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He has every right to be pissed and the New Zealand government has egg all over it's face on this. Recently NZ has been updating it's Privacy Act and they yet again left it toothless with no power for the Privacy Commission to enforce compliance. But hey, that's what you get when the MP in charge of the Bill is also in charge of the GCSB. Well that, and a blanket exemption for the GCSB. This was before the Christchurch Shootings and look where we are now. It looks as though the Bill wasn't rewritten to so much to protect peoples privacy as it was to allow our economic compliance with the GDPR and gain more government exemptions. I doubt the Privacy Commissioner is as pissed at Facebook as he is at being left totally impotent by the New Zealand Government.

The claim is that it won't create "a right to be offended", because the term "Serious emotional distress" is supposed to exclude mere outrage. Nor embarrassment, anxiety or worry. (See paragraph 10 on page 3 of the ministry of Justice's briefing on the bill).

Courts in the US award damages for serious emotional distress (or whatever you call it) over and above actual physical damages, so it can't be that difficult to work out the difference..

The claim is that it won't create "a right to be offended", because the term "Serious emotional distress" is supposed to exclude mere outrage. Nor embarrassment, anxiety or worry.

(See paragraph 10 on page 3 of the ministry of Justice's briefing on the bill).

Here we have the legislative page: http://www.parliament.nz/en-nz/pb/legislation/bills/00DBHOH_BILL8651_1/patents-bill

Here we have the link to all related bill documents: http://www.legislation.govt.nz/bill/government/2008/0235/14.0/versions.aspx

Additionally here we have a link to the "live" bill currently in force, this is the passed version, 235-2: http://www.legislation.govt.nz/bill/government/2008/0235/14.0/whole.html

If you note Section 15, 3A, it still says the same. This is what is known as a trump line, in that under the currently in force legislation software is an invention which is not patentable.

I would be most interested in linked examples of what you are referring to, because I certainly have not found it on the government legislative website so far, so that a more informed debate may occur.

The bill has passed through the Select Committee stage and is now ready for its second reading (from TFA). That's a real Bill, on its way to being an Act. For those a little less familiar with the New Zealand legislative process, here's a handy Factsheet from the New Zealand Parliament.

The bill has passed through the Select Committee stage and is now ready for its second reading (from TFA). That's a real Bill, on its way to being an Act. For those a little less familiar with the New Zealand legislative process, here's a handy Factsheet from the New Zealand Parliament.

Oh, look, "repeat infringers". Nothing about "guilt on accusation".

To be fair, versions of the bill that were circulating before it was passed did indeed provide for guilt on accusation, absolutely explicitly, and also explicitly without any recourse or appeal process. This was up until it went to committee for the last time. Unfortunately I can no longer find the older version of the text anywhere online, and I deleted a copy I had on HDD when the act was passed.

The relevant section (92) was by far the most heavily debated part of the bill in the last round of committee discussion, and it's a lot better now.

Firstly, this bill is being brought in by the opposition party in parliament (Labour). Secondly, the current government has only recently been instated as of November 19th. So, basically, the bill was going to be introduced either way, and the next opportunity to vote is three years away. A better approach for concerned NZers is to approach their local body representative directly. There is a list here.

That would be the former member of Parliament Judith Tizard (she lost her seat during the last General Election in November). Now would be a really good time for all New Zealand based Slashdot readers to contact Steven Joyce (who is the minister for Communications and Information Technology). It would probably also be a good idea to contact your local electorate MP to voice your concern.

Actually, since I live in NZ, they're not our overlords yet, but we do have the RIANZ down here, who are cut from the same cloth.

In fact, here it's illegal to make any copies of music at all. Hence, until the iTMS arrived, it was a pretty good bet that almost all music on any digital devices was illegally uploaded. Law changes are proposed, and the RIANZ wants to keep the law the same, but they give their word they won't chase the little guy, but want the law to remain the same just in case.

Yup. And judging from the comments that came back from the select committee that reviewed the Copyright (New Technologies and Performers' Rights) Amendment Bill last year (I made a submission; hope you did too), there's a huge amount of resistance to changing that. The Bill, if it is ever passed, does include (at the moment) a limited exception for format-shifting audio recordings for personal use, but only audio recordings; even that has met a lot of resistance.

I guess all those videos I've got on my iPod are going to remain forever illegal, then. Politicians seem completely incapable of grasping the idea that it is just dumb to keep somehing illegal when not only is everyone doing it, but everyone is morally right to do it.

For reference, the Green Party is the only party to have opposed the DMCA-like DRM circumvention measures in the bill.

As stated in this post, the media have said (and backed it up with action) that they will ignore it. For once the competing T.V. stations have teamed up and are disobeying with no action taken against them. The only broadcaster obeying this ruling is the inhouse crew that beam parliament live to the internet via http://www.parliament.nz/en-NZ/Visiting/LiveBroadc ast/

http://www.parliament.nz/LiveBroadcast/house-384.a sx

Here's the actual link to the order in question:
http://www.parliament.nz/en-NZ/PB/Debates/Debates/ b/2/0/48HansD_20070628_00000893-Standing-Orders-Se ssional.htm

Basically, this is a sessional order, and will be reviewed after the next election, if not sooner. Based on current popular opinion, it won't last...

Methinks this was introduced because, as others have pointed out, it's much easier for New Zealand's TV stations to fill the 10 minutes between ad breaks with name-calling and napping politicians than it is to actually do some proper journalism. Seriously, the journalism here is so pathetic; with this order in place, TV3's "political editor", Duncan Garner, is screwed.

Also, what Jon Stewart did on the Daily show, as far as I can tell, isn't in breach of the order. Satire of the politician is fine, however showing images of them picking their nose isn't...

If you wanted to run a Slashdot style mod system and invite both Reps and Dems to your site, you should have moderation based on their political styles instead of an additive approach. For example: Dems mod an article up 77 points, while Reps mod it down 20. For Democrats, it will be a prime article to read. For Republicans it won't even show up. I think this may be the future of moderation on websites. It doesn't have to stop with just Democrats and Republicans, there are tons of groups that are at odds, or simply different than mainstream.

This is why I'm glad the country I live in has a democratic system that doesn't automatically dismiss anyone who doesn't fit into one of two main categories, but actually fosters a government that's formed by people with all kinds of different views, in a structure that actually encourages them to negotiate and work together.

I don't mean to criticise you personally, but I think the fact that you leapt straight to the democrat/republican divide, just as everyone else does when referring to the US federal political system, exemplifies one of the biggest problems with the US Federal democracy. Most people seem to be so accepting of the status quo that there's little or zero opportunity for anyone different to have a chance. This results in large amounts of inefficiency and corruption, and a system where it's not possible to get anywhere in politics without aligning oneself with one side or the other.

If that isn't enough, people's alignments are thrown around to score political points. For instance, it shouldn't be an issue that Bush's Science Advisor is a democrat, but it's been a fallacy used over and over again to justify that Bush's science policies must somehow be "scientifically neutral" and fair to all. Everyone who's analysed by the media is thrown into one of the two sides, and the have to be on one side or the other or they get dismissed and ignored as irrelevant.

- ... but probably getting a DMCA-lookalike law later this year unless a LOT of people protest loudly

There is an online petition against the Copyright (New Technologies and Performers' Rights) Amendment Bill. This should probably have been part of the original post. If you live in New Zealand or are a New Zealand citizen or permanent resident, please do consider signing the petition. Thank you.

From my blog:

My notes I posted to mailing list reproduced on this:

Here is the major announcement from the government:
http://www.beehive.govt.nz/ViewDocument.aspx?Docum entID=28024

and the actual proposed legislation is here:
http://www.parliament.nz/NR/rdonlyres/5A88D15B-C4A 1-42C2-AE75-9200DD87F738/48250/DBHOH_BILL_7735_401 93.pdf

Some quick highlights as I read the act: (Note I am not a lawyer)
- Reverse engineering IS allowed under some circumstances - basically for interoperability
- format shifting is allowed but only initially for 2 years, this can be extended though (or not)
- time shifting is allowed provided you don't keep it and it's not available on demand
- ISPs are basically not liable (provided they follow take down notices)
- allowed to alter commercial software if the vendor doesn't fix problems in reasonable time
- anti-TPM (DRM via another name) is prohibited for sale or for producing (seems to cover open source). Fines of $150K or 5 years jail. Doesn't seem to prohibit if you have a copy but you can't write it yourself, sell it or tell others about it. Does make it an offence if you use it to copy copyrighted material. But you are allowed to use anti-TPM for "interoperability of software" so conceivably you could use software to play Itunes or DVDs on Linux. But this only applies if
you have asked vendor for a copy you can use and they don't supply in a reasonable time.

Overall this seems to be much better than DMCA of the USA but not perfect. It is probably better than people could have hoped for.

Ian

Indeed. I just wrote a long email detailing my concerns (primarily the issue of treating copyright as a property right, that copyright should be about providing incentive for content creators and any laws should be made with this fact firmly in mind, the protection of fair use rights - to allow individuals full access to do as they wish with works for personal use, and about the steady creep of ever longer copyright terms) to the MPs who provided personal addresses (as opposed to their official parliamentry addesses). I think as long as you sound reasonable, serious, and actually raise deeper issues for them to think about, many MPs will actually pay some attention to this. The reality is that most people, politicians included, simply haven't really thought about copyright issues all that seriously. Giving them some reasons to dwell on, and think a little more deeply, about the full implications can, I strongly suspect, make a difference.

In case you're interested in writing as well, here is the list of email addresses. I strongly suggest that anyone who can write an intelligent thoughtful email to help get MPs seriously thinking about these issues should do so.