If you don’t like the Copyright Act, join up!
There is now a Facebook group for people who don’t like S92A of the Copyright Act and think it should be got rid of as soon as possible.
In related news, New Zealand’s extreme copyright law has been picked up by BoingBoing and the Toronto Globe and Mail. And Brenda Wallace brings out even more of the essential unfairness of it all. That’s right, we have been sold down the river.
I am embarrassed to see that this is what New Zealand is famous for.
Update: a YouTube video on the absurdity of it all.
Further update: a great piece about abuse of copyright written by Lawrence Lessig is running on the Wall Street Journal.
As we discussed on Thursday, I handled a bunch of copyright complaints made by the US motion picture enforcement crowd when I was running security for my Australian government employer. In no case were we able to confirm the allegations. Most of the time, the IP addresses they listed were for subnets that weren’t allocated. When it was a valid IP address, we wouldn’t find any evidence of P2P traffic in the logs or P2P software on the computer. After a while I just ignored them and their threats to prosecute us under some US law that didn’t apply in foreign countries. I had enough to do without trying to work out why their forensics were so sloppy…
And now I find that their word is law in New Zealand.
Comment by DavidP — 12 October 2008 @ 9:03 am
Now at 206 members and climbing
Comment by Mark Harris — 13 October 2008 @ 1:20 pm
On a lighter note, this story has also been picked up by NZs premiere baby blog.
http://www.haveababyforyou.com
Seriously though thanks for covering this and making noise.
Comment by wow — 14 October 2008 @ 2:08 am
Colin Jackson: “The thing that’s got me really worked up, though, is the provision in the act that says that Internet Service Providers have to cut off your Internet access if you are accused – that’s accused, not convicted – of unlawfully infringing someone’s copyright.”
Colin, where in s92a does it say this?
Comment by Question — 15 October 2008 @ 7:59 pm
By making ISPs liable if they do not act in a timely way, and ISPs are not capable of judging whether a given activity is a copyright infringement or not.
Comment by colin — 16 October 2008 @ 5:26 pm
Colin, are you sure? I checked the section again and it just doesn’t seem to be saying what you say it does. Do you have a quote of the act that says what you’re saying?
Comment by Question — 17 October 2008 @ 9:06 pm
Question – the issue that ISPs cannot tell what you are doing and have little or no choice but to act in the face of accusations. Don’t just listen to me, check out the joint press release by just about everybody.
Comment by colin — 18 October 2008 @ 3:07 pm
The s92 issue is now covered at this website …
http://creativefreedom.org.nz/
This is a website of artists “against the removal of New Zealander’s rights through proposed changes in Copyright law”.
Comment by Peter — 7 January 2009 @ 7:10 am