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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."
o..k. Maybe you misunderstood the DMCA. It's a law that makes it illegal to crack any "protection mechanism", no matter how easy it is to do so. Most countries around the world that have DMCA-like laws put in some sensible exceptions of course. Fair use being the most obvious. And the work being "protected" has to actually be under copyright. As for whether or not this is "insecure".. I'm confused. A copyright "protection mechanism" has nothing to do with security. You don't use copyright protection mechanisms to keep secrets, you use them to electronically enforce copyright. Claiming that they are "insecure" makes as much sense as claiming that a parking inspector is "insecure".
I'm no fan of laws that say what I can and cannot do with my own computer, but if you're going to attack them, at least be coherent.
How we know is more important than what we know.
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
And the work being "protected" has to actually be under copyright.
Which is bizarre. DRM'ed content breaks the copyright bargain, the first sale doctrine and fair use provisions. It should not be possible to copyright DRM'ed content.
A copyright "protection mechanism" has nothing to do with security.
Sorry, but that's double-think. Double-plus un-good.
It has everything to do with security. The vendor's security. Security is all about physically enforcing somebody's view of ownership in the face of other people's different view of ownership. Ownership, by definition, is simply the legal right to control something to the exclusion of others. Security in general has nothing to do with secrecy though secrecy is often used to achieve security.
In this case the vendor thinks they should be able to legally enforce their view of ownership. This happens to be in conflict with most people's view of ownership which includes the right to share. Reasonable people can dis/agree with either point of view.
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Like software, intellectual property law is a product of the mind, and can be anything we want it to be. Let's get it right.
Companies would rather you weren't able to break their technical protections in the first place, the DMCA is a legal-smackdown on those that do. I'm not sure what you're trying to say with "hard encryption" because DRM implies that the key already is in your posession, but that they're relaying on obscurity/tamper-proof hardware to prevent compromise.
The difficulty prevents more casual hackers, and DMCA prevents large commercial efforts, funding expensive equipment etc. and overall makes it more dangerous to create a huge cracking effort.
Also one of the important reasons is to stomp out end-user tools. already people expect to be able to transfer CDs to the iPod, not that many expect to transfer DVDs to their HTPC, video iPod, cell phone etc. but many enough. They can tell consumers "You weren't supposed to be able to do that with DVDs either" but they'll still get a "screw you" when trying to push HD-DVD/Blu-Ray.
If you don't see what use they have of the DMCA, you must really be blind. I'm not saying that it's good uses, but if you had the RIAA/MPAAs goal of control, profits and pay per view/playing, pushing it makes good sense.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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
It gets attention because it's a western country with an above average interest in technology. I lived for seven months in New Zealand and six months in France, I'm a Yank myself. I found New Zealand on pare with France and England and the US as far as access and interest in technology. A lot of those 121 countries lack the access to technology that New Zealand, Europe and the US have. Not surprising there's a lot of references to New Zealand. I'm sure english speaking doesn't hurt as well. Even in Europe english speakers aren't as common as you'd think. When I was in Spain I found when they realized It didn't speak Spainish well they'd try French or Italian but few spoke english. English may be considered the current world language but a large number of people still speak little or no english. People forget but at one time French was considered the world language. One day I'm sure it'll be something else. When Slashdot is mostly Chinese they'll still be wondering why there are so many New Zealand references.
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
Most countries around the world that have DMCA-like laws put in some sensible exceptions of course.
No they don't.
Fair use being the most obvious.
Buahahahahaha!
And the work being "protected" has to actually be under copyright.
There is absolutely nothing stopping anyone from putting DRM on public domain content. It's technically not criminal for you to strip the DRM off of public domain content, but it is still criminal for anyone to actually supply you with the means to do so.
There are no meaningful execptions to any of the DMCA laws, there is certainly no Fair Use exception, and it even effectively enforces DRM on non-copyright content.
if you're going to attack them
If you're going to defend them... Chuckle. Here's a link to the text of the USA DMCA anti-circumvention law.
Note that 1201(c)... the supposedly "Fair Use" provision... note that it merely states that Fair Use defenses to copyright infringement are not affected. Fair Use is a defense to charges of copyright infringment, and only to charges of copyright infringment. Circumvention and trafficking circumvention tools are not copyright infringment, they are simply criminal. Therefore there *is no* Fair Use defense for DMCA violations. So in effect what 1201(c) really says is that a non-existant defense is not affected. That's the sort of stupid legal games you get when we allow industry lawyers to literally write the text of our laws. The Fair Use provision literally does nothing, but it sure looks pretty doesn't it? It sure creates the appearance that the law is reasonable, the appearance that it reasonably addresses and defends the public's interests. And that is far from the only example of legal tricks slipped into copyright law. The notice-and-takedown section of the has another great public interest sounding clause that doesn't actually do anything... the clause that gives the appearance that takedown orders are filed under penalty of purjury... it is effectively meaningless. Another lovely stunt they pulled was in the NET act, they slipped an apparently insignifigant single little sentence that redefined the legal term "financial gain". This redefinition of terms radically altered the very landscape of copyright law. It redefined "financial gain" to encompas almost any case of copyright infringment (especially P2P), and it took almost all fairly insignifigant cases of non-commercial copyright infringment and though the back door slammed them all under the extremely sever FELONY LAWS that were intened and designed only to apply to serious cases of COMMERCIAL copyright infringment. Individial noncommercial infringment was suddenly thrown under the laws intended to target major criminal commercial enterprice priracy. Individual non-commecial infringment which *was* considered a minor and purely civil matter was suddenly subject to 3 and 5 year felony prison terms. This is the sort of legal trickery you get when we literally allow industry lawyers to write our laws for us, and our legislators simply and ignorantly vote through that prepared text. Oops.... I'm ranting.
Anyway, the point is that there is absolutely nothing reasonable or Fair about DMCA-style anti-circumvention law. And for purposes relevant here, the various international versions of the law are effectively the same as US law. The US "free trade" negotiators forcibly cram crazy terms into every single trade deal, and those terms pretty well prohibit any meaningful softening or exemptions to the DMCA. The law would become 100% worthless if they allowed any meaningful exception at all. DRM security is 100% dependent on circumvention means being COMPLETELY unavailable. If there is any meaningful excemption at all for anything, you would need some means of circumventing the DRM available. You would need someone to be able to supply you with
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Probably you are a troll, but I will bite.
1. copyright DOES exist
It was 14 years long for books originally. You should probably look at the motivation for the original laws and compare it against publishing monopoly abuse that existed prior to that.
Are books now so advanced that a 95+ year monopoly is needed to encourage people to write them?
There is no real justification for a monopoly that last a century and/or beyond a persons life-span.
2. it exists for good reason (we couldn't have the GPL without it)
The GPL, Open Source and Creative Commons are reactions to the effective termination of the Public Domain. Specifically, GPL is a reaction to copyright law that does not fit software. Software is obsolete in 10 years, and in 95 years, when public domain, the software is only available in binary form.
3. creators have the right to control the distribution of their works
It's not the "creators" that are worrisome, it is publishing collector companies that expect to buy and "own" information, even of the dead, and profit from it forever.
Creators should expect a system that compensates people for new invention.
There is no eternal publishing right. It was intended to be a temporary monopoly that encouraged people to innovate.