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DMCA in Oz: Rusty a witness at FTA Senate Hearings
Mikey writes "The Australia Senate currently has a committee investigating the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between the USA and Australia. The draft proposal for the FTA will bring DMCA style laws to Australia. Here is the public parliamentary record (the Hansard) from Monday's hearing. The witness list includes Linux Kernel hacker, Paul "Rusty" Russell and other interested parties. Rusty was well received and it seems we have some support from opposition (Labour and Democrat) Senators (FYI Oz currently has a Liberal government). We are getting there, but we need to keep fighting."
Quick quote:
The Australian parliament has to pass five or six pieces of enabling legislation, although the agreement itself will not be voted upon directly.
Mr Vaile said he hoped to have those pieces of legislation passed during the July and August sittings of parliament.
Both countries hope to have the deal operating from January 1 next year.
It looks as if Rusty Russell was allowed a good amount of time to give the Linux Australia position. The transcript of all the witnesses is a very long one. From my scan of it, he clearly used the opportunity well to make clear how potentially oppressive the results would be if Australia accepts the bilateral agreement with US. The agreement would not only put a DMCA-like law into effect in Australia: aspects of the result in Australia might be even harsher than in the US. Also, the agreement would seemingly bring a position where Australia would be exposed to trade sanctions if the Australian legislature ever had second thoughts in future and decided to relax aspects of the law resulting from the bilateral agreement.
-wb-
The Greens are a real political force in Australia.
They hold the balance of power in the Senate, along with the Democrats and a few "swinging independants". The Greens will not be supporting the FTA, and in particular any DMCA-like provisions.
[Disclaimer: I'm a member and contributed to the Greens IT policy currently under development.]
'Labour' claims to stand for 'we are all in this together', so we will advance together. This may include taxes and welfare to keep the rear of the pack closer to the head.
As such, talk of 'conservative' and 'radical' is unrelated to the stated aim of each party. Either party can be seen as 'radical' or 'conservative' depending on the measures they take to achieve their objectives.
In practise, the actual aims of each party have wandered over the years. A cynic would say that both parties have moved to the aim of preserving the two party system and resulting trough of benefits for politicians, parties and their mates (the big end of town). They have convinced themselves that such an arrangement is to the benefit of Australia, the only problem being that they are so cloistered that they (unknowingly?) equate their circle of friends with Australia. (Eg. politicians no longer mix with the unwashed masses due to 'security' concerns, and the rise of the career politician.)
The current government has also lost sight of its 'liberal' roots in that it has removed things such as the right to a trial (David Hicks) and introduced laws allowing people to be detained without charge and made it illegal to protest when detained in such a manner. I guess they are confortable with replacing objective courts with subjective 'gut feelings' because their 'mates' are on the inside and so safe from subjective judgements.