Bless me Internet, for I have sinned. It is 6 whole months since my last post. Woh!

So what happened to drag me away from the keyboard?

• I got a dog (using the same rule as cats – see other blog)
• I helped run a BarCamp on Open Government
• I did a couple of other projects that I can’t link to or talk too much about
• I had bronchitis (been a pretty crappy winter all around, health-wise)
• I was accepted as an exhibitor in the Kapiti Arts Trail this weekend (#91)
• (I’m sure there was some other stuff)
• Oh yeah, I signed up on Twitter.

That last is the big one, really, as it chews up the most time. I have barely looked at RSS since April, and have only made one post to my family blog. It’s really quite fascinating to me (10K tweets later) and not a little frightening. I’m following most of the people I used to use RSS for, but now it’s in real time.

So, what’s hauled me back to the keyboard? ACTA – the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement – you may remember that I’ve blogged on this before. Well, it’s just entered its next round, in Korea, that well-known home of freedom and civil liberties (and the first country in the world to pass a 3 strikes law and implement it).

So, wassup with ACTA? For background, I’d like to point you to a recording of me discussing ACTA with Kim Hill on National Radio recently. Very pleased with the event and it’s now very timely, as ACTA has reared up again. (more…)

You may remember I mentioned the Copyright thread on Public Address System (PAS to its habitués). It got to 37 pages which we thought was quite a lot. There’s another one, starting from a review of Lawrence Lessig’s lecture in Auckland last year by Matthew Poole, which is now at 81 pages and 1600+ postings, and it’s gone into the issues for the music industry at some length (warning: abandon hope all ye who enter here, as much of it goes round in circles – just pick through and find the nuggets)

Yesterday, Rob Stowell posted a link to a series of posts on Hypebot about free music, from inside the industry. I recommend reading them for some insight and to form your own opinion before reading on, because I’m about to dissect them.

(more…)

(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.

[Warning - this one is quite long with lots of juicy links]

Mauricio Frietas has posted a Q&A session with Campbell Smith, the CEO of RIANZ that happened in one of the Forums. It’s an interesting read but Smith is still convinced that his cause is just and, hey, RIANZ are not the RIAA so just trust us already.

He cites a report by Entertainment Media Research in the UK (don’t go there if, like me, you use anything other than IE) which is the 2008 Digital Entertainment Survey (direct link to full report PDF 8.6MB, Summary report PDF 848KB).
Actually, he says:

Independent research has found that the main driver of piracy is the
availability of music for free. For example, a recent survey in the UK
by Entertainment Media Research found that 7 in 10 file-sharers cited
the availability of free music as their reason for using peer-to-peer
networks and our focus group research in New Zealand suggests that it is
a similar driver here.

Okay, I’m up for some independent research. Let’s go looking for the report. (more…)

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…)

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 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…)