Posts by Russell Brown
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__No. It's specifically exempted.__
Wait, isn't the bill technology neutral? What about the "specific exemptions" that will be required for stuff that hasn't yet been invented?
The reasoning was that technology intended merely to control geographic pricing was no business of copyright law. So there is actually a principle behind it. Small mercies.
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__I'm sure all parties to debate around the bill will be thinking that it could have been worse__
Bollocks. This has to be one of the shittiest pieces of legislation relating to technology for a long time.
The depressing thing, I think was the inability of the select committee to get to grips to any great degree with the arguments raised against it. It would be richly ironic if a government agency was (as State Services fears) tripped up by a DRM mess it'd have to break the law to fix.
But it's not quite as bad as laws passed in other jurisdictions, and certainly not good enough for the International Intellectual Property Alliance, which issued a "special comment" notice about it being insufficiently draconian.
They then go on to describe how TPM's should be made even more restrictive and their customers carry even more liability. Would you buy anything for these caring guys?
But they didn't get it, and RIANZ, despite spending $30,000 on a submission, didn't get the simply outrageous restrictions it wanted on libraries and archives.
But Section 84(1)(c) -- that's the one that would have made made it an infringement to time-shift a programme if you could "legally access it on demand" (there goes most of TVNZ's local production) was eventually amended to prohibiting the copying of an on-demand programme (thus satisfying RIANZ's paranoid fantasies about stream-ripping without making it illegal to use your VCR).
The format-shifting exception was widened a bit (so you could copy a CD to iTunes for someone else in the household) and the sunset clause was ditched). ISPs got a little bit, including a clearer steer on how they might have "reason to believe" infringing content was stored on their networks, and the gesture of making it an offence to bogusly claim copyright. Indeed, the bulk of the movement after the first reading was away from the copyright lobby's submissions. (Of course, the lurch towards copyright interests during the discussion paper process was fairly noticeable.) The TPM provisions saw the least movement, probably because the select committee didn't understand the arguments, and because the copyright lobby was really, really hot on the TPMs.
So, yeah, it could have been worse.
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So, can I assume that the region-free DVD player I've had for the past five years is now an uber-felonious TPM-spoiler?
No. It's secifically exempted.
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Just squint past the small technicality that the non-white majority were totally disenfranchised, and you had a prosperous and functional democracy.
But one constituted on an irrevocably evil basis, which is how the whole world eventually came to see it.
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NZ did have the backing of other Pacific forum nations. I suspect that was encouragement for sanctions .
Fiji was also suspended from the Commonwealth. But we do still trade with them, largely, I suspect, because a trade ban would hurt the wrong people.
Lets hope(thats all there ever is) that the FTA allows for better dialogue with China regarding Human rights and with that , education.
China has actually backed off capital punishment a lot in the past few years, and has made official noises about abolition. Contrary to popular belief, it doesn't actually have the highest rate of execution -- Singapore does, then Iran. OTOH, the range of offences for which the death penalty can apply is scary.
So yeah, I do have hope for China, which is probably the main reason I don't buy the comparison with apartheid South Africa, which was fundamentally and irrevocably evil.
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Who needs casino's when you've got the property market? I'm holding a dud hand myself but I still refuse to fold. Even tho' my mortgage jumps from $4700 to $7200 next month! If I can just hold on til the next property upswing I can make it all back...
Bernard Hickey says that's 2018 ...
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Interesting article on Tibet's new prominence by Uri Avnery on Counterpunch.:
Why do the world's media adopt one independence struggle, but often cynically ignore another independence struggle? What makes the blood of one Tibetan redder than the blood of a thousand Africans in East Congo?
Again and again I try to find a satisfactory answer to this enigma. In vain.
Although this part's fairly weird:
I support the Tibetans in spite of it being obvious that the Americans are exploiting the struggle for their own purposes. Clearly, the CIA has planned and organized the riots, and the American media are leading the world-wide campaign. It is a part of the hidden struggle between the US, the reigning super-power, and China, the rising super-power - a new version of the "Great Game" that was played in central Asia in the 19th century by the British Empire and Russia. Tibet is a token in this game.
I am even ready to ignore the fact that the gentle Tibetans have carried out a murderous pogrom against innocent Chinese, killing women and men and burning homes and shops. Such detestable excesses do happen during a liberation struggle.
Ouch.
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And I hope we're not going to have better luck than the last go round with the plumber who came to come around to fix the hash the last one made.
Plumbers who make hash? The North Shore is such a crazy place.
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What if its as simple as holding down a key when the disk is inserted in a computer?
The copyright police will be around to seize your stuff later today.
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I do think that if SA had more to trade, Apartheid would have lasted longer, though.
Actually, they had plenty to trade. They were the world's largest producer of gold, diamonds and a slew of valuable minerals for a long time.
We have to accept that the FTA is practical rather than principled. Like most political compromises. I'd rather the USA didn't have Guantanamo Bay either, but to stop trading with them over it would be martyring ourselves.
Yes, certainly -- to an extent. But the glib comparisons with South Africa bug me. South Africa was constituted on a fundamentally evil basis, in service of a ruling racial minority. It was globally recognised as such. I don't think the same can be said of modern China.
China's in everyone's mind at the moment, for obvious reasons. But no one hits the streets to protest, say, the European Union's extensive formal trade relationships with vile plutocracies like Uzbekistan, which, IMHO, is a far worse state than China. EU governments that sermonise about China have a bit of a nerve in that respect.
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