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Australia-U.S. Trade Agreement Takes First Strike
inflex writes "With the recent AU-US Federal trade ageement coming into force, the first signs of what is to come have started appearing with Sony unleashing a legal bid to clamp down on previously legal mods chips in Australia."
.. spread those checks for the bald eagle.
Those FBI warnings at the start of some movies are now not a joke - a branch office will be opening soon.
Also expect some law suits from Americans about the product you guys sell as "beer".
Here's the text:
Sony in push to outflank PS2 mods
Andrew Colley
MARCH 15, 2005
SONY Computer Entertainment Australia is planning a new legal bid to outlaw PlayStation modification chips following recent changes to federal copyright laws.
The devices override copy control mechanisms Sony builds into its consoles to block the use of pirated games and DVDs encoded for players built to operate in other regions.
Launching the Gran Turismo 4 game in Sydney last week, SCEA managing director Michael Ephraim said the company had instructed its lawyers to prepare a new court challenge to the legality of the devices.
The case would be based on amendments to the Copyright Act flowing from the US Free Trade Agreement in January, he said.
Sony's lawyers were preparing the case in anticipation of a High Court appeal overturning a decision in its favour, based on previous laws, handed down by the full bench of the Federal Court in July 2003.
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Mr Ephraim said "the company would take more steps to crack down on street-level piracy in the second half of the year.
"We will wait for the outcome of the Stevens case.
However, Mr Ephraim said, "the world has changed a lot".
"So we will continue our fight against chipping on the PS2."
SCEA has engaged in a long series of legal manoeuvres to outlaw the chips since 2002 when it took legal action against backyard mod chip supplier, Eddy Stevens, in the Federal Court.
Sony asked the court to interpret parts of the Copyright Act outlawing the devices that circumvent copy protection mechanisms to include mod chips that Mr Stevens was selling.
However, Justice Ronald Sackville ruled in favour of Mr Stevens after the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission intervened in the case.
The competition watchdog argued that Sony was using the copy control mechanism to erect artificial trade barriers between Australian consumers and overseas games and DVD markets.
Sony eventually won its case on appeal to the full bench of the Federal Court in July 2003. However, on February 8 Mr Stevens appealed to the High Court to overturn the decision.
Mr Stevens's legal representative, Gadens Lawyers, said the High Court had not set a date to give its decision.
From the article:
However, Justice Ronald Sackville ruled in favour of Mr Stevens after the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission intervened in the case. The competition watchdog argued that Sony was using the copy control mechanism to erect artificial trade barriers between Australian consumers and overseas games and DVD markets.
Really? No kidding? It seems to me like erecting trade barriers has been the only use of the DMCA and related copyright legislation's restriction on copy control mechanisms. DVDs and region coding/CSS, Lexmark and printer cartridges, Sony and modchips. Can someone please give me a valid instance of the DMCA's copy control mechanism clauses being invoked in a case that didn't involve keeping a potential competitor out of a specific market?
Free yourself. Everything else will follow.
If you don't buy your Sony games locally, you undercut Sony's ability to gouge on local game prices locally. And from what I've heard, video game companies seem to gouge on local game prices in Australia quite a bit.
It's all about protecting corps, such as Sony, from the effects of global capitalism; market forces are bad for profits, so technological and legal barriers to their proper operation must be put in place. Modern corporatism demands that only corporations get to benefit from globalization, never consumers.
I think anyone who's been keeping up to date with international agreements could see this coming a mile away. Australia is just the latest in a series of countries that have signed up for a Free Trade Agreement with the United States and received a bonus kick in the nuts to their copyright laws.
As an Australian, however, it's a lot more personal. I read /. I keep up to date on stuff like this. I sent letters to all political parties about this, with little success. My problem is this: I can talk to the politicians, but in an issue such as this, which politician will stand on principles to block the copyright amendments and subject themselves to "blocking Australian jobs" and other, more emotionally-laden epithets?
We know why the copyright amendments are in there; the USA is willing to sacrifice protectionism in a few key markets for a bigger stick on copyright. The USA wins: they get to stop the popular-but-expensive subsidies, while being popular in the electorate for their copyright stance.
The other country, my country, thinks it's getting a good deal, but ends up with an Intellectual property deficit. The politicians don't care - they reap the political benefits now.
Sorry for the rant. I guess it's just sour grapes - one would think that after helping the US with that crazy War on Terror thing, that we'd at least get the courtesy of lube before the big event.
"Einstein argued that [...] God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer." ~ Brooks
Write Sony a letter.
If I am having to write letters to privately held corporations if I want to express displeasure with the laws that are being applied to me, something is very, very, very wrong.
I bought my PS2 in London when I was living there the past 3 years, Ive now returned (to Sydney) and want to buy and play legit games that are sold at my local stores. WTF should I buy a new console when a mod chip will do the job? I guess im the 0.01% your talking about but thats no reason I should get shafted.
serenity now!
In other signs of what is to come with the AU-US Federal trade agreement coming into force, actor Paul Hogan of the "Crocodile Dundee" movies has been removed to an undisclosed location and beaten to death with large stones.
StupidChildren...the reason jesus is crying
"Sony will be in a weaker negotiating position when they talk terms with foreign distributors/publishers "
So what?
Really, I can't imagine why this is the general public's concern. I certainly can't imagine why its the job of the Australian government to make sure Sony is in the best negotiating position with local distributors.
I was personally questioned by the french police and my flat was raided 10 years ago when Nintendo France made a lawsuit for the SNES/SFC game copy machines (the nice thing that plugged in the cartridge port and had ram and a floppy drive). So the police searched my flat while I was away, seized around 5 copy machines, about 50 games on floppies, my 2 computers and all they thought was of interest, besides that they emptied the trash in the bathtub and let it like that, it was nice when I came back home from holidays 2 weeks after that... So I had to go to Paris to talk to the police and explain myself, of course I was importing the copy machines from Hong Kong and selling them in France, the only problem for the police was that I was doing this in an "open" way, sending the goos by FEDEX "game copy machine" written on the customs decalaration and paying the customs and VAT tax. First they told me I was questioned for "importation of material being used for illegal copying" but when I showed them the customs paper they changed this to "selling of pirated games" arguing that I HAD to give games when I was selling a unit, at the time we had a pre internet way of coimmunicating in France called minitel, basically a chat BBS with incredible speed (1200/75) and so they had minitel logs of my conversations with buyers, but since I NEVER sold games after 2 hours they had to let me go, give me ALL my stuff back and pay for the damages they had caused in my flat... Bottom line is that since the modchip or device can be used for private copying and so on, it's going to be VERY difficult to put someone who's not selling pirated games in jail, at least in France, and even with the P2P hype, the judges are starting to realise that and the situation is MUCH more calm than it was 6 months ago... Now how is the law and the judges in an hysteric environment such as Fox news-USA and Murdoch land is another question...
its bad enough that we spread crap media and movies to countries like australia, now we give them laws...
If your major contention aligns with the thought that trans-national mega corporate capitalism is wonked and needs at the least some tweaking, then I don't wan't to argue that here, perhaps never.
"See, for someone to make a profit, someone else has to make a loss.."
Here I think you are wrong. Here is a simple thought experiment.
You have a green thumb but are terrible with animals. I am great with animals, but my plants always die. Rather than each of us tending our animals and our gardens, if you will do all the gardening and I will tend all the animals, we can both make a profit. Right?
We may both end up being happier while we work as well which can be a major bonus.
all the best,
drew
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
The free trade agreement changed into NAFTA when Mexico entered the picture.
Before free trade agreement, pretty much everything sold between Canada and the US had tariffs and there was no standard way to mediate the conflicts.
It's always easy to say that things are worst then they would be if something had been different but since there's no way to compare it's hard to actually demonstrate it.
Personnally, I think that the fewer barriers there are to trade, the better. The FTA and NAFTA both serve that purpose. I don't see how not having these agreements would stop the US from imposing tariffs. There were plenty of those before the agreement.
So, why should Sonly be able to inport/export at will across the world but consumers should not? If they want regoin coding, why should it not also apply to their manufacturing and production for example?
Of COURSE they want to squeeze out the most money, heck, I would say they would be even more happy if no one else would be able to seel products that would compete with them, that way they can make even more money. Even better, make it mandatory for everyone to buy everything from them, instant profit as much as they want.
It is time to stop caring only about companies and start caring for the general consumers and the public as well.