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.
Interesting ethical question, Mark: you insist that copyright infringement is in a different ethical catagory to theft, yeah? Yet personally you won’t have a bar of it.
More…
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))
By Ulrika Hedquist Auckland | Wednesday, 11 March, 2009 in Computerworld
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…
[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 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…