker. This is the essential difference that the printing press made. And, in England, the right to print these was governed by the Crown, and this was used to censor and suppress material that the Crown felt did not benefit it. (more…)

Well, sort of. Introduction of Section 92A has been delayed until 27 March, to allow the negotiating parties to sort the Code of Practice out.

3News has it here:

Government delays introduction of controversial ‘S92A’

The government has called for a delay in the implementation of Section 92A, the controversial Copyright Amendment Act due to come into force February 28.

John Key made the announcement at a post-cabinet press conference this afternoon, stating the implementation will be delayed until March 27.

“We are hoping that by that time we will have come up with a voluntary code of practice,” said Mr Key.

It is reported Section 92A will be suspended if no agreement is reached.

and Computer World has it here:

Finlayson John Key delays copyright law

[...] Computerworld spoke to technologist Nat Torkington who attended Finlayson’s press conference this afternoon at 4pm.

Torkington says the government may suspend the controversial S92a if no agreement is reached between the parties on how to implement it.

[...]Even if there is an agreement, Torkington says the government will monitor the first six months of the new regime and review the progress then.

My hearty thanks to everyone who has been involved in protests, and especially to Bronwyn Holloway-Smith and Matt Holloway of the Creative Freedom Foundation who, I have no doubt, are a big part of the cause of this. Well done guys!

Michael Geist reports that :

the next round of ACTA negotiations, which had been scheduled for next month in Morocco, has been delayed at the request of U.S. officials. While this does not signal a change in perspective on ACTA, the U.S. did want to provide incoming USTR officials time to review ACTA before continuing with the negotiations. No new meeting has been established.

As usual, nothing on the MED page about it, but who’s really surprised about that?

You may remember I posted last year on an interview Oliver Driver did with Chris Hocquard. He still doesn’t get it, in my opinion, despite the fact that he’s the director and sole shareholder in amplifer.co.nz and is well regarded in the industry.

Last Thursday, he had a set to on 95Bfm (MP3) (where he’s also a director and shareholder) with Russell Brown, media commentator and founder of Public Address. Russell rang in to criticize and correct an interview with PM John Key in which Key had said that a) National didn’t support it (when they did) and b) they had officials’ advice that they had to support it now. Anyone who read my last post
will know that, after the Select Committee process, the officials were against the reinsertion of s92A, although I have no doubt they’ve accepted it as gospel since, since to do otherwise now would be to criticize a former Minister and a current Attorney-General and Public Servant 101 says you just don’t do that in public. (more…)

Last year, when I first heard about ACTA, I submitted an OIA request to the Competition, Trade and Investment Branch of the MED for any information about ACTA in order to make a submission. I recorded the results, and my progress on a wiki as well as my final submission. I was extremely disappointed as to the result. MED identified 91 documents but only provided 13, and those were redacted heavily, as MED advised that all the countries participating had agreed not to tell anyone anything. They were also all photocopies of text and thus not searchable but I’ve made the PDFs available from the link. Not a hugely successful result, from my perspective, but I got enough to complete my submission, so I left it there instead of referring it to the Ombudsman. You can only bang your head against the wall for so long, eh? (more…)

From the Creative Freedom Foundation website:

Public Demonstration

In Wellington on the steps of Parliament on Thursday 19th at 12:30 with a petition handover at 1pm. This is a postive event where we will hand out hundreds of CDs and thank the politicans that support us – so please keep it friendly and polite. While we appreciate people arranging their own demonstrations it might be best if we don’t dilute our numbers with multiple events.

We want everyone reading this to email everyone they know in Wellington about this. We can’t let this be another internet protest that results in few people turning up. This is important so we need to prove it in numbers.

NOTE: Please don’t wear all black as that has negative associations with other demonstrations but instead come along with bright clothes and BLACK PLACARDS!

See you there

This site will be black all week.

There’s a wee snippet in the Briefings to Incoming Ministers regarding ACTA. Yes, I do read these things. Not for fun, you understand, but they’re always a good way to get an overview of what government agencies are working on and how they are constructed, especially when there’s a change of Government. The Beehive site has gathered them all in one place so that you can access them. I downloaded the lot, because you never know when such things might vanish away… (more…)

We return you to your regular programme, after a summer hiatus that I wasn’t intending, actually. And what better way to get into 2009 than with some juicy leaked stuff!

James Love, of Knowledge Ecology International, has just blogged some details from apparently leaked documents re ACTA

http://www.keionline.org/blogs/2009/02/03/details-emerge-of-secret-acta/

It seems he has the outline and some text snippets, but doesn’t disclose the source. Love is pretty credible and I’d think unlikely to publish stuff he didn’t whole heartedly believe was correct, but he may be being spoofed – who knows?

There is apparently a permanent structure to be erected, the ACTA Oversight Council, to:
“supervise ACTA implementation, consider amendments, interpretations, and modifications to the agreement, and establish and delegate responsibilities to ad hoc working groups, (more…)