Slashdot Mirror
Australia Is Getting Its Own DMCA
biscuit nipple writes: "According to this article, our government snuck a little copyright law in under our noses. It just seems like a big moshpit of crap. Incidental copies of data, ie from an ISP, for transmission are ok, but deliberate copies (including proxy caches) are not." Also, "Libraries will have exemptions similar to the ones they already hold for distributing information but they will not be able to build up searchable collections, or provide material in competition with commercial providers." (Imagine if they applied that standard to books, too!)
"...removing DeCSS and other pieces of software that might put me personally in the position of breaking the Australian Copyright Act (Digital Agenda Bill), 2000..."
- I guess you could fight this through the australian legal system but the article goes on to further state the following....
"...Bad juju, legally speaking, is something that I have neither the time, money nor resolve to take on personally. As 2600 Australia is neither a business nor a registered organisation we cannot fight this on legal grounds. 2600 Australia does not enjoy any form of protected speech such as that which 2600 in the USA is mounting a defence...peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
The Second Reading Speech (which has legal bearing on the spirit of the law) is here
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
I spoke with a bloke who attended a briefing by the solicitors for the AVCC (Australian Vice Chancellor's Council - the AVCC control AARNET, the internet 'backbone' across the universities here).
/. can be bothered to complain to the authorities here.
/. can prove the front page was placed there deliberately.
The solicitors have advised a 'wait and see' approach, and this seems an even-handed way to go about things.
The keyword is 'deliberate'. www.slashdot.org is probably one of the most popular pages at Monash university and is always in the cache.
But if anyone were to *deliberately* place www.slashdot.org in the cache, they might have some explaining to do, if:
o Anybody at
o Anybody can actually figure out what's in the cache from the US (from anywhere outside Monash, actually).
o
Socceroo
Does anyone know of a link to the text of this bill? The article is quite vague (standard mainstream media quality). I'd love to read (or at least skim) the real thing to see what it really means.
For example, it doesn't go into any detail regarding what constitutes "digitally protected material" - does this cover only materials already protected by strong crypto (not much legislation required) or anything that someone chooses to protect by any means (DMCA-style - protect your copyrighted work with ROT-13 and make un-ROT-13 illegal)? Or is there a legal definition of "protected" which says how the protection must work?
From the article:
How does anyone define what is "deliberate"? If I set up an HTTP proxy in order to minimize traffic on an outgoing line, am I potentially in violation of Australian law? I may have deliberately set up the proxy server, but after that, I do not control what goes through it.
And what about the fact that my HTTP proxy can't even decode the material? Does this act represent an attempt to regulate the copying of the digitally-protected materials (like caching the encoded data, or copying a DVD bit-for-bit) or just the decoded, unprotected materials (distributing de-CSSed DVD content)?
Or perhaps Australian legislators don't realise the importance of caching to the health of the Internet... If every client had to talk directly to the originating server for every request, the Internet would have brought to its knees years ago under the load. Caching, mirroring, and other techniques based on making local copies of data are what keep the network running (Slashdot effect aside)
(I'm glad to see that they're not planning on making computers illegal :)
If there are any Aussies reading who are familiar with this legislation, I'd be very interested in hearing more (especially how it got this far without anyone hearing about it (for anyone, read me.))
Living better through chemicals
So basically the government is trying to censor or copyright everything digital in the hope that nothing will be legal on the internet soon. Then what....??
What really sux about the whole copyright issue in Australia is how corporations are exempt from copyright (at least in some areas). Take for example pirated music CDs. It is totally illegal for a regular person to copy a CD and sell it to someone else even at a cheap price - BUT it is legal for companies to import pirated CDs from indonesia and sell them at a high profit margin. If companies are allowed to pirate stuff, and even make a profit off it, then all citizens should be given that same right!
Saying your OS is the best because more people use it is like saying MacDonalds make the best food
Maybe this is just me, but with the open source world getting it's butt kicked more and more by DMCA's and UCITA, I'm feeling more and more that people who crack down open source reverse-engineering have no business using free software. Should there be clause added to the GPL and other open licenses that prohibits jerks like movie studios from benefitting from the same process they try to destroy? Should we tolerate movie studios getting their movies cheaply rendered with Beowulf and cheaply and securely promoted on the net with Apache and Linux when the very same people who create that software cannot legally watch those very same movies? Any opinions?
This is another brilliant example of corrupt law-makers not understanding how the world works combined with some old-fashioned short-sightedness.
Good laws should spring up to enforce social conventions and give them legitimacy. For example, if a society can agree that it entering people's houses and taking stuff is wrong, then the laws should reflect that. If we lived in a society which stressed the unimportance of having personal space or possessions, the law would probably reflect that. I admit Im probably being a little philosophical here, but consider the alternatives.
Laws should not (in my obviously not consulted opinion) be created to shape society, especially in ways that are non-intuitive to the average person, and benefit only a small minority. By this, I mean that the vast majority of people out there dont really consider it stealing to trade files and music with one another. That such copying is immoral has been propagandized by the software (remember MSFT circa early 1980s?) and entertainment industries for many many years. When this propaganda failed to sway the behaviour and sentiment of the public, they resorted to pushing through unfair laws to force us to obey.
I, for one, think that people, even in government, are mostly fair and intelligent. Companies will change or companies will fade. Once pocketbooks are hit, eyes will open.
Poster B: I doubt that'll happen. Once it gets down to a few, then suddenly freedom of communication will become a viable competitive factor for nations
I hope you're right, but I fear you're wrong. Once it gets down to a few, they may find that no one will trade with them, which would be a pretty strong incentive to adopt the DMCA.
When the Internet was first created, it was intended to be used to exchange the ideas and work of universitys and promote a better intellectual solidarity. Now it's intitial purpose has been thwarted, and it's subject to the whims of the commercial world. Governments pandying to the big companies propogate this, leaving the true enthusiasts/intellectuals behind. With the internet, we have an opportunity to do something that is unprecedented. We have freedom of speech, freedom to exchange and express ideas. We have anonymity, free from racial and social predjudices, where people can only judge us by what we say and think, not where we come from and how we look. Why must we abandon this to shallow commercialism. Thats what we have TV for, right?