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New Zealand DMCA Moves Forward
nzgeek writes "The DMCA-like amendments to the New Zealand Copyright Act passed their first hurdle in parliament today, with an overwhelming 113 to 6 vote to pass the Bill to the Commerce Select Committee for further discussion. The detail-oriented can read the full debate (or rather lack of debate), and one enterprising New Zealand legal blogger has an excellent series of posts on the Bill, its background, and its implications. New Zealanders interested in fighting this legislation have until the 16th of February 2007 to make submissions to the Select Committee, before the committee makes its recommendations and sends the Bill back for a second reading."
First post!
Hiss~
*Throws cabbage*
I don't understand the need for DMCA-like legislation when there are hard encryptions available to negate the question. DMCA is like claiming you're cracking a bank safe when all you did is slide a latch or ignore the "No Trespassing" sign.
Aren't DMCA legislations just a means of guaranteeing that companies keep using insecure technologies?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
No unauthorized cloning of sheep!
It's a fact that New Zealanders regularly fuck sheep! As an American animal rights activist, I find this appaling. You're either for bestiality or against it, and clearly New Zealanders have voted with their gonads. I urge Australia to denounce this disgusting sheep buggery and institute a trade embargo against these sadistic bastards.
Here lately we're starting to hear the beginnings of experiments into actually USING P2P techniques to distribute content and experiments in dropping DRM, and yet the DMCA is continuing its march across the WTO.
I wonder how long it will be before the media people realize that it will always be a minority of people who will actually bother to copy and crack and skip commercials and never buy. This leaves the majority going along in their mainstream way taking things as they are packaged and delivered.
I'm hopeful that the experiments in dropping DRM will be as successful as the software industry was when it gave up on their copy protection schemes that involved odd and flawed formats on floppies and CDs. (Is anyone here old enough to remember the floppies with the errors in specific locations and all that?) Now they haven't given up entirely, but they have definitely become more friendly about it as they matured. I'm hopeful that the content people mature more in their new digital frontiers and realize it's all pretty much the same thing as before and that people will continue buying regardless of other options being present.
Or writing a letter, or suchlike. But even if the law gets passed, it wont make any difference to me, will still keep playing DVDs in Xine, will still tell others how to play DVDs on Linux, and I doubt any enforcement will happen. But I thought the government was smarter than this, I guess not. If anything, the opposite should he happening, the government should really be actively seeking to eliminate DRM.
That's right. Introduce an important bill just as the country is closing down for the rituals surrounding the Christmas holiday and set the date for submissions just a few days after most people surface after the haze has cleared.
If this is what is called Consultative Democracy, then frankly I've just become rather envious of the Fijians. Now we know why the leadership of the NZ Government was saying such condemnatory things about the actions of Cdr. Bainimarama.
We are very isolated from the Real World(tm) here in Little Ol' NZ, so don't get to hear very much about what's happening out there. Do the governments of other countries which purport to be ruled "by the people for the people" get up to these tricks?
Although the bill passed with an overwhelming margin, that doesn't mean a lot of the MPs will support it next time it comes up for vote. In New Zealand MPs often support a bill in its first reading because they feel it requires more thought and debate.
For example recently a bill to raise the New Zealand drinking age to 20 was passed in its first reading by a large margin before being voted down in the second - MPs back off from drinking age hike
*goes and sobs in the corner*
Karma? Hey I just call it as I see it.
New Zealand is a country of 4 million people. It gets a lot of attention on Slashdot because people speak English there. There are 121 countries that have more people than New Zealand.
Q: What is the difference between Elisha Cuthbert and Vladinator?
A: One is an unbelievably hot Hollywood actress, and the other is a fat, child-molesting alcoholic
NZ is what australia would be if the country was run by women. over protective and petty. they sport some of the most rediculous laws in existence AND they enforce them. my guess, is they will pass this law.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
You're no exception in NZ at all.
It's certainly like you describe here in the UK as well, and I hear it's the same in US.
What seems to have happened is that politicians worldwide have now lost any intention of representing the interest of "The People" honestly, and always work against them in any way they can. The political system is only as good as its practitioners, and hence nowadays it's rotten to the core.
I don't know if it was ever any better than this. Back in the days of the Founding Fathers in the US it must have been better, you can see the pro-The People intention clearly expressed in their Constitution. But of course that's being subverted now by the current administration.
Just treat politicians with utter contempt for the pure scum they are, universally. I don't know of any that are an exception to this, in the current day and age.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
The best thing for everyone at this point would be for the investors in the entertainment industry to invest in oil futures and leave entertainment to Youtube. People get their free entertainment and the investors can still make money since oil stocks are likely to climb for the forseeable future. Okay the entertainment will mostly be Weird Al wantabes and uncle Simon getting hit in the nuts by a baseball but hey it'll be free and everyone will be happy.
Recently apple opened up their iTunes store in NZ. On that very day the NZ govt passed a law making it legal for people to copy their music from one format to another. Before that it was illegal in NZ to rip your CDs to MP3 or any other format.
Here is the odd thing. If it's now your right to be able to format shift the music you bought wouldn't any technology that prevents you from doing that be illegal?
evil is as evil does
Now I can freely complain about the people who elected these fools. And the fools themselves, of course.
All I can really say is that if there's a way for the government to make money from this bill, it'll be home and hosed. Our government seems to be so heavily focused on revenue lately it's driving me insane.
The police for example. If you call 111 (our emergency number) when, for example, somebody has broken into your house, you'll be told that there aren't any officers available, but somebody will be there to see you as soon as possible. Nevermind the fact that your life may be in danger. If this happens, all you need to do to find a police officer is find a speeding car. They'll be around writing out tickets. Guaranteed. In a few days time, you'll hear from an officer about the break in at your house.
Not surprisingly, the number of violent crimes has increased dramatically lately.
As for this bill, I can just see it going through. I can also see it being abused as far as possible. Our judicial system, it seems, is utterly clueless when it comes to technology, yet as soft as hot butter on people who have actually damaged lives with violent crimes (rape, murder/attempted murder, assault, armed robbery, etc...). Combine a bill like this with a judiciary system like ours and you will more than likely get a disaster. I can just see somebody getting fined heavily for using Linux if this bill is approved.
Hopefully, we have enough people who'll stand up to legislation like this. God knows we need some sense from the government.
Right now, my parent post is moderated 50% off topic and 50% insightful.
I love New Zealand. I have lived there. However, Slashdot never gives a sense of proportion when it covers English-speaking countries. Slashdot also seems to assume that the 210 (approximately) countries that don't speak English are less important.
From my blog:
m entID=28024
A 1-42C2-AE75-9200DD87F738/48250/DBHOH_BILL_7735_401 93.pdf
My notes I posted to mailing list reproduced on this:
Here is the major announcement from the government:
http://www.beehive.govt.nz/ViewDocument.aspx?Docu
and the actual proposed legislation is here:
http://www.parliament.nz/NR/rdonlyres/5A88D15B-C4
Some quick highlights as I read the act: (Note I am not a lawyer)
- Reverse engineering IS allowed under some circumstances - basically for interoperability
- format shifting is allowed but only initially for 2 years, this can be extended though (or not)
- time shifting is allowed provided you don't keep it and it's not available on demand
- ISPs are basically not liable (provided they follow take down notices)
- allowed to alter commercial software if the vendor doesn't fix problems in reasonable time
- anti-TPM (DRM via another name) is prohibited for sale or for producing (seems to cover open source). Fines of $150K or 5 years jail. Doesn't seem to prohibit if you have a copy but you can't write it yourself, sell it or tell others about it. Does make it an offence if you use it to copy copyrighted material. But you are allowed to use anti-TPM for "interoperability of software" so conceivably you could use software to play Itunes or DVDs on Linux. But this only applies if
you have asked vendor for a copy you can use and they don't supply in a reasonable time.
Overall this seems to be much better than DMCA of the USA but not perfect. It is probably better than people could have hoped for.
Ian
Nobody such as yourself ever complains when Zonk/ScuttleMonkey/kdawson spam Slashdot every weekend with any Australia-related story they can dredge up. There are only around 20 million people there, yet if any nation can be said to be over-represented on Slashdot, it's Australia.
So how about it -- why do you complain when a very rare story about New Zealand is posted, but stay oh-so-silent when we see yet another of the very many Australian stories?
Go tie your kangaroo down, sport. Tie it down good.
Or anywhere else.
Software patents delenda est.
The New Zealand government has bugger all interest in property rights. As far as I can tell, the current morality is something along these lines. If you steal a car, then you are a criminal and the car is not your property or the property of any you sell it to. If the government steals a car, then it is their car and they can damn well do what they want with it.
The government does not give a damn about property rights. They are just doing a deal with someone in return for something else. In this case, I would imagine they have been offered a slice of someones pie and/or are being pressured by Maori to protect their culture. I can't see there being a huge problem with p2p uploading in a country with a largely 128kbs upload rate.
Personally, I wish they would shaft the music industry in New Zealand and the rest of the world. I like a good sing-along, and think the music should be made because we want to, not for money.
I reserve the write to mangle english.
The more I think about it, I'm coming around to the idea that the DMCA (and its ilk) might not be the end of the world.
Think about it... What would your reaction be if you were in business and your chief competitor cut their own legs off at the knee caps? Would you view it as a bad thing?
Now recast that as RIAA and friends vs. Creative Commons and friends. Surely the DMCA will only serve to drive people towards the Commons?
So in the absence of the abolition of copyright, perhaps copyright+DMCA is a better position for the producers of Free content than copyright-DMCA? Think of the DMCA as the equivalent of the GPL's "liberty or death" clause, applied to the RIAA's content. The DMCA ensures that non-free content will die, leaving Free content to take its place.
I agree that Australia is over-represented, or discussed out of proportion.
Hi,
I am a kiwi, who has been living overseas for 6 and a half years, and I used to vote libertarian. Anyway, I am coming back soon, because I find Europe to be too socialist for my tastes, and will be looking into starting a new political movement based on Freedom. It will be partially based on the Libertarianz, and partially based on the "Pirate Parties".
The issues I have with the Libertarianz are:
I dislike the fact they specifically include "intellectual property" as deserving of the same sort of protection as physical property, fair enough, but this is specifically listed in their constitution as an non negotiable policy of theirs, whereas I see the extent that "intellectual property" is to be protected as an issue to be dealt with normally as legislation dealt with in Parliamentm (and personally dont see the point in intellectual property laws at all, although I wont enforce my personal beliefs upon the party I would be interested in helping to create).
I find their over the top America-worshipping symbolism (statue of liberty etc) distasteful and frankly bizarre as a I dont actually percieve the current America to be particularly more free than the current NZ. Its a huge turn off to most especially young Kiwis who recognize the USA as being rather far from an ideal role model for NZ.
Their press releases, website, policies etc are worded in an over the top inflammatory way which reduces their credibility.
They intend to totally reform the NZ political system by introducing a constitution, which is too ambitious for a nation like NZ, whereas I would prefer to work within the current MMP framework, either as part of the opposition, or a coalition partner, at least initially. Lets face it, the Labour Party and Helen Clark havent done that terrible a job, NZ in general is better suited towards slow gradual improvements rather then anything too radical and revolutionary, and many people are in fact happy with the current level of socialist meddling in private lives. However I believe just as many people are interested in opposing such meddling, and thus would like to see a party in Parliament address those peoples needs.
They base their politics rigidly on the philosophy of objectivism which I dont believe is especially productive. Most political issues are after all fairly subjective, and the truely objective issues are mostly self evident and fairly common sense and represented by values that are upheld by most parties anyway.
Anyone who wants to be a part of this please get in touch.
>> it DOES NOT MATTER, because the two big parties rule the country anyway
Yes, that's exactly the case, and it's like this almost everywhere.
Winner-takes-all is almost universal today because it ensures that the majority parties stay in power almost all the time. It's an institutionalized distortion that parties absolutely love, because it provides a rotating meal ticket for life.
That mechanism is the seed of this worldwide corruption of politics that we're seeing, because it turns the goal from "represent the people" to "represent the party", and everyone else is marginalised.
And that's a good definition of "scum politician" as any: a politician who represents his party instead of representing the people who voted for him. You can't be both, because they are in direct conflict with each other.
Hence, "scum" is right on the mark, in > 99% of cases.
We're here with you.
Current legislation is due to pass in NY concerning the downsizing of hospitals. We have a small, financially efficient, hospital in our little village that is due to be downsized... unless our legislators vote against the bill.
No vote means passing by default.
And it's over the Christmas holidays.
I suppose we'll all be driving 30 to 40 miles for the nearest hospital, or paying an extra $2k for an ambulance roll out.
Yay Democracy?
#SickNotWeak
It's easy enough to claim "most countries that have a DMCA" when there are very few examples, and only one original.
It's as specious as the US DEA argument that there is no valid research in the United States demonstrating medical use of cannabis, while other US departments prevent any such research from being done. Catch-22. It's Schedule I because there is no documented medical use; there is no documented medical use because it's illegal to research.
Technically the viewpoint and phrasing is correct: there is no such research in the US. But there is in the rest of the world.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
is Playstation 2 Memory cards. 8 Mb of flash ram for $25 bucks. Why? Because of what Sony affectionately terms "Magic Gate", a really basic system of controls for what can and cannot be copied from a memory card. Thanks to this stuff triggering the DMCA, we get no 3rd party Memory cards (except the Nyco ones, that are also $25 dollars). This kind of stuff is what the DMCA is all about. It's about giving companies absolute legal control over their products. Hell, Lexmark tried to use it to keep 3rd party printer cartridges off the market, and I'm still convinced the only reason they didn't succeed is the judge didn't want to have to pay more than he already was for the damn things.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
So I have just read the whole thing. Takes a while. Anyway this is a long way from DMCA. Fair use is fully protected and now we have fair use (we didn't in NZ untill now). For NZ its a big step forward IMO.
Now when I say fair use I mean you are alowed to use cracks etc if the DRM is preventing fair use. You are can also distrubute these cracks providing you have ensured that its only going to be used for fair use provisions. Its by far the best "DMCA" i have seen. You are even able to decompile code to create interoperable products and the EULA cannot deny that right.
But its not perfect. I would like to see DRM vendors forced to respect fair use. And format shifting is for 2 years unless extended. There is also no expcit right to produce backups.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
I think you didn't understand my post. In Germany we don't have winner-takes-all, yet the small parties matter just as much as they do in other countries. Ok, they might have 10% of House seats instead of no seats, but trust me, it doesn't matter a bit, because the same big parties (program-wise) still have the majority (thanks to voters!).
So, how does if effect my bittorrent downloads?
gadgetophile.com
There is an online petition against the Copyright (New Technologies and Performers' Rights) Amendment Bill. This should probably have been part of the original post. If you live in New Zealand or are a New Zealand citizen or permanent resident, please do consider signing the petition. Thank you.
That apparent paradox is the key to the media companies' strategy.
It used to be media companies were content to simply abide by copyright law. If someone broke copyright law, the companies would go after them. But aside from that, we customers could do what we wanted with their products.
Then technology made it increasingly easy for people to break copyright law, and harder for media companies to find out who broke it and stop them. So they started implementing technology of their own: copy protection.
Naturally, this was poorly implemented and caused more trouble for real customers than for pirates. But the media companies realized it was very useful, because it allowed them to separate what people were legally entitled to do from from what the companies let them do. So media companies grew to rely less on copyright law -- which provides a relatively small set of prohibitions -- and more on physically preventing customers from doing anything the media companies didn't like.
Because the technology was still pretty crappy, people could crack it. So the media companies lobbied governments to make cracking these technologies illegal. And here's the really sneaky part: they didn't just get protection for technologies that prevented copyright infringement. They got protection for pretty much anything they can dream up. All they need to do is bundle it all together and claim it's meant to help protect copyright.
The end result: media companies can effectively write their own copyright laws! They decide what they want to allow us to do and what they want to prohibit, they implement a technological measure to this effect, and it's illegal for anyone to circumvent it. They've ended up with the best of both worlds: the ability to dictate terms to customers how they use their media, and the legal right to enforce compliance.
I should buy some cement.
New Zealanders interested in fighting this legislation have until the 16th of February 2007 to make submissions to the Select Committee, before the committee makes its recommendations and sends the Bill back for a second reading."
Should read:
New Zealanders interested in fighting this legislation have until the 16th of February 2007 to piss into the wind, before the committee rubber stamps the bill and collects their brand new sailboats from NZRIAA/NZMPAA.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
1. That the NZ Government is basically the most corrupt that the country has ever had, including under Muldoon (for examples, look up the recent media stories on the PM forging works of art for sale, the PM dodging speeding convictions for a high-speed motorcade to a sports match that would have landed anyone else in Jail, the ruling parties blatant breach of election spending laws, and in the Auditor-Generals clear report the blatant misuse of public funds for political purposes, and using its control of law enforcement to dodge prosecution)- actually the Fijian solution looks kinda acceptable at this point
2. That the PM is arts-mad (banned the commercial parallel importation of legit DVDs when lobbied by the industry, lets people on welfare dodge work if they are engaged in artistic or creative endeavour), spends a bunch on arts, and will make a speech at the opening of a door if the arts are involved.
3. That the ruling party is flat-broke and desperate for cash, whereas the other main party is recieving a lot of donations - hence frantic government efforts to legislate for state funding of political parties and clamping down on private donations which they don't get many of now (see corruption above). Thus they are probably going to be very receptive to lots of little men in black suits from Sony et al with suitcases full of cash for bribes ^H^H^H^H errrr contributions.
When you add all these things up, there is probably zero chance of them standing up for the freedoms of citizens. Still, we should all put in submissions nevertheless, even if they are in vain at least they cant say that there were no objections.
Oh, and just as a tip, submissions can be emailed and letters to Members of Parliament don't require stamps - a little quirk of the NZ postal regs.
Listen up America! This is what you get when you aren't politically active enough in letting your representative know what you want.
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