Posts by Idiot Savant
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But personally I would suggest a look at the web sites of political parties, MP's, SOE's and lobby groups may be more fruitful.
And the music industry, of course.
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Some of us don't sell advertising at all.
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Mark: Nope. At least not according to sections 26 and 27 of the Copyright Act. As submitters, we're not employees of the crown or engaged by it, and our submissions are not covered by the Parliamentary exclusion in s27(1) (which is pretty specific in enumerating Parliamentary work product).
There is an exemption in section 62 for material communicated to the Crown - but the Crown isn't Parliament (check the definitions in the interpretation section). And while section 59 says that copyright is not infringed by Parliamentary proceedings or the reporting of same, I'm not sure that that applies in this case. To the internal copying and distribution, sure, and to anything an MP actually says (sorry, but if an MP reads your book into the record, or sings your song, tough luck) - but to wholesale public distribution over the web?
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I imagine the person who did that would be sued into bankruptcy if they were not actually the copyright holder, or perhaps prosecuted. In fact I believe part of the advice given to the minister is that the remedy for anyone wrongly accused was to use the fraud provisions in the Crimes Act.
Which the police will ignore. So, one law for the rich, then.
As for Parliament, you may have noticed that submissions to select committees appear there now. Submitters automatically hold copyright in those works, and unless you specifically granted them permission, their subsequent reproductionand distribution is unlicensed and violates your copyright. The online submission form may include such a licence (or an implied one); but they scan hardcopies as well. So parliament is breaching the copyright of myself and hundreds of other New Zealanders. If the law goes into effect, the first thing we should do is lodge a complaint with their ISP, and hoist them with the consequences of their own actions.
(For maximum irony, complaints should be about submissions on the actual bill...)
Parliament would probably call this a breach of privilege, citing the BORA 1689. But the law cares as little for that as it does for whether an accusation is actually true. The negative PR of Parliament persecuting someone for inflicting its own laws on it should dissuade any action for breach of privilege.
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I also wonder about the effect on universities. IT students in particular indulge in a fair bit of torrenting on university owned servers, and it's not all Linux downloads. Given the broad definition of ISP in this law, does this mean that a whole university (in theory) could lose its ability to access the Internet?
Who is Parliament's ISP? Heaps of copyright violations on that den of piracy...
(I'm serious. Pass a bad law, get hoist by it. And then they'd call it contempt...)
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How about some offline civil disobedience. Since nearly everyone who works in IT opposes section 92, why don't we all just call in sick on the same day and see what breaks without anyone to fix it..
Better: break something (quietly) first.
I mean, the net goes down all the time, right?
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DoSing Parliament? That would be entertaining.
That would be illegal. A day of "unexplained technical faults", OTOH...
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Just stop buying CDs for a month, don't go to the movies for a month.
I don't do either anyway, so no point.
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This is part of a mass protest about the impending coming into force of Section 92(A) of the Copyright Act, which requires ISPs (that definition is very wide indeed) to show plans to terminate the internet access of any customers accused of copyright infringement.
Somehow, i think getting ISPs to shut off the internet for a day would be more effective.
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They already have several offences that'll fit just fine.
I'd say that s22A of the Land Transport Act 1998 covers things quite nicely. It's the general "boy racer" section. All they're doing is upping the punishment for things that are already against the law. They don't need to come up with some mystical new offences, there's quite the smorgasbord from which to select.Which suggests the real problem (as in many cases) is enforcement, not penalties, and the police being willing to do their bloody jobs.
(They also have plenty of offences for the people who tried to ambush that police care - criminal damage, assault, resisting arrest, sections 45, 48, 52 or 55 of the Arms Act... its been illegal to throw bottles and shoot at people for a long time, and the police need no extra powers to punish such behaviour. All they need to do is catch the people responsible. Which is the difficult bit.)