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.
Hocquard took exception to this and said that, though ISPs could disconnect people who breached their terms of service, they didn’t, and on in that vein. It got pretty messy, as Havoc’s show tends to, and Hocquard went on to say that the whole mess was the ISPs fault for not getting the Code of Practice right, and that Telecom was responsible, that Telecom had “got to” Key, which is why Key was less than unequivocal in his prior interview. I think is a pretty odd thing for an entertainment lawyer to accuse a sitting prime minister of being dictated to by Telecom, but that’s Hocquard’s problem not mine. Personally, I think Key just hasn’t got a clue.
Russell still regards Hocquard as a friend, he assures us. I am happy for him, but I’m not happy about the message that Hocquard is putting out there. Either he’s uninformed as to the facts of the business (which doesn’t appear to be the case, given the testimonials on that thread from Simon Grigg and others), or he understands them and doesn’t care. I can’t tell which. It was pointed out that he’s a hard-nosed lawyer and defending a principle he believes in, but that says to me he’s out of touch with the way the world is working now, especially for the potential benefit the Internet can bring to his artist clients on amplifier. It needs new ways of working but so does everything that changes.
Anyway, we put that thread to bed, but yesterday, I noticed this little beauty that he released on Friday. Gems like “Hysterical response to Copyright changes rings alarms”, “At least 85% of all digital traffic in music involves illegal downloading and file sharing. Every one of those transactions involves a data transfer through an ISP” and “If you have a business model based on the illegal trafficking of other peoples’ property then perhaps it is time to revisit that model.”
The hysteria is not confined to the opponents of s92A, it seems.
I don’t know Chris Hocquard personally and, as I’m in Waikanae and not a lawyer and he’s in Auckland and is, I’m not likely to make his acquaintance. And when distance separates antagonists and communication is indirect, there’s always a risk that comments are misunderstood, taken out of context and turned into personal insults, so I’m not going down that path. But I think he’s been pretty clear in his comments, and consistent, as the ‘hysteria’ line was one he used to Oliver Driver last year.
What I’d say to him, were we in the same room, is “have you really thought this through? How, as an officer of the court, can you be in favour of removing due process?” I’d genuinely be interested in his answer.
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