Public Address - Hard News (Home)

High Noon | Feb 19, 2009 07:23

Public Address reader Mark Harris has a fascinating blog post on the progress of Section 92A of the Copyright Act. He notes the way that it was restored to the amendment bill after being deleted by the select committee, with notice by Judith Tizard and approval from National's Chris Finlayson ("we support what is being done here") constituting the whole of the debate.

But the most interesting part concerns the Officials' Report on the Copyright (New Technologies and Performers' Rights) Amendment Bill: Clause by Clause Analysis, a summary of submissions on the bill. Noting support for 92A from RIANZ, the officials said:

Disagree. ISP standard terms and conditions generally already allow for the termination of accounts of people using the ISP's services for illegal activity, and section 92C already provides for removal of infringing content. There is no clear need for a further requirement for termination of accounts. It is recommended that this clause be deleted.

It's a strong point, and one that has not been highlighted in the debate, so far as I'm aware. It wasn't addressed at all when Section 92A was brought back into the bill in Committee of the House stage. Tizard brought it in, Finlayson gave the thumbs-up, and that was it. Mark has followed up with a clutch of OIA requests in search of other advice.

Meanwhile, the Section 92A public demonstration in Parliament's grounds is now at noon today, having been moved from 12.30 to accommodate another protest. As luck would have it, I'll be there. I'm told there will be another question asked in the House by Labour's Clare Curran today, and you may care to write the Simon Power, the responsible minister, at . I'm told staff have been taken aback by the volume of email on this issue, and more polite emails couldn't hurt.

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In tonight's Media7, we discuss the economy and the media with Bernard Hickey, Herald business editor Liam Dann and Tim Watkin, making reference to this somewhat electrifying interview with Paul Keating, in which the former Australian PM calls for a fundamental re-alignment of global financial structures; one that may not be to the liking of the "debtor nations" such as Europe and the US.

Also, there's a chat about science reporting with Peter Griffin and Alan Samson and reports from Foo Camp and the Top Gear circus. That's after the 9 o'clock news on TVNZ7.
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Finally, I learned overnight that Bob Munro, a member of the Public Address community, has died. He had a massive heart attack during an early-morning bike ride in the Port Hills in Christchurch. His friend Jane Pearson wrote that:

When I spoke to Ann, his partner, this evening we talked about Bob's involvement with Public Address. Bob and Ann own an art gallery and Bob would spend some of the quiet times following the on-going discussions and felt that contributing posts kept him on his "mental toes". He would sparkle with delight at the ideas and erudition that he gained from you all. Sometimes when I read his posts I would find out what was happening in their lives and it was like a personal network within a wider context.

Ann wants you to know how much enjoyment Bob had from being part of Public Address. He was a positive, optimistic and thinking person who loved a good discussion and his many friends will miss him greatly.

I'm moved to hear that what goes on here gave such enjoyment. We'll miss Bob too, and my thoughts are with Ann.

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Blackout Bingo! | Feb 18, 2009 09:28

The Guardian has a story (one of quite a few on the wires) on New Zealand's Internet Blackout protest against Section 92(A) of the Copyright Act.

The Blackout fun continues this morning with the release of The Copywrong Song under a Creative Commons licence. You are cordially invited to download, enjoy and have a little remix.

And then at 12.30pm tomorrow, Wellingtonians can get along to the Parliament steps for the S92(A) petition handover. Dress code: bright clothes, black placards.

And, of course, the Blackout Bingo craze takes hold. Ive got two lines. But does Jack Black count?

Frank Rich had an interesting column in the New York Times on Saturday, surveying the gulf in perceptions of the economic battle in Washington. The press, perhaps overcompensating for last month's luvvies, holds that the Republicans have been strengthened by the stimulus scrap, and Obama is losing the message war. A series of polls say quite the opposite.

In a similar vein, Jane Hamsher on the HuffPo looks at the Research 2000 polling conducted for DailyKos (blogs commission nationwide polls!) which tells the same story.

Pew finds that while support for the stimulus package has eroded somewhat in the last couple of weeks, Obama himself is being seen in remarkably positive terms.

Jon Stewart is not alone in wondering where the Republicans' newfound passion for fiscal rectitude came from. His Daily Show interview with John Sununu was a cracker. [NB: I tried to do the right thing and use the official Comedy Central embed code -- 2500 characters to embed a video clip! -- but it was a complete mess. If Viacom wants people to stop infringing its copyrights on YouTube it should put some effort into improving its own useless solution.]

So here's the link. The video plays like crap on the Comedy central site. Talk about breaking a good internet brand ...

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On this week's Media7, we're looking at economic news with Bernard Hickey, Tim Watkin and Liam Dann. There's also a chat with Peter Griffin of the Science Media Centre about the fortunes of science reporting and a little item on Foo Camp (the plan is to make the interviews I did available in full online).

Among the things we'll be discussing is this extraordinary interview with Paul Keating from Australia's ABC Lateline programme in which he calls for a complete re-engineering of the world financial system, in favour of creditor nations.

If you'd like to join us at The Classic just after 5pm today, hit reply and let me know.

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In other news, Pew finds more than one in 10 Americans using Twitter or other microblogging platform.

And in a last morsel of Pew goodness, 80% of American Buddhists and Hindus agree that "evolution is the best explanation for the origins of human life on earth" versus only 24% of evangelical protestants. Overall, nearly two thirds of Americans still reject the theory of evolution.

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The Public Bad | Feb 17, 2009 10:14

You may have noticed that something has happened to your friends' avatars on Facebook, Twitter and Public Address System: they've gone black. You're seeing The Blackout, a netroots protest against Section 92(A) of the Copyright Act, which comes into force on February 28.

David Farrar has a detailed explanation of the problems with the law from a business point of view -- and of the oddities of its progress -- so I'll try and avoid going over much of the same territory. But this is the text the fuss is all about:

92A Internet service provider must have policy for terminating accounts of repeat infringers

(1) An Internet service provider must adopt and reasonably implement a policy that provides for termination, in appropriate circumstances, of the account with that Internet service provider of a repeat infringer.

(2) In subsection (1), repeat infringer means a person who repeatedly infringes the copyright in a work by using 1 or more of the Internet services of the Internet service provider to do a restricted act without the consent of the copyright owner.

It's vague, but some opinions hold that an "ISP" for the purposes of this law could be any organisation that provides internet service to end users: a library, or a commercial business. What no one disagrees on is that it applies a harsh penalty -- disconnection from the internet -- without the legal process that would traditionally apply in the case of a copyright complaint.

Hence, the Creative Freedom Foundation, an artists' group that has been making the running on protest (and whose website contains a good deal of information and background, as well as instructions on how to join the protest), dubs it "the guilt upon accusation law".

As I have indicated before, I find this issue vexing because I have many friends in both the music and tech industries. At times during arguments over amendments to the Copyright Act I have felt some despair at each side's ability to talk past the other.

I'm still not much interested in naming and blaming. But Campbell Smith's comments on behalf of RIANZ rejecting the Telecommunications Carriers' Forum draft code of conduct on Section 92(A) -- because it is insufficiently draconian -- do make it a lot easier to choose a side here.

Matthew Holloway and Bronwyn Holloway-Smith of the Creative Freedom Foundation have been clear and constructive in the way they've communicated on this issue. They have been at pains to uphold the rights of copyright holders. They have introduced to the debate constructive suggestions, such as a copyright court modelled on the disputes tribunal, as an affordable venue to bring and contest claims.

The copyright-holder side has, in my view, simply walked away from the public good argument that the local music industry has been happy to play on for the last couple of decades. It was a public good that, say, radio stations should be induced to cohere to a local content quota when they'd paid a great deal of money to be able to broadcast whatever they thought would make them a dollar. It was a public good that taxpayers should help fund the industry in a variety of ways.

But apparently the principle of public good only runs in one direction. This isn't the first time: RIANZ/IMNZ presented a submission calling for libraries to be prevented from digitising works simply for archiving purposes (and yes, that is what we fund libraries to do). Along with APRA, it opposed an amendment providing an exception in the Copyright Act for format-shifting -- that is, finally making legal the ubiquitous and reasonable activity of copying your own CDs to your computer or your portable player. (Something, it should be noted, that all those who resisted the law change actually do themselves). They didn't get those. But they did get Section 92.

It appeared that a code of conduct devised by the Telecommunications Carriers Forum, representing the major ISPs and telcos, might ameliorate the worst aspects of the law and outline the processes missing from the text of the act. It also contains a social responsibility section, which commits carriers to avoid the disconnection of "vulnerable" users. (Essentially, they heard the name "Folele Muliaga" in their heads and knew they didn't want to go there.) The fact that the concept of social responsibility was introduced by telecommunications corporates and ignored and dismissed by the rights holder lobby does not flatter the rights holders. At all.

It is not only that this law denies the accused any due process, it is that it stipulates a penalty that no court would impose in adjudicating a copyright complaint even if infringement were proven. Remarkably, someone convicted in a court of law of handling child pornography via the internet would not suffer such a penalty.

It is quite proper to seek efficient ways of adjudicating legal disputes, but the problem with Section 92(A) is that it places the adjudication of a legal dispute either in the hands of parties who are not competent to make such decisions (ISPs and telecommunications companies), or (in the approach endorsed by RIANZ' Campbell Smith) in the hands of one party to the dispute. To say this isn't ideal is putting it mildly.

When the unexpected decision was to restore Section 92 to the Copyright (New Technologies) Amendment Act -- after the Commerce select committee dumped it on hearing public submissions -- it could have been argued that it was necessary for New Zealand to keep in step with other major jurisdictions; most notably Britain and Germany, who were planning similar laws. That is not the case now.

Germany and the EU have both rejected the idea as a breach of civil rights, with the German Secretary of Justice observing in a statement that:

I don't think that (Three Strikes) is a fitting model for Germany or even Europe. Preventing someone from accessing the Internet seems like a completely unreasonable punishment to me. It would be highly problematic due to both constitutional and political aspects.

The long-awaited Digital Britain strategy paper has also rejected the idea of obliging ISPs to disconnect users without due process. They will be required to produce anonymised data on file-sharing and hand over names and addresses to rights holders on receipt of a court order. Yes, a court order.

One argument in favour of 92(A) is that the doom is exaggerated, and that rights holders will be visible and responsible, and would not make frivolous complaints. One would hope this would be the case, because a penalty for frivolous accusations was removed from the amendment bill.

Unfortunately, that probably wouldn't be the case. Under the US law, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (which does not mandate disconnecting people from the internet, only incentivise the takedown of allegedly infringing content held on servers, and is mirrored in Section 92(C) of our updated Copyright Act) it's frequently impossible to find out who is accusing you of what.

Some time back, Daniel Gardiner, who operates a YouTube channel under the name dannews, posted an amusing mash-up of an Air New Zealand ad, which I embedded on Public Address. I received a C&D letter from Air New Zealand's chief counsel, about which I did nothing -- because I knew that YouTube would act with dispatch, and without asking questions, to take down the clip under the DMCA. This is precisely what happened. But since then, Dan has twice had his entire YouTube account frozen on the basis of complaints whose nature and source he has been unable to determine.

There seems no obvious reason that this wouldn't happen in the case of 92(A) -- indeed, TelstraClear has already stated that its policy would be cut off accounts on receipt of a complaint, because it cannot adjudicate copyright claims. When someone is locked out of a YouTube account, it's vexing. When someone is cut off the internet, it's rather more serious.

So where to from here? It's not just Twitter. The Creative Freedom Foundation will tomorrow announce the details of a Remix competition intended to underline its protest. That will draw in some well-known names in New Zealand music (and, sadly, a couple of artists who are unwilling to use their own names because they fear repercussions). There will also be a flashmob in Wellington. Next Monday morning, this website and many others will redirect to a symbolic black page for several hours.

Like the black avatars, these actions do nothing to change the law in themselves -- but they do engage the news media.

There are other, private representations going on at a political level. At this stage, there are two potential actions. One is repeal of the law, which would require the support of Parliament to pass a repeal bill under urgency this week. That's a big call. The other option is to revoke or delay the Order in Council that enacts the measure on the 28th. That's not simple either.

But the principle here is important enough as to require that both courses of action be explored. This is a bad law.

PS: I'm discussing this with Kathryn Ryan at 11.40 am today on Radio NZ National.

PPS: This is getting weird now. Opponents of 92(a) have started getting strange, anonymous phone calls that seem to be angling for them to say something that endorses copyright infringement. No one knows where these calls are coming from.

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Emma Hart is a werewolf | Feb 16, 2009 10:59

Some important stuff came out of the weekend in Warkworth and you'll be seeing it and hearing about it as the week progresses. Today, I am too cognitively drained to do much more than try and get ready for a particularly intense week.

Kiwi Foo Camp 09 was soaked in the usual Foo collaborative magic. I only wish we'd been able to invite more people, but Foo does not scale. Public Address was well represented, with Emma, David, Keith and myself present, along with a number of regular commenters, including Sacha, who proved a very able camper.

Some morsels to savour:

- Emma Hart emerging from the Werewolf room, her eyes bright with bloodlust, declaring "I just killed a lot of people!"

- Saturday night sitting in a darkened room full of geeks cackling at in-jokes and applauding the killer lines in the first episode of Joss Whedon's Dollhouse. And no, it wasn't an infringing download from the internet, but a legitimately-obtained screener DVD. Verdict? The first seven minutes are perplexing, but it looks very promising. Sohrt review: Joe 90 with boobs.

- Touching base with some art folks in the "art and social media" session. Don't be strangers now, people.

- An intense (and sometimes emotional) but productive session on investment options for Scoop. As an investor and a longtime friend of Alastair, I really appreciated the time and attention that key people gave this session.

- Sacha and another dude discussing disability policy over several glasses of single malt. It was some high-level shit.

- Watching a RepRap make a tiny kitty.

- Chairing the Saturday night debate on the moot "New Zealand is Fucked". The negative team (Roger Dennis, Rod Oram, David Slack) defeated the affirmative (Bernard Hickey, Sam Tobin, Lance Wiggs) by general acclaim, although that should not be taken as an indication of debating skill so much as an expression of ineffable optimism. It was very, very funny.

- Section 92(a). Watch this space. Soon.

On another tip entirely: Cabaret Voltaire remix Kora! (hat tip: Peter McLennan). MySpace here, blog comment here.

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