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Tougher Copyright Laws for Australia
smee2 writes "The Age reports Tougher copyright laws linked to the Australia-US free trade agreement (FTA) have been passed by the Australian parliament, AAP reports.
The bill, which passed the Senate last night, will enable people other than copyright owners to force internet service providers to take down material allegedly infringing copyright."
that is the internet will not last forever. cherish it.
Am I missing something?
"'Yrch!' said Legolas, falling into his own tongue."
Asked whether the US would not object to such watering down, Coroneos said it was a case of treading another fine line. "We are meeting Mr Vaile tonight in Canberra to work on the regulations which would be used to soften the bill," he said.
Who cares if the US objects to laws in Australia? How is it any of the their business?
Even if Kazaa is shut down by these new laws (or some others already on the books or in the queue*) will it really affect P2P traffic?
Personally, I don't even use Kazaa anymore; it's so overrun with half downloaded songs and mislabeled files that it's nearly useless and better alternatives are already in place to grab the standard should/when Kazaa fall(s). In fact, cleaning out the dregs that the Kazaa network has become will only increase the efficiency of the P2P machine.
Sites like Suprnova and Shareconnector verify the content before providing links to the torrent or donkey file, eliminating the possiblity of a mislabeled or otherwise misleading file. Sure, the speed can be slightly slower, but faster alternatives (Bearshare, Ares) are also available for the speed freaks. And unlike Kazaa, these newer apps are willing to share networks, rather than trying to corner the market.
Napster showed us that killing a single app (even one as prevalent as Napster was) hardly interferes with the P2P machine, I don't think any legislation will manage to slow it down.
* denotes bad P2P joke
Rember this one?
Censoring The Net With A Hotmail Account
I think Australian ISP's will be very busy for the coming time..
And the term of protection for copyright material was extended by 20 years. because 50 to 120 years http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries'_co pyright_length
will just not give you enough time!
(personel note: wiki is wrong right? it can not be THAT long!!!)
"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest." - Denis Diderot.
Dear Australia,
Stop following our example. IT IS NOT A GOOD ONE.
Your friend,
The U.S.
... even highlighted the main issues. How to Kill a Country. A bit dramatic but the agreement undermines some crucial aspects of our sovereignty. The PM (Prime Minister) laughed off the IP issues as just "technical matters". Yeah right. Shafted a-fucking-gain.
Bitter and proud of it.
I'm in Singapore, which is also in a bilateral FTA with the USA. My concern is that the FTAs that are being pushed through are actually a blatant attempt to enforce american law in countries where they have no prior influence over. If you're looking for a governing body over the entire internet, there it is, America is becoming the Nazi that will police the cyberstate of the Internet(s!). Of course, living in the commie state that I do, you'll never hear any of these concerns voiced over the mass media channels, which are all but overflowing with praise for the government and their clever negotiating of this FTA. Fear.
Starbucks, Harbuckle of Breath.
Heh. If you were really Americanized, you would have spelled it Globalization.
Join moola.com, play games to earn money.
A bit of a broad brush, perhaps. Please don't say "the people in Canberra". I'm a Canberran, I'm not a politician and I'm certainly not a dog.
I utterly despise US style copyright. It's a travesty of freedom.
Copyright should be there to encourage authors - how does paying their publisher 70 years yonder help the author?
Under the previous Australian system authors got 50 years after their death, companies got 50 years from date of publication. May terrible things happen to those who put Australia in the position we're now in.
Not only has this copyright bill gone through, they also just passed an Electronic Surveillance bill that "regulates the use of surveillance devices (data, optical, listening and tracking devices) by law enforcement agencies and.... also significantly widens the circumstances in which they can be used and the types that can be used." where is the government free space??
He means Australia should make friends with the school bully in order to prevent getting the crap beaten out of it.
And so to achieve this, what the school bully wants, the school bully gets.
M8 it's called geo-political advantage. We Aussies call it "suckinup" and Johnny is our champ at it. We do stupid shit like vote against Kyoto, support Isreal's state terror, and other such crap. Why? So the US doesn't look so fucking lonely at the UN. The "IP colonists" have been trying to use us as a testbed & springboard for a while now and have had some success. The BIG thing Australia has that the BIG boys want is strategic position.
Obligitory: We do need overlords but I for one would much rather be welcoming back our EU overlords.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
The Australian FTA is particularly bad for Australia (from a purely monetary American perspective, you should be glad the Australian government is such a ham-fisted negotiator), but I don't think it's particularly unique here. In fact, FTAs are bad news all round - and this is coming from a perspective of mostly being in favour of free trade. They force all sorts of stupid tracking costs so you can prove that you're not acting as a transshipment point for goods from countries not covered by the FTA, cause all sorts of distortions, and serve as a convenient political cover to force through all sorts of measures multinationals like but citizens aren't so keen on.
Frankly, I think the rest of the world should gang up on the United States at the next round of WTO negotiations and demand looser IP laws. Even if they don't get them it's a hell of a bargaining chip to get the US to play ball on a lot of other issues.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I've heard very little discussion about how we (people who believe copywright and patent law has tipped too far in the corporations' favor) can use these laws AGAINST the big guys.
An earlier post suggested overwhelming Aussie ISPs with inaccurate copyright-breach claims.
But how about taking these laws to their logical, unreasonable conclussions on the lawmakers' and coprorations' own turfs?
For example:
- Bring coypright violation claims against the websites of the Aussie parliamentarians / senators / corporations that supported the bill.
- Try to find ACTAUL copyright violations of these guys. Then tell ISPs to bring down these offending sites. But do it in a trickle of death. I.e., don't tell the site maintainers about all infringing content at once. Rather, tell the ISP about it once offence at a time, requiring a new take-down---fix-content---bring-up cycle for each offence.
- Develop our own submarine patent portfolio for use against corporations.
I think at best this could get new versions of the law up for consideration by lawmakers. Unfortunately, that just gives the special interests more of an opportunity to craft law to our disadvantage.
How do we actually get the lawmakers to TRY to craft law that's fair or even anti-copyright? Is there no way we can do it, since they ALWAYS ultimately follow the money?