Those crazy Holloway kids are up in arms about S92a, and you don’t mess with artists in arms! They’ve started a new foundation, the Creative Freedom Foundation, and I’m delighted to support it.

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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…)

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

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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?

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