(Hat-tip to harrismint for this one)

On Torrentfreak there is a report of an EU vote (481 in favour, 25 against and 21 abstentions) to accept a report about fundamental freedoms on the Internet.

For the third time in a year the European Parliament has spoken out against tougher anti-piracy legislation that would allow alleged file-sharers to be disconnected from the Internet based on evidence from anti-piracy lobby groups. Instead, they chose to protect rights and freedoms of Internet users.

Apparently, the French are not amused. (more…)

There is a video going around on the Intarwebz. I am not going to link directly to it but you can find it in the blog I link to in this post. It’s a report from Russia Today about ACTA. It has a clip of Richard Stallman sounding off, and a few others, and intimates that their laptops and MP3 players might be searched at the border if this “Act” goes through. I’ve seen this turn up on a couple of New Zealander boards, but the main places I am seeing it is on conservative American blogs.

The wing nuts are raging that Obama is interfering in their lives! Let me quote to you from one of the slightly less foaming:

Yikes! Is there any part of American citizens’ lives that the Obama administration does not want to intrude on? Where is the MSM on this? Can you imagine the outcry if this was coming down the pike under Bush? There would have been weeping and gnashing of teeth! And cries of totalitarianism, which it seems, is coming for us under the cover of night…

The irony that this originated under George Bush seems to escape them.

But they’re right to ask where are the mainstream media? Why haven’t they been all over this for the last 18 months? As I said in a previous post some have, but nowhere near enough.

The irony also is that the wing nuts are getting their information from a Russian blog (and funded by the State, no less). And yet they’re posting with labels like “liberal bias”, “media bias”, and “totalitarianism”. Way to have a rational discussion, guys.

ACTA is hairy and scary, not least because of the secrecy. But Europe is calling for more transparency, as is Canada, and Obama’s White House is reviewing the USTR’s stance of “national security” as I type (well, maybe not as I type as it’s just coming up Sunday morning in Washington DC). What will it take to shift the MED? Probably dynamite.

As bad as s92A was, ACTA is a whole other ball of wax. The media need to be on top of it, but they really are conspicuous by their absence. I don’t want to seem like a conspiracy theorist, but are the big media combines suppressing any reporting of the negotiations? Are there instructions going out to remote bureaus to not cover the issue?

Bloggers are able to get information. You’d think the MSM with their vast resources should be able to get at least that much, if not more. Because the alternative to the paranoia is that the media are just too stupid to recognize a story if it bit them on the arse.

One of the fraught issues, when looking at censorship, is child abuse images (CAI), also known as “child pornography” (note that I disdain the use of “kiddie porn” as it diminishes the importance of the issue). Anyone with children feels this one in the gut, that it could be their child being abused but for the grace of whatever deity they look to. I’ll own up front that I have no children, and thus little emotional stake in the debate, which is both a good and bad thing. Good, because I can look at the issue rationally and try to get to the bottom of it; bad, because many involved in the debate are so invested and regard those who are not with some suspicion. I can live with that.

Let me say, also, that I do not support the CAI ‘industry’, either the images or the rationalisations that many use to justify it. It does disgust me, but so does the life and death of JonBenet Ramsay and other matters of the exploitation of children for whatever reason. What I do support is rational policy based on hard data and not on unproven assumptions.

For the record, I was involved in 2005 in some research and testing for InternetNZ, Netsafe and the Department of Internal Affairs. We were looking at the Internet Watch Foundation’s filter list and assessing it for use in NZ. My conclusion then was that, although the list appeared to contain nothing that wasn’t related to CAI (I freely admit that I did not check every link!), it would not be a silver bullet in preventing NZ Internet users from seeing all CAI material. I was investigating the freedom of speech aspect as much as the efficacy of the filter. What I was looking for, particularly, was whether the list blocked material that would be legal in NZ (not really) and, more importantly, whether it allowed material that is illegal under NZ law (which it does). (more…)

http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/section-92a-be-scrapped-89121

Prime Minister John Key has announced that the government will throw out the controversial Section 92A of the Copyright Amendment (New Technologies) Act and start again.

Justice minister Simon Power will now meet with officials and rewrite the section of the Act from the ground up.

No timeframe has been set for whatever clause will replace Section 92A.

Let’s hope we can do it right this time.

I’ve called out Campbell Smith on his creative use of English to make black appear white. Now its APRA’s turn, and specifically Arthur Baysting. This will probably earn me wrath from some sectors of the music community, to whom Baysting has been a battler of the local industry for years, but his latest effort is a little much to swallow. (more…)

ACTA stands for “Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement” and after a year of negotiations (following a year of “pre-negotiations”), that’s all we really know for certain. Which is just a bit insane for countries that are supposed to be representative democracies.

Trade agreements are often negotiated under cover of secrecy, so that industry lobbyists can’t focus on details that affect their constituents and derail the process. But, with ACTA, the industry lobbyists appear to be in on the game, privy to the details and offering advice to the negotiating teams. It’s only we poor, tax-paying, voting citizens that aren’t allowed to know anything.

The media isn’t helping. I don’t recall much media comment at all in New Zealand on ACTA, over the last year. A Google search outside official government sites says there are 5180 responses for ACTA, but the first 20 shows blogs (Br3nda Wallace, Colin Jackson, Geekzone and me), InternetNZ and the Distilled Spirits Association (both of whom put in submissions during last year’s “consultation” spurred by the Wikileaks release). The rest of the results are for other uses of the word “acta” (which is Latin for “beach” apparently, but also “register of events”), often for scientific journals. Searching on “Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement” is a little better, but largely the same type of suspects. The mainstream media is conspicuous by it’s absence. (more…)

Over on PublicAddress, there’s a long running debate on copyright (actually, crossing over multiple threads and other discussions). It’s got a little heated at times but at the moment, it’s not too bad. Last night, one of the participants, Rob Stowell asked me a question that I had to think about, and this morning I posted my response. I’ve decided to repost it here, because I think it’s a good articulation of my views on the debate.

Effectively, it’s dead as a means of managing the Act. The TCF’s rules are pretty clear: (more…)

WOW! (hat tip to Paul Matthews (NZCS))

The code will not solve copyright issues, says TelstraClear

TelstraClear has pulled the rug from under efforts to implement New Zealand’s controversial new copyright law. The telco has told the Telecommunications Carriers’ Forum (TCF) and a working party trying to thrash out a draft code to implement section 92A of the Copyright (New Technologies) Amendment Act that it no longer supports the effort.

Well, don’t that put the cat among the pigeons!

Update: Also, now in Stuff

Astute readers of the net will have noticed that Korea has a proposal for a three strikes or, should we say “graduated response” piece of legislation.

France is also going through the process of such legislation in spite of the fact that the European Parliament has declared it not suitable to Europe. In Ireland, the IP industry has coerced the largest ISP and has sent demands to the smaller ISPs to put in place a graduated response mechanism without legislation. That’s their preferred tactic, I think.

Germany has recently knocked back such a proposal, but there appears to be a surge in United States and other countries for such processes to be put in place.

This has led some people to ask “is this just about the RIAA or are they just a useful stalking horse for wider goals of censorship and control?”.

In my view, that’s bordering on tinfoil hat territory. I’m not disputing there is a wider game being played globally by interested parties, and to some extent it’s about control. But I really don’t think censorship’s the driving force. However, I agree that the RIAA et al are front and centre, while machinations occur behind closed doors. (more…)