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DMCA in Oz: Rusty a witness at FTA Senate Hearings

Posted by timothy on from the impressive-turnaround-time dept.

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."

3 of 29 comments (clear)

  1. just to clear things up by onya · · Score: 4, Interesting

    here in australia a liberal government is conservative, and labor doesn't like being spelt labour.

    1. Re:just to clear things up by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      No, spelled is spelt spelt.

      Have you never heard of strong past tenses? Like bent, leant, blest, and so forth. The weaker versions have started to take over in some cases, but are by no means ubiquitous (at least, not here in the UK).

  2. New Zealand by Isomer · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I live in New Zealand. America got quite irritated with us not supporting them fully during the war with Iraq. They made it quite clear. Australia did, and got a Trade Agreement that New Zealand missed out on. Unfortunately Australia's trade agreement had these DMCA issues (amongst others), so really, New Zealand came out of this much better off.

    If America's going to treat it's friends like this, I think I'd prefer not to be in America's best buddies list.