Slashdot Mirror
Draconian Anti-Piracy Law Looms Over Australia
ccozan writes to tell us of a law being rushed through the Australian legislature that would criminalize great swaths of the citizenry. The Internet Industry Association of Australia is posting warning scenarios spelling out how far-reaching this law would be. From the release: "A family who holds a birthday picnic in a place of public entertainment (for example, the grounds of a zoo) and sings 'Happy Birthday' in a manner that can be heard by others, risks an infringement notice carrying a fine of up to $1,320. If they make a video recording of the event, they risk a further fine for the possession of a device for the purpose of making an infringing copy of a song... The US Free Trade Agreement does not require Australia to go down this path, and neither US nor European law contain such far-reaching measures. We are at a total loss to understand how this policy has developed, who is behind it and why there is such haste in enacting it into law — with little if any public debate."
You have to wonder whether those - like the RIAA and MPAA - that are pushing for ever more restrictive copyright laws are going to find that they've gone a bridge too far and wind up in a worse position than where they started. For example, I can see a day when juries will simply refuse to convict people who run afoul of laws like this, as is their right. Once that starts happening, they can buy all of the laws they want and it won't do them any good.
I live in Australia, and well this is the first I've heard about it... kind of creepy in a way. Maybe I'll change my birthday song to "happy give me presents day". Although i don't know if this relates to another story this week (local-ish news). Apparently at concerts and events people -could0 get fined for record videos of bands on there mobile phones, strange that no-one mentioned actual digital camera's though.
Wait. Wait. Wait. How would they even know about this if they didn't know any of the most important details about it? I smell BULLSHIT. This is just pure scaremongering on the part of iia.net.au.
Nice troll ccozan, but you don't get troll points for slipping one past newbies like kdawson. Can we please get this taken down off the front page until someone comes up with some real facts?
The love of money is the root of all evil.
It's time to route the music supply AROUND the RIAA, just the same way a person would route AROUND a circuit that poses a fire hazard.
In the long run, greed will greed itself out of existance as publically created free music replaces "go-to-jail" / "pay-the-fines" music.
Hmm. Of course...who's working on that free music again?
www.anvilstudio.com
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
Normally on slashdot, there are thought-provoking topics that trigger much debate and such, but it's all pretty clear in this case.
I'm gonna need a spec.
because the kernel source says "fuck" in a few places, and there was a proposal to make it illegal to convey profanities via the internet.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I mean this sincerely:
If you believe that you can make any kind of difference to the masses with a move like getting people to give up licenced popular culture due to unfair IP laws, then go for it; it's a good goal, but I think you might be understating the difficulty of converting even one person just a bit.
Do you have plans? An idea without a plan generally doesn't amount to much. How do you intend to achieve your goals? Warning friends and family that you won't accept the gifts you mentioned and then not accepting them is a good move, though you might piss people off if you don't accept a gift, which they will inevitably buy, despite your warning. If you want people to write to their politicians, perhaps you could come up with a template and host a site that contains in an easy to use form who the relevant politicians are for each area. Rather than suggesting that maybe people should meet up in Sydney at some time, specify a time that you will definitely be there and then seek commitments from others.
Like I said, it sounds like you could achieve some part of your goals, but are you actually going to try, or is it just steam?
I'm gonna need a spec.
Actually even before those laws the only time an Australian ever has true freedom of speech is if they are elected MP's and speaking on the parliament floor. Not saying the law doesn't suck, its just suckier now then it ever was.
The RICO act is a good example of the reverse -- a law which is used to sweep a far broader net than it was originally written for, with each new extension slipping in as 'just a little bit more'. Once a law has been around for a while, courts tend to be leery of overturning it.
Not sure about the Patriot Act. The courts have gotten wonky in later years. Really, by all standards of precedent, it should have been shredded.
My statement was based on the reasoning in Reno vs. ACLU (http://www2.epic.org/cda/cda_decision.html), where the issue of overbreadth is discussed at length.
IAE, I'm just curious as to how Australia deals with these issues. What are the grounds for challenging a law in Australia, which obviously has a very different Constitution than the United States?
It's not about greed...
It's about a lust for power. As a libertarian, I tend to be fair to capitalism, as long as it stays within the boundaries of good ethics.
During the industrial revolution and earlier part of the last century, it was more simple. Your mind designed something- a lightbulb, the first radio, you produced a prototype, you hired people to produce more, and you got paid based on the value of your ideas, and the value of your products - the catch being that competetors are too. You build a mousetrap, and if they build a better one... well, the power's in the hands of the customers.
Then we evolved mass media advertising, technology, and non-tangible goods, and things became more complicated. Market visibility becomes an issue as the marketplace becomes wider. So little people who are hardworking and make good products and want to compete start hiring the big people to help them with this... some to help them become visible, and others as a shield help to protect them legally. This becomes more and more of a corporate thing, and the little people tend to become just visible enough to get bought out, and the larger companies show off what the little companies did and say "see, we can take credit for this now." In the meantime the little company sadly, in some cases, mutates to the form of "productivity" the new parent company had: producing mostly crap, but lots of it.
Then you get people like the RIAA, doing this for musicians or the movie industry. But with digital media becoming prevalent, they don't have as much to hold on to.
At the billion dollar level, it's not about the few hundred thousand. It's about control. File sharing deals a blow because the most popular files are the easiest ones to find... the catch being if you want to find music by an obscure enough artist, you *have* to buy it. This eventually leads to musicians who are outside the "current realm of control" getting enough money to do things like produce videos, which gets them seen... which is a threat if they don't have a sellout pricetag. The RIAA doesn't want enough competetors joining together to produce a bigger competetor that could take them down off their high mountain.
Good capitalism wants its competitor to have enough of a chance to make life interesting, but will work hard to beat it. This "working hard" should not involve dirty tricks or absolute control of the media outlets used to advertise, but the problem here is that the industry in question IS the media. It turns business into little more than politics, which is part of why the american system is in need of reform.
This is all IMHO, though, since I'm neither a lawyer nor in the media.
I'd put him under citizens arrest for crimes against humanity and treason, but I really could be bothered.
I don't therefore I'm not.
Take a Bob Dylan (insert any other protest song here) song and have a group of protesters singing at some rally say against the government introducing bad copyright law. Now there is nothing the government can do about them... until they sing the song in a public place... And hey presto... start the fining.... that will teach them hippies for singing copyrighted material....
If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence you ever tried.
What about the "French" or the "Dutch" or the "Chinese" or the "Japanese"?
We don't call people from the Peoples Reupblic of China prians.
Francians, Netherlandians, Chinaians and Japanians sound just as idiotic as usians.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
after the law is passed I suspect people will not change their habits and just as many people will record, watch and re-watch TV programs.
Until this law is passed it is illegal to have MP3 recordings of commercial material (i.e. songs ripped from CD's), yet MP3 plyers ahev been selling,like hotcakes and CD ripping sodtware is freely available and work computers a loaded with songs and shared. again...nothing will change
The thing to remember here is that there is no way to determine if a recording is being played fo the 1st time or the 100th time. This is especially true if you record a movie from pay tv (legal under the new law) onto a DVD-R. Unless an officer of the law catches someone in the act of watching the recording more than once how are they going to prove it?
"yess officer, I've recorded all these movies but as yet I haven't watched a single one"
Unless they have methods to prove otherwise these laws mean nothing for the home user other than making it perfectly legal to record TV shows (something that has been going on for ages anyway).As for singing "happy birthday" in public, while technically illegal under the new laws in the example given I would be extreemly supprised if any action was taken.
Burning some Disney DVDs is surely within the rights of the owner of those DVDs. Their choice. And from then on their choice to not indoctrinate their children with that stuff, to not buy that stuff, and to tell others why they think they should stop buying it too. No problem there, just consumers exercising their rights of choice in the marketplace and free speech. And it would be easy to argue it's a healthy and positive step, given the kind of stuff that companies like Disney have been doing recently.
There are people who believe there is something inherenly 'evil' about burning books - not at all. As another submitter has mentioned, people using violence to *force* others to burn books is a completely different matter - but even then there are still far worse things to worry about.