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Audio Format Shifting To Be OK'd In New Zealand
Bloodrage writes "The New Zealand government is about to define a small part of the rights assumed by the 'fair use' clause in the Copyright Act 1994. Essentially they are going to protect the consumers' rights to convert media from one format to another for personal use, making it clearly legal to transfer tracks from a commercial CD to a mix-CD, MP3 player, PDA, PC, 8-track, or tuned array of hummingbirds. NZ law already makes it clear that gifting or reselling items includes a transfer all of rights, including copyright, warantee, and licencing agreements, so providing your original is the genuine article you're not a criminal. An article in the The Dominion Post gives an outline of the responses from the recording industry and why the government is considering it. It boils down to; this is 'fair use' and don't argue, and that the government can't see how the alternative could be (affordably) enforced."
..now if the fricking Howard government across the tasman, I would be very grateful.
Legally I know why it is, but realistically, what's the problem?
I have a large CD collection, and like to keep digital versions of some CDs I listen to frequently on my hard drive (never shared), or burn CDs to carry around with me so I don't have to worry about theft/damage/loss to the original. Why could that even be a problem? Sure, people can pirate, but people are going to find a way to pirate regardless.
Maybe I'm missing the logic of recording execs, but how is pissing consumers off by limiting their rights going to encourage them to buy more CDs?
With any luck, we'll be rid of Howard (US bootlicker) in November, so don't forget to speak to opposition MPs as well.
a government finally showing some sense in the matter. i recently purchased several cd's from a favorite band of mine, ripped them, and the cd's now are nestled safe in my cd case. since i don't have a cd player at all (besides in my pc) the last thing i want to see is a cd that is not rippable. go NZ! :P
First legalized prostitution, and now this. ;-)
I'm all for fair use - I bought it, I can transfer media, backup and so on.
But insistence that you should be able to freely distribute material is just ammunition for the RIAA, ARIA and other industry lobbiest bastards' weapons against fair use.
Howard is a fucking idiot. Vote latham!
Before all you geeks get any ideas, NZ is a right crap place. The Govt is bloody awfull, the weather is terrible, and despite what you think you know, LOTR was actually made on the moon.
We don't want any more to migrate here, the place is OK as it is.
There is a lesson to be learned here. There's no economic loss to record companies when people copy their own CDs to MP3s or some other digital format. However, it will cost the government millions to enforce a law that prevents that.
Therefore, the sensible thing to do is, let the people copy their own music. As long as they don't pass it on illegitimately (which, actually happens even if you ban copying once own CDs), this should be a solution that makes both the companies, the people, and the the industry happy.
It's high time other countries followed soot.
Three cheers to the Kiwis!!!
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Nothing to see here
New Zealand has always been surprisingly progressive when it come to technology (surprising because of the decisions of some other *cough* Australian *cough* governments, not because of anything else). DVD players with region codes are illegal in New Zealand - they see it as anti-competitive and trade restrictive.
That's why I buy my stuff from NZ - the $AU coupled with the open trade agreement - no import tax - yay!
This is NOT the best sig in the world, but this IS a tribute to the best sig in the world.
Come on, if we can be trusted to photocopy from books on an honour system with regards to how much we can copy for fair use, we can damn well be trusted to give ourselves one copy of an audio CD. And why stop at CDs?
Of course there's going to be the fringe element, come on. Even with students (not like me) desperate enough to photocopy a whole sociology or -- heaven forbid -- a 600-page politics textbook on the New Zealand Parliament!
Jonathan Ah Kit - Lower Hutt, New Zealand - jonathan@metalab.unc.edu
... or tuned array of hummingbirds.
You mean, a tuned array of Kiwis?
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
How about insightful? I'm not a big fan of our Police roading enforcement right now, but that aside, NZ is actually making laws that reflect the reality of the people. Prostitution ain't flash, but it's real, and legalising it means the girls get the same workers rights as anyone else. CD ripping is common place, and is considered "fair use" in the eyes of all outside the music sales industry boardrooms. These laws reflect the people's view, not some corporation's greed. I guess that's why it's news here on US based Slashdot.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Shit, man! Main use for blank CDs is not music-and-video-piracy for many of us. I do backups, store my five-megapixel pictures and burn linux distros to give away to my friends! And I'm just avoid talking about hard disks...
I feel sick! Stop this madness!
MOD THIS UP!!!
It's True!
Sony NZ managing director Michael Glading said he was totally opposed to the move, which he believed would "open the floodgates" to unrestricted piracy.
This would be the same Sony NZ who have been selling MP3 players in New Zealand for many years now. How on earth did they expect their clients to find anything to play on these devices without breaking the law? I'd like to hear them give an answer to that.
-- Free software on every PC on every desk
NZ law already makes it clear that gifting or reselling items includes a transfer all of rights, including copyright, warantee, and licencing agreements, so providing your original is the genuine article you're not a criminal.
What if an actual criminal steals the genuine article? If my rights disappear because no longer own it, does it mean they get transferred to the criminal?
What if the original article is destroyed? Does it matter how it happened?
New Zealand and Australia are like the US Guinea pigs for new technology. Before the US makes use of it themselves, giving it a test-run in a developed, friendly, and reasonably well-off country like Australia and NZ makes for a good test case.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
I find a lot of the double talk is because one arm of the corporations don't know or care what the other does. It's how a lot of our esteemed (ho, ho) companies that run record labels turn around and sell burners on the side. Oh, and music players.
:)
Now, I really want to legally format shift my household's MP3^H^H^H LP collection, dammit!
Jonathan Ah Kit - Lower Hutt, New Zealand - jonathan@metalab.unc.edu
It's true! Look at his name!
Bad enough living in a place with local mountains and winter sun to the south when I grew up with both to the north! Now I've got East and West inverted!
The man with no surname and a silly hat
On the universe: It's bunk.
The EU should have done this, so that Europe can unify their fair use provisions.
It doesn't seem unreasonable that the EU could declare Format Shifting legal, Backups legal and so on, just as long as you still own the original.
Its a mess right now, with everyday acts (like ripping CDs to MP3s) being copyright infringements in some countries but not others.
Why should an everyday act, done by everyone, that has no financial impact on the copyright holder, be illegal? Because the BSA wants it to be?
They could do some work there.
I think if I bring it back in a roundabout way it isn't off topic. I don't think we discussed patents much tonight, but we have the NZ patent watch site up for techie-related patents. Why it's not off topic? A lot of this format shifting stuff is to do with the intellectualy property people use to stop us format shifting.
(Context for other people: I'm physically at an InternetNZ members' consultation meeting right now in Wellington.)
Jonathan Ah Kit - Lower Hutt, New Zealand - jonathan@metalab.unc.edu
For a while, these were common, at least in the city I live in. Many of the larger dairies had them. They had the appropriate part of the copyright act printed on them, along with a note that they are not to be used for copyright violation, however they had bigger writing saying things like 'back up your music and data'. They seemed to vanish part way through last year, likely due to a recording industry crack down (or because, in the uni city I'm in, you only need walk 10 meters before you meet someone with a CD-burner)
Oh my God, I never realised all the harm I was causing by copying tracks from my CDs onto my harddrive. Well, now that I realise, I'll never do it again.
In what other ways have I been undermining the recording industry? I wonder if it's ok to copy CD tracks onto physical sound waves?
One thing's for sure, I'm never going to sing along to my favourite songs again. I'm such a good singer, I'm bound to put the recording industry out of business.
--
James G.
I an my CD collection are headed to NZ. I'll drop in on Rachel Hunter and Kyle Bax... Ok, first I'll convert my CD collection to cash....
What? Walk 10 metres? At my local university and and its affiliated college, all I need to do is go to a computer in a lab and use the right software. I could already be logged in to one, bugger the 10 metres.
(Note: it's against the statutes of the university and probably the college of education to do this. I don't do it myself.)
Jonathan Ah Kit - Lower Hutt, New Zealand - jonathan@metalab.unc.edu
There is another way of looking at the situation but noone wants to get shot. Many people(including me) believe there is no given right to own intellect, a thought, or a 'bit'. What makes people who do believe 'intellectual property' any more right then those who don't? The difference is one type is willing to imprison the other over an act that is not violent in any way. Intellectual property is a rationalization to control people by cohersion. cow
It's nice to see the NZ govt making some sensible laws for a change :)
:)
We/NZ have excellent consumer rights laws and this is a nice polishing touch
Now if only they hadn't giving in to the movie industry and stopped parallel importing of DVDs (GRRRR)
Nevrar
For a while the US Government OWNED a brothel in Nevada. That's right, in capitalist America you pay the government to fuck you, "happy ending" offer only available in Nevada.
Even if your original was copied from a mate, you'd still not be a criminal unless you were profiteering off the copying. Copyright infringement is a civil offense, not criminal in all but a handful of cases. As soon as people realise that copying music isn't a crime but an offense, they'll see that this whole thing has been pulled out of RIAA's ass and promptly blown out of all proportion to help their flagging bank balance.
a Beowulf cluster of those! Highly tuned Kiwi performance!
already makes it clear that gifting or reselling items includes a transfer all of rights, including copyright, warantee, and licencing agreements, so providing your original is the genuine article you're not a criminal.
Does this mean that its normal for CD's as gifts to be illegal in different countries?
Don't know about anyone else, but I find it a metric shit-load easier to bring my computer to university -complete with CDs ripped to .mp3 & .ogg on my hard drive- than 200+ CDs.
The execs are just little chicken littles, crying that the sky is falling in, just like they did when taping music off the radio was about to kill the record industry...remember?
Your music retailer is now no longer a spacious shop with hundreds of boxes on shelves, but a small boutique establishment with a licence to copy, a fast Internet connection, a computer, and a bank of CD writers. All legal and above board. What's your problem? Providing a useful service perhaps?
Because if not I envision the situation becoming "you're legally entitled to copy it but good luck trying!".
Hmmm, i thought it was quite normal to have the right to make a copy for personal use. Oh well, maybe it's just that i'm not a US citizen..
look here and mind this quote: (...) CD-Rs were not seen as a media intended for copying music.
Show a man some news, distract him for an hour. Show a man some mod points, distract him for the rest of his life.
Sony NZ sells Minidisc recorders with software to rip CDs. Also, the NZ Sony Style shop (corner of Lambton Quay and Willis Street for any interested Kiwis) last week (it may still be there this week, have not looked) had a *huge* window display exhibiting their new hard drive jukebox product. This included photos of all the stacks of CDs you could do away with by copying them to said jukebox.
Furthermore, given that the NZ recording industry association clearly opposes this, and considers it illegal and "theft" at present, will they explain why they don't: (1) expel Sony NZ (which is a member); and (2) seek criminal prosecution of Sony executives. After all, Sony is selling the tools that permit the "theft" from their members, and blatantly advertising this capability as the main reason to purchase
It is a bit rich for Sony to sell products and then lobby for it to be illegal for the hapless consumer to use the products Sony has sold them.
Now the obligatory:
1. Sell overpriced product to consumers
2. Profit
3. Lobby to keep using what you have just sold illegal
4. Prosecute your customers for buying from you
5. More profit
A business strategy to make the RIANZ and RIAA proud.
Making it for all media would mean that time-shifting TV programs would be ok, copying a DVD to as "media center" and watching it would be ok, copying a game to the hard disk and playing it would be ok etc. i.e., as long as only one copy is in use at once, you can have multiple physical copies.
For the producers of the media.
Look at the windfall that occured when CD came in, large amounts of profit made from people buying the same material again on the new format. Now that it is in digital format, how is the industry going to repeat that windfall now that everyone has bought pretty much every CD they are ever likely to need and the current music production is ghastly. I for one know that the 2.7K tracks I have on my iPod is quite frankly enough. If people are able to copy this material for their own use then you can have backups.
Strictly speaking when you buy a CD you are buying a license to the material, not he delivery media. By preventing people from being able to copy the material they have a license to onto a fresh media platform the record companies are trying to preserve the cash flow generated by selling people multiple licenses to the same thing which is frankly, money for old rope!
Incidentally, a similar thing has happened with TV, certainly in the UK anyway. Here if you get Sky (Murdoch's digital sat system) you get a single box and a single card. If you want to record one channel and watch another you need two boxes and two subscriptions, paying twice for the same thing. This also strikes me as quite unfair.
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
...the words of the Great George W. Bush, President of the United States of America:
"We must speak the truth about terror. Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories concerning the attacks of 11 September - malicious lies that attempt to shift the blame away from the terrorists themselves, away from the guilty."
These laws reflect the people's view, not some corporation's greed.
You guys could do a great business exporting your government--you've got 6 billion potential customers waiting with bated breath.
Assuming I can prove that I purchased them and haven't re-sold them (however I might do that)
Would I have the right to download a new copy from Kazaa - or for that matter burn a copy from my friend's identical cds?
Cool! When is the next bus to New Zealand?
..there are 22 sheep per person in New Zealand and not a damn one of them cares if it's fair use or not.
||| I still can't believe Parkay's not butter.
I suppose overclocking them is out of the question.
This was the bit troubling me with P2P file sharing technology. There's other uses for the technology. Likewise with CD-Rs, I use them mostly for backing up my precious (yes, my preeeeeciousss!) homework and hard-earned digital photographs which seem to take up a lot of room. Like I said earlier, it's like banning photocopiers because the 'non-extreme' and 'non-fringe' students photocopy a few pages too many. IMHO, YMMV, etc. The CD-R solution sounds nice as a solution, but it'd annoy me that I'd be paying for a copyright levy for backup activities.
Jonathan Ah Kit - Lower Hutt, New Zealand - jonathan@metalab.unc.edu
You mean tentacles, right?
---- Take the Space Quiz!
Jonathan Ah Kit - Lower Hutt, New Zealand - jonathan@metalab.unc.edu
They are too deeply in the pocket of big business and our 'most important ally' to do anything like protect the rights of their own citizens.
If the govt. won't act to rescue its own citizens from a cage in Guantanamo Bay where they are being held and tortured illegally in contravention of all international law precedent, we can't really expect them to care about our right to use things we legally own in ways we see fit, can we?
Additionally, there is a push by big business in Australia for the 'harmonisation' of our IP laws with the US of A, so you can forget about anything sane like these NZ laws ever happening.
Read Pynchon.
"For the purposes of this Act, the author of a work is the person who creates it." Nobody can create information. You can only discover it.
-I am an elective eunuch.
Maybe someone needs to sell them a new soul.
Jonathan Ah Kit - Lower Hutt, New Zealand - jonathan@metalab.unc.edu
So why are all NZ TV programs coded in Region 4 then? Is that just so that no-one outside the country is allowed to watch the Topp Twins? It seems crazy that TVNZ encodes its documentaries like that just to prevent people in Europe or the USA buying them and watching them.
... that is what the NZ and Australian governments called it when they brought the Pharmacy Acts and Poisons Regulations into line with each other. So the laws governing pharmaceutical are now almost the same. I believe that it is also possible with Copyright. Especially since trans-tasman trade is becoming more and more important (it would only help Australia on the world stage... NZ is already being used for outsourcing)... why alienate a trading partner?
Also, the title of the article, 'Industry warns of legal CD piracy', seems a bit misleading. This so called 'piracy' they've been talking about has gone on for years. Why should I be a criminal for taking a vague interpretation of the vague fair use provisions in the Copyright Act 1994 for not wanting to put in my CDs into my computer every single time? (Maybe they want me to buy an oversized laptop with a 3- or 5-disc CD-RW changer
Another alientation I recall is the last Jewel album I checked out required me to install software just to play that particular CD. Ugh.
Jonathan Ah Kit - Lower Hutt, New Zealand - jonathan@metalab.unc.edu
I said information. Besides, an idea, in all its forms (expressions), can be independently discovered.
-I am an elective eunuch.
"click my links! I can't even spell suit! have pity!"
strictly speaking when you buy a CD you are buying a license to the material
False. To avoid redundancy, see this post.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Hi Michael,
I have just read the article at http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,2852764a11,00. html. You say you are totally opposed to the move, because you believe it would "open the floodgates" to unrestricted piracy.
As a software developer I spend a lot of time in front of a computer at both home and work. I like to listen to music when I am using computers. Under the current law (which is what you support, given that you are totally opposed to the move), I can only legally play copyrighted music from CDs in CD-ROM drives on my computers (and don't even get me started on copy-controlled CDs). During the course of a workday, this means interrupting my workflow up to 10 times to switch CDs. Of course, if I decide I'm sick of a CD before it is finished it means another switch. Clearly switching CDs quickly gets annoying. It also proves very annoying to transport CDs I want to listen to between work and home each day.
In fact (as I am sure you are aware), Sony itself currently sells Minidisc recorders which currently allow music to be copied illegally under the current law. Given your position, I hope you are overseeing the removal of these useless recorders (as it is illegal for people to use them to copy music) from sale in New Zealand.
However, if the law changes to allow fair personal use, my life suddenly becomes easier because I can make a copy of my music in a digital format which makes it much easier to transport and switch between listening to different music.
Your viewpoint is analagous to saying no-one should be able to drive cars because some people speed and cause accidents in which people die. However, in real life, people are allowed to drive cars. Why? Because cars make our lives easier. The speeding problem is dealt with through driver education, and dealing punishment to those who do speed as a discouragement to them and others. Similarly the music sharing problem is dealt with by consumer education, and dealing punishment to those who do share music as a discouragement to them and others.
Without education and punishment, the current law would be effectively 'powerless' to discourage people from sharing copyrighted music. Under the proposed changes, it still will be illegal to share copyrighted music. Provided there is still continued education and punishment, I can't see any reason why the proposed law change will result in increased music sharing activity.
By opposing the move, you are only denying otherwise law abiding consumers the opportunity to use technology to make their lives easier.
Simon
128k is "broadband" (256k if you are lucky) in NZ, with capped amounts for international traffic (NZ$80 per month for uncapped)!
http://www.ihug.co.nz/products/jetstream/index.h tml#128
http://www.telecom.co.nz/chm/0,5123,203071-20247 0,00.html
I went back for a holiday a few weeks ago, first time I've heard a modem since last time I went back!
No way I can ever go back to modems I'm afraid.
From the article:
So under the proposed changes, it would still be illegal for me to have more than one digital copy of a CD I own i.e. one on a work computer and one on a home computer (correct me if I am wrong - IANAL)
So, would this mean that in New Zealand, I can make a Linux application that converts Windows Media Player format to another format (Ogg Vorbis) without paying any license fees to Microsoft (and it's all legal).That is what this implies to me.
This proposal is short, clear, and simple. It is depressing to have to opine that the US legislative bodies are so well-oiled by the RIAA that this will not come to pass in the United States!
Goddamned kids! Get off my lawn!
"The Copyright Board of Canada stated that the country's copyright law does allow making a copy for personal use and does not address the source of that copy or whether the original has to be an authorized or noninfringing version..."
Interpretation of the "Fair-use" clause in Canada allows people to download copyrighted music from P2P but not to share.
Copyright Board Decision...
"I wouldn't risk it right now."
Now's the perfect time, there's no valid argument against fair use, the lobbyist strategy seems to be "lets not talk about it" all the while strengthening copyright to make the grey area look blacker.
We have nothing to lose, since they can't make an everyday thing illegal, its an argument we can't lose.
"The Recording Industry Association believes up to 10 million CDs are pirated annually in New Zealand, costing the industry tens of millions of dollars each year. "
:)
So now each CD costs more than a million dollars each? Is that a heck of a price increase - or just a really bad current exchange rate?
There is no such right. If there were, I could do any old thing that I cared to define as "work" and demand that somebody pay me to do it.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Your point about independent discovery is also irrelevant. If two people should happen to create identical works independently, they are each the author of the work they produced, and each can license it as they choose. Either is at liberty to sue the other for copyright infringement, but to win their case they have to persuade the jury both that they wrote the article and that the defendant copied it from them rather than producing it independently.
The story says "allow one copy" of a recording you already own.
We already have this right in Canada. I think most Americans take it as a God given right.
Can someone compare the NZ recording industry gross proceeds vs Canada/USA (maybe normalize for population)?
Can someone compare the NZ-RIA "claims" of copyright violations per year vs the R/C-RIA "claims" of copyright violations per year (and normalize for population)?
Their claims are just idiotic. Reminds me of the kind of utter illogic and delusion you get from listening to Iraqi Tribesmen and Mullah's (no offense, but really!) If only we could get the XX-RIA orgs and Labels to listen to themselves:
"OMG OMG OMG OMG if people can listen to their CDs through non CD-players, THE FUCKING SKY WILL FALL AND ALL OUR BASE WILL BELONG TO THEM"
Hee hee, yeah, that's right, keep screwing around with "the laws" and focusing on "p2p" as the great evil enemy instead of focusing on delivering PRODUCTS that people CARE ABOUT or WANT (other than teeny boppers I mean).
According to our relentless pace of technological progress, in 10-15 years I'll be able to walk over to my friends place with something in the palm of my hand, and give him a copy of every single audio recording ever made - and it'll cost us next to NOTHING.
Right now if someone were to walk over to their neighbours place, you'd have to carry the device in a plastic bag and it could only contain 50,000 songs and would take a few days and $200 of receiving hardware to copy.
Notice something? I didn't use the Internet or p2p, not even ONCE! So when will "the hammer drop"? When all the *average* schmucks like my Mom and non-techie friends figure out that they can do this, and actually start asking their friends "can I come over with my portable storage device"?
"You have no chance, make your time"
I have to say that the ones I saw in Auckland were quite beautiful and had very soft wool.
--
E_NOSIG
One of the main reasons that gun control never succeeds in the U.S. is that there is a genuine question of predator control for livestock farmers. There are still cougars and coyotes out there, and many of the farmers grew up when these predators were much larger problems.
So there's always a base of people who really do have a use for guns other than shooting people. In the city, it's always shooting people... it might just be "bad guys."
Is it leagal to own MP3 players in New Zealand? Until iTunes came out and Napster went legal there wasn't a big digital music store. So if you couldn't transfer your CDs to MP3 players, and you couldn't buy the songs leagally, how were you supposed to get music into your player?
I have my array of hummingbirds, but Master of Puppets [Metallica] just doesn't sound the same.
What, New Zealand didn't get enough thanks from the LOTR cast and crew during the Oscars? It's already looking for more?
Visit me on the web at Permanent4.com.
For the Australians, this sums up American politics from the opposing viewpoint.
Bush (aka "Warrior"): Fighting for the peace and justice by giving no quarter to terrorists. Has toppled two known terrorist regimes via force, and a third without firing a shot (Libya). Has a campaign fund of over 100 mil and a high approval rating.
Kerry: Not Bush. Flip-flops on every issue, often within the same week. Decorated Vietnam vet who got one of his 3 Purple Hearts for a "walking wounded" incident, got transfered to administratve duty for those medals, left sevice early to pusue political career. May have been in a meeting discussing assasination of US officials. As a Congressman, worked to cover-up POW/MIA from Vietnam, the war he had even fought in. This is your best hope for a not-Bush president? Campaign fund of around 2.4 mil.
The copyright modification as proposed allows people to make copies for personal use. Big Deal. It ALSO has standard DMCA-like wording about copy protection and reverse engineering. So we have a right to make a copy, but if there is copy protection, then there is no legal means to make that copy. It's still an ass. Still, the bit about limiting liability for ISPs at least shows some thought went into it.
See the proposed amendments
This is a well known case of possibly independent discovery of a simple tune. In theory independent discovery should protect you, but in practice it's too hard to prove.
-I am an elective eunuch.
The record execs are worried about this for a pretty clear reason. When CD's were introduced they saw huge boosts in the sale of old catalogue as people began replacing much of their vinyl collection.
They want the same to happen when people want a copy of their favourite hits on their iPod or memory stick.
Trust me, I heard the local head of one of the big 5 record companies say this himself.
From the article:
"Sony NZ managing director Michael Glading said he was totally opposed to the move, which he believed would "open the floodgates" to unrestricted piracy.
"At the end of the day, you're sending a message that it's okay to copy, and that is going to kill our business. It's taking away people's rights to earn a living, and that's horrendous."
Someone should clue this guy in over tha fact that it was Sony that introduced the SCMS (Serial (referred to as Sony) Copy Management System as part of the audio CD standard. Sony has explicitly allowed consumers to make a first generation digital copy of a CD.
See: http://www.xs4all.nl/~jacg/dcc-faq/scms.html
20 years ago it was desirable to respect the consumers' right of fair use, and today it's killing the business. Yeah, right.
Bleah!
I guess that means, "giving away", or even, "regaling".
Score -1: Gratuitous Verbing of Nouns..
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
cam
Wont happen, Howard is beholden to American interests. The supposed Free Trade Agreement adds DMCA like provisions to Australian copyright (as well as extending copyright protection). Details of the FTA. There will be public meetings with members of the trade commision in the next month or so.
cam