NZ File-Sharers, Remixers Guilty Upon Accusation

An anonymous reader writes "Next month, New Zealand is scheduled to implement Section 92 of the Copyright Amendment Act. The controversial act provides 'Guilt Upon Accusation,' which means that if a file-sharer is simply accused of copyright infringement he/she will be punished with summary Internet disconnection. Unlike most laws, this one has no appeal process and no punishment for false accusation, because they were removed after public consultation. The ISPs are up in arms and now artists are taking a stand for fair copyright."

Comments

The solution is easy

[A beautiful mind]

Just download a phone directory and spam everyone with generated accusations. They would either have to disconnect the whole country or rethink this utter stupidity.

Re:The solution is easy

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not just spam the members of the legislature with the accusations? After two or three months of near-constant Internet service interruptions to their offices, I'm sure they would get the hint.

Re:The solution is easy

[Anonymous Coward]

Sign the petition against it!

Re:The solution is easy

[Joce640k]

Presumably they'll only let "qualified" people make accusations, ie. they'll ignore the likes of you and me.

Re:The solution is easy

[ms1234]

Start with the politicians internet, let them do for example banking the old way.

Re:The solution is easy

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly as Holloway described

as ISPs transmit data across their own network (for their users) they're open to copyright infringement claims themselves unless they comply with [section 92]. ISPs are therefore put into the role of policing copyright infringement accusations without judicial oversight against their customers, all while risking their business if they get it wrong. It's in this impossible situation and this poorly thought out law that bypasses the courts that ISPs are saying they will be forced to disconnect customers. When you bypass the courts and due process in favour of a free market of risk-averse ISPs the true nature of [section 92] becomes clear.

Rather than justice and due process this is a free market of ISPs deciding whose lawyers will cause them more problems. Governments won't be disconnected, nor will important people, but the public now have no protection. Disgusting!

Re:The solution is easy

[jamesswift]

Better yet, just accuse those who supported the idea.

Re:The solution is easy

[rolfwind]

Then they'll put in a politician's clause - like they always do. Legislators in the US made their political solicitations calls immune to the Can Spam act.

Even better, catch their spouses and children in the act. Much harder to make the family immune.

Re:The solution is easy

[goldsaturn]

First become a valid copyright owner. Release a song you record and own the copyright to. THEN accuse everybody in NZ of pirating it. Then you have a claim to make.

Re:The solution is easy

[forkazoo]

Just download a phone directory and spam everyone with generated accusations. They would either have to disconnect the whole country or rethink this utter stupidity.

No, just do it for any politician who has any relation to this, and any government office that has any relation to this, and anybody in the local equivalent of the RIAA. You want an easy way to get the word out to your fellow abused citizens, and you want to attack the ability of the asshats to respond. Seriously, if there is no legal repurcussion to reporting an infraction, New Zealanders need to start organising clubs, distributing target name lists, and making sure that nobody related to this abuse of power is allowed on the internet.

The lawmakers have aparently waltzed into a situation that makes it trivially easy and non-dangerous to organise a strong social movement against copyright abuse. Here in America, I'd be guilty of Perjury if I started issuing DMCA complaints against anybody and everybody.

Re:The solution is easy

[Racemaniac]

but how are you going to sign it...

if you have no internet?

mr anderson?

Re:The solution is easy

[Anonymous Coward]

If the last 8 years has taught us anything, in pretty much every industrialised nation, it's that politicians will completely and utterly ignore petitions and street marches.

Re:The solution is easy

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad the shitface of a politician who added this clauses is out of office since the government change. Judith Tizard if anyones interested, in the hands of the RIANZ, full of shit.

Re:The solution is easy

[EdIII]

Just download a phone directory and spam everyone with generated accusations. They would either have to disconnect the whole country or rethink this utter stupidity.

I see something else far more likely to occur. Most the accused will also happen to be same exact assholes that were guilty of spawn camping the accusers party the night before.

Re:The solution is easy

[mpe]

Too bad the shitface of a politician who added this clauses is out of office since the government change. Judith Tizard if anyones interested,

In which case her Internet connection is no longer likely to have any special protection applied to it :)

Re:The solution is easy

[zotz]

Well, add in all ISPs, record companies, and radio and TV stations. That should be a good start. Are you sure companies don't have some appeal process under this law though?

all the best,

drew

Re:The solution is easy

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Presumably, they'll only let copyright holders make the accusations (which makes a lot of sense). I could also imagine that there'll be some clause regarding basic plausibility, e.g. whether or not you have a copyrighted work on the market (which would also make a lot of sense).

Still, the system would be laughably easy to corrupt.

Re:The solution is easy

[mpe]

First become a valid copyright owner. Release a song you record and own the copyright to.

Current copyright law makes becoming a copyright holder trivial. So trivial that you'd have to take complex steps to avoid being one...

Re:The solution is easy

[Beezlebub33]

If I write a poem, then I copyright it, then I accuse person X of violating the copyright. Easy.

Re:The solution is easy

[Godwin O'Hitler]

Presumably, they'll only let copyright holders make the accusations

No problem. Becoming a copyright holder is one of the easiest things in the world.

Re:The solution is easy

[endymion.nz]

Before the election last year I wrote to the MPs who ran in my electorate and posted the replies in facebook group forum..

http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=29834002818&topic=5497

Would be good to get some feedback from others.

Re:The solution is easy

[KillerBob]

You don't actually have to follow a process to copyright it... if you write it, it's your copyright. It's a safe bet that everybody on the planet who's ever held a pen has some copyrights to their name. The question, really, is whether you've produced anything that people actually want to copy.

Re:The solution is easy

[evilandi]

politicians will completely and utterly ignore petitions and street marches

Yes. We have an alternative system called voting. I recommend that you use it.

Re:The solution is easy

[Necrobruiser]

Yes. We have an alternative system called voting. I recommend that you use it.

That's swell, if you want to wait until the next election to (hopefully) resolve the problem. Until then, what? Should the Kiwis just grab their ankles and smile?

Re:The solution is easy

[Anonymous Coward]

No, spam accusations against the teenage kids of legislators.

Re:The solution is easy

[mog007]

Nothing complex about adding a little footnote in whatever work you've made that says "As the creator of this work, I hereby release it into the public domain."

Re:The solution is easy

[Firethorn]

From my understanding of the way it works, you'd STILL hold the copyright, you've just granted an unlimited license to everyone with that.

Like the guy said, avoiding making copyrighted material is actually pretty difficult.

Personally, the short stories I wrote back in school for class would count as copyrighted, so I'm a copyright holder.

Re:The solution is easy

[Neeperando]

Those were all really good political non-answers. Kudos to your candidates for so gracefully dodging the question.

Re:The solution is easy

[evilandi]

Should have paid attention last time around.

Re:The solution is easy

[AKAImBatman]

From my understanding of the way it works, you'd STILL hold the copyright, you've just granted an unlimited license to everyone with that.

I don't believe this is correct. If you explicitly and validly release a copyrighted work into public domain, then it leaves your control permanently. Everyone has the exact same rights to the work as yourself.

The catch-22 is usually in how rights are intertwined. For example, Firefox is released under a very permissive license that gives many of the same benefits as public domain. Yet due to trademark law you can't call your distribution Firefox without the blessing of the Mozilla organization.

So caveat emptor.

Re:The solution is easy

[Fjandr]

The problem with voting is that it only takes something like 16% of the population to be motivated morons to outvote the 15% of people on the other side. That's best-case scenario, whereas in most cases the persons representing all parties with significant voting blocks are morons. Then you're screwed no matter who you vote for.

Re:The solution is easy

[Anonymous Coward]

Thomas A Anderson?

Re:The solution is easy

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. We have an alternative system called voting. I recommend that you use it.

That's swell, if you want to wait until the next election to (hopefully) resolve the problem. Until then, what? Should the Kiwis just grab their ankles and smile?

No, you generate a lot of media fury. Do this by spoofing the IP's of newspapers, public officials, celebrities, etc. Get them kicked off the internet. If enough people get pissed, the politicians will know they won't get re-elected unless they fix it NOW.

You don't have to wait until the next election to bring pressure on politicians.

Re:The solution is easy

[Fujisawa Sensei]

Go after the people backing the legislation, report the lobbyists, lawyers, and copyright cartels.

Re:The solution is easy

[blitziod]

no they should grad thier ankles and squeal like pigs!

Re:The solution is easy

[mspohr]

Actually, the common practice of including a copy of an email when replying violates copyright. We all violate copyright daily.

Re:The solution is easy

[skolima]

Even stranger - in many European countries, including Poland where I currently live, you _can not_ release you work this way. People still have to pay money to ZAIKS (our equivalent of RIAA) even when then use supposedly public domain / creative commons content.

Re:The solution is easy

[Hotawa Hawk-eye]

Even if there are some legal repercussion, pay an inmate who's already in prison for life or a homeless person to send out a few dozen accusation letters. What are they going to do to the inmate, throw him in jail for even longer than life? As for the homeless person, depending on his situation, spending a short time in jail might be an improvement.

Re:The solution is easy

[Dishevel]

In many countries the politicians are screwing the people so badly that they are without a doubt encouraging the people to revolt. The people on the other hand in those same countries have been turned into liberal pussies that think that nothing can ever be solved with violence. You get what you vote for. I don't feel sorry for anyone in any country. Even me.

Re:The solution is easy

[witherstaff]

Interesting idea, hit the ISPs so they lose Internet connectivity. A few complaints against the major backbones and the country goes dark.

Re:The solution is easy

[OceanKiwi]

Truth is, there really aren't many homeless people in NZ...

Re:The solution is easy

[GigsVT]

don't believe this is correct. If you explicitly and validly release a copyrighted work into public domain, then it leaves your control permanently.

This is not a settled legal question, and may vary from country to country.

Go look at wikipedia's PD template, it says "in case this is not possible", for this reason.

Re:The solution is easy

[HeronBlademaster]

Non-answers? "I don't know anything about that" isn't a non-answer, it's an admission of ignorance, and two of the three who knew nothing about it said they'd look into it. A non-answer would be something that implies the candidate has a stance on the issue but remains ambiguous about what that stance actually is.

The response from the Family Party representative said:

I too have grave concerns about this section of the Act... I will certainly be interested in changing this should I be in parliament after the election. I have been following the debate on this issue on the internet on and off for the past year, and it does appear that Labour has ignored the genuine concerns of the IT industry and most thinking people.

That's about as far from a non-answer as can be - not only does he say he's been following the issue on his own, he specifically says he's in favor of changing the Act!

Re:The solution is easy

[HeronBlademaster]

If the law wasn't a publicized issue during the election, then there wasn't any attention to be paid. From what I can tell, most of the candidates in question don't even know about it, and most (all?) of their parties don't have a stance on this act.

At what point were the people not paying attention? Perhaps they could have made a fuss about it when it became a problem - OH WAIT! That's what's happening right now.

Re:The solution is easy

[Nasajin]

From her wikipedia page:

In 2008 Judith Tizard championed an amendment to the Copyright Act which requires ISPs to develop policies to terminate the Internet account of repeat copyright infringers. She defended this position robustly when meeting Internet lobby groups, saying it is necessary to protect New Zealand artists, and referred to the release of New Zealand film Sione's Wedding, which, she claimed, was damaged by unlawful distribution on the Internet.

Did anyone actually see Sione's Wedding? Gods. That film was not damaged by unlawful distribution on the Internet, it was damaged by the fact that it was a terrible film.

Re:The solution is easy

[Nasajin]

Firstly, this bill is being brought in by the opposition party in parliament (Labour). Secondly, the current government has only recently been instated as of November 19th. So, basically, the bill was going to be introduced either way, and the next opportunity to vote is three years away. A better approach for concerned NZers is to approach their local body representative directly. There is a list here.

Re:The solution is easy

[WiiVault]

To be fair most of these political solicitation calls in my experience, are simply talking about a candidate or asking if the voter has any questions about official. I have made these calls and it is amazing how valuable they can be to get people engaged and counter media FUD, or other elements of spin. Often people agree with you and didn't even know it. If CAN-SPAM covered these calls we would become even more apathetic and politically misinformed than we already are, and that should never happen. Also remember that charities are exempted as well, I would argue for similar reasons. On the subject of fundraising, the big money people don't have to make calls, they have big industry already backing them. Its the little guy who survives by making personal fundraising calls

Re:The solution is easy

[Petrushka]

Firstly, this bill is being brought in by the opposition party in parliament (Labour).

You seem to have the chronology a bit mixed up (unless it's just a quirk of tenses). The bill was passed almost a year ago, when Labour was in power, and received assent in April last year.

I'm not sure, but I think the submitter may have the chronology mixed up as well -- viz. "Next month, New Zealand is scheduled to implement Section 92". According to the act itself, the relevant clauses came into force on 31 October 2008, though maybe they're not being enforced yet.

Re:The solution is easy

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I think the homeless number somewhere around the 200 mark.

You actually have to want to be homeless to be homeless in New Zealand.

Re:The solution is easy

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you're crazy and you just want to be a yeti. There are lots of homeless people like that.

Re:The solution is easy

[Nasajin]

The clause itself has been had its implementation delayed until february, according to this article.

Re:The solution is easy

[Petrushka]

I guess there are always going to be delays with unenforceable laws :-)

Re:The solution is easy

[Nevyn]

I don't believe this is correct. If you explicitly and validly release a copyrighted work into public domain, then it leaves your control permanently. Everyone has the exact same rights to the work as yourself.

Depends on which laws (countries) you are talking about, SO has a pretty good question/answer about it:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/219742/open-source-why-not-release-into-public-domain

Re:The solution is easy

[mikaere]

Did anyone actually see Sione's Wedding? Gods. That film was not damaged by unlawful distribution on the Internet, it was damaged by the fact that it was a terrible film.

Actually, the problem was that one of the film editors took a copy home and his cousin copied the disk and it was illegally distributed via copies rather than the internet. Either way, Tizard implemented a truly bad law, and for that alone I am glad she got voted out. She had no excuse, she just caved in and gave the content industry what they wanted.

Anyway, I thought the film was great

Re:The solution is easy

[hinemoa]

The ISP loses either way - they'll need to weigh up who's lawyer they're scared of most -- yours or the accused. Making ISP tech drones the judge in a trial you're not allowed to appeal or even present evidence at -- nice on New Zealand.

Re:The solution is easy

[Nasajin]

Funnily enough, according to the articles, the select committe removed the particular problematic provision from her bill during the first reading. It was then reintroduced to the bill by National MP Christopher Findlayson during the whole house debate on the bill. Not only is Findlayson still in parliament, he is also the Attorney General, as well as having the Ministerial portfolio for Arts and Culture. Citing his comments regarding the bill during the debate:

The Minister [Judith Tizard] knows, and I certainly know, that we have all had approaches from various commercial entities, as a result of which the Minister has come up with a number of amendments. We will support those. The first makes some changes to new section 92A, and I need not go into that in any great detail. We support what is being done there. Essentially, it is putting back into place what had been there before the bill went to the select committee.

Re:The solution is easy

[Anonymous Coward]

What internet connection? :)

Re:The solution is easy

[dangitman]

So that explains all those bigfoot sightings.

Re:The solution is easy

[Meski]

I'm thinking they didn't expect a Spanish Inquisition...

Re:The solution is easy

[jesterzog]

Just download a phone directory and spam everyone with generated accusations. They would either have to disconnect the whole country or rethink this utter stupidity.

That's not going to happen because no serious ISP will be stupid enough to disconnect all its customers, or even very many of its customers, just because a random person is spamming it with obviously fake copyright infringement notices. Similarly, no court (in New Zealand) is going to waste its time convicting such an ISP.

What will most likely happen is that major copyright owners and publishers will spam the ISPs to a lesser extent (but still significant), and ISPs will disconnect people based on legal threats from publishers. Every so often a big mistake will occur, someone will be disconnected in a way that the media deems to be unfair, and the first one or two times may get a lot of publicity. It'll be reported for about a week when it's a new thing, and then the masses will forget.

We'll still have disconnections based on nothing more than accusations, but the accusers will learn to make sure they target people who either lack the money or the interest in fighting back. The law's not going to be re-written simply because it's written stupidly, because people who abuse it (seriously) will be careful not to make it too obvious that it's a stupid law. I suppose this is why it's so important to actively remind politicans as much as possible that it's a badly designed law, remind them why, and keep records of all the abuses so it's easy to demonstrate that it's being abused.

Re:The solution is easy

[Anonymous Coward]

amen to that, and their relatives and friends too

Re:The solution is easy

[theaveng]

Here in Pennsylvania I received two calls a day for months. One from Obama and one from McCain.

Day-after-day-after-day-after-day-after-day-after-day-after-day-after-day-after-day-after-day. Don't give me a bunch of BS about how political solicitation calls are "valuable" or not annoying. They are EXTREMELY annoying, and the politicians should be banned from harassing citizens private phones same as the telefrakkers.

Re:The solution is easy

[theaveng]

Baloney. Lots of movies are leaked to the internet, but they still go onto very successful theater sales and DVD sales.

Re:The solution is easy

[theaveng]

(drives to the house of the ISP's Tyrant... er, CEO)

Steady.

Aim.

Fire.

"The beauty of the Second Amendment is it will not be needed... until they try to take away our freedoms." - Founder of the Democrats, Thomas Jefferson. Too bad NZ doesn't have a second amendment.

Re:The solution is easy

[endymion.nz]

I am so surprised that someone actually read the link. :D

Re:The solution is easy

[badkarmadayaccount]

Just nuke em' from orbit! It's the only way to be sure!

Re:The solution is easy

[badkarmadayaccount]

*stands up*

I love you.

Faints again.

Re:The solution is easy

[zotz]

There ya go.

Fun can('t) done as we say around here.

drew

Incredible

[VagaStorm]

I can quite honestly say this is one of the most insane things I've red. Fortunatley for the population in nz, once evry one and their grandmas has lost internet connections, which should happen in about 3-5 weeks, they will have to see how stupid this is and redraw the law.

Also an economic rescue pacage for isps with no customers should be prepered now :p

Re:Incredible

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Start a business claiming to be an ISP in New Zealand.

2. Don't bother with renting an office, acquiring network infrastructure, etc. (All you need is a P.O. box and a bank account.)

3. Accuse each customer of copyright infringement and issue disconnect notice as soon as he/she pays the signup fee.

4. (No "??????" required.)

5. Profit!

Re:Incredible

[Tubal-Cain]

Might I suggest replacing #1 with "Start a business claiming to be a movie studio/publisher/record label" and #3 with "Accuse every living and recently deceased ( < 10 years) citizen of copyright infringement."

Re:Incredible

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell it's not illegal to make false accusations, just charge protection fees

Re:Incredible

[Anonymous Coward]

s/citizen/person, place, thing, or idea/g

There we go, fixed it for ya.

Re:Incredible

[The Anachronist]

Help! What to do?

Should I simply deplore NZ's appalling incompetence over this issue?

Or should I applaud their Kafkaesque debut in the Theatre of the Absurd? (C.f., for instance, "The Trial, which includes a good summary of the novel.") For the interested reader, other potent names in the genre of absurdity include, e.g. Eugene Ionesco and Nobel Laureates Samual Beckett and Harold Pinter. Go look 'em up in the 'pedia if you don't know them.

But if they really want to Kafka-ise NZ society, why bother with the formality of an accusation? Why not - without blocking their Internet access - just define all of their Internet users as implicitly guilty (here, we must remember that Josef K., the main protagonist of "the Trial," was never actually *accused* of anything), so that they can then impose suitably stringent, annually recurring, fines on *all* computer owners/users?

Finally, don't let's be too beastly to the Kiwis, who after all may not really have meant any real harm - perhaps they just wanted a Nobel Prize, too.

Re:Incredible

[adonoman]

That's what Canada's doing (kind-of) through its recordable media levy. If you buy a recordable CD, it's assumed that you'll use a portion of it for copying music - some you pay something like $0.25 per cd to compensate the artists of that music.

In some ways its nice not to have to worry about the CRIA suing you, and since we're already paying for it, it's perfectly legal to make private copies of music in Canada. It does seem ridiculous, though, that to buy cds to back up your computer, over half the cost of the media is the levy.

Re:Incredible

[ChienAndalu]

You forgot replacing #5 with "No Profit!"

Re:Incredible

[Drakkenmensch]

That's what Canada's doing (kind-of) through its recordable media levy. If you buy a recordable CD, it's assumed that you'll use a portion of it for copying music - some you pay something like $0.25 per cd to compensate the artists of that music.

Math time! 1 cd = 700 megs Average MP3 of reasonable length and quality = 5 megs 700 megs / 5 megs/song = 140 songs 25 cents / 140 songs = 0.17 cent per song I say put the artists in the Thunderdome and let them fight out for the 0.17 cents!

Re:Incredible

[Ant P.]

Most songs these days aren't worth $0.0017. In fact, why aren't the artists compensating me for the undue stress caused when I hear their manufactured pop puke on a radio?

Re:Incredible

[atraintocry]

Most songs that I choose to listen to aren't worth $0.0017.

Fixed it. But I'm still baffled.

Re:Incredible

[epine]

If you buy a recordable CD, it's assumed that you'll use a portion of it for copying music - some you pay something like $0.25 per cd to compensate the artists of that music.

The other way to look at this is that when you do copy someone's music, it's perfectly fine ... you already paid for it through the CD levy. The psychology of this law is incredibly stupid.

Dammit I forgot

[Anonymous Coward]

Mother F^&*$% I forgot that was coming in. Dammit now I have hide my torrents arghh

Incompetence By Design

[MaskedSlacker]

How is it that the other Anglo-Saxon countries are all WORSE than the US when it comes to digital rights and freedoms? Canada's version of the DMCA is worse, NZ has this, Australia has its wonderful new Great Barrier Firewall planned, and don't even get me started on Britain and encryption. Seriously?

Re:Incompetence By Design

[Nutria]

How is it that the other Anglo-Saxon countries are all WORSE than the US when it comes to digital rights and freedoms?

And lots of other Big Brother and Nanny State idiocy, all from countries that think they are superior to the US.

Re:Incompetence By Design

[timmarhy]

so you prefer your countries 99 year copyrights and law suits?

Re:Incompetence By Design

[Anonymous Coward]

This may be a conspiracy. Really, think about it: they implement different limitations in different countries, either to see which is better (and then implement it in all countries) or later to implement them all (by saying "but they've got something else and they're doing better, let's do what we do now _and_ what they do").

Flame me... I've got zero arguments to support this theory, but it's the only one that explains what's going on.

Re:Incompetence By Design

[MaskedSlacker]

I didn't say the US had good copyright laws--they're god damned awful. But give me the choice between 99 year copyrights, and lawsuits (none of which have exactly been successes for the RIAA, even the one jury verdict they got was on the edge of being tossed out IIRC) and getting my internet permanentally cut off for suspicion of infringement and I'll take the former. Piss poor laws with due process rights over piss poor laws without them any day.

Re:Incompetence By Design

[Anonymous Coward]

Cos the things you read on slashdot are gross distortions of newspaper stories about proposals from right-wing bodies. Non of the things you mention will/do actually happen. Except in the US where you ARE stopped at the border and your person and laptop is searched.

Re:Incompetence By Design

[Failed Physicist]

FYI, Canada doesn't have its own version of the DMCA (yet). Let me try to do a timeline of what happened to it.

In september 2008, Bill C-61 died on the table when Prime Minister Stephen Harper decided to dissolve parliament (he hoped that his then-minority government would come out of the election as a victorious majority government).

His party (the Conservative Party of Canada) declared in their election that a new bill would be introduced containing pretty much the same provisions. It was never really discussed during the election period, though.

Pretty much everyone expected to see that follow-up bill soon, but Harper did not win his bet and got yet another minority government. He never had a chance to introduce the new bill; barely weeks after the election, the 3 main opposition parties declared that they intended to bring down the governing party in the first motion of non-confidence to come. We then learned that they had signed an accord to form a minority coalition in order to take power when Stephen Harper will have to dissolve parliament again.

So Harper prorogated (ended early) the parliamentary session, which means that when parliament opens its doors again in late january, the conservatives are at high risk of losing power (either the coalition takes over, or parliament is dissolved and we have elections yet again). If Harper doesn't find a way out of that, we will have the very happy consequence of the Canadian DMCA's final death.

Re:Incompetence By Design

[Xest]

I've thought the same thing myself and yet when it comes to, no one has actually suffered due to anti-piracy measures more than those in the US with the DMCA and the RIAA's lawsuits/threats etc. Even software patents are a similar issue to an extent. So despite the bad press about these other nations the US is still the worst for it. At the end of the day despite 3 strikes, despite threats of nationwide filtering none of it has actually happened yet to anyone in these countries.

This means one of two things:

1) It's all hot air and they're not really any worse than the US

2) They are worse than the US, but are just slow at implementing their worse ideas and they haven't had time to come around yet

Point 1 is possible, it could be that the hot air in these countries is enough to overturn these stupid laws- certainly in Canada this has been the case with some attempts so far. Possibility 2 frankly just scares the crap out of me as a UK citizen and I truly hope it's the former.

Re:Incompetence By Design

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the whole firewall thing seems to have died a quiet death thank god.

Re:Incompetence By Design

[wisty]

The US is the only Anglo-Saxon country where free speech (or a limited slice thereof) is constitutionally protected. I think we have some implicit "fair use, if the court thinks it is OK" laws that some judges kind-of made up, but nothing really codified. Don't rely on this, I'm not a lawyer.

Re:Incompetence By Design

[Herr Brush]

The main difference is that in Canada/NZ etc these laws haven't actually passed yet. They are proposed by industry shills and then slapped down by non-bought and paid for legislators. In the US the latter don't exist...

Re:Incompetence By Design

[alienunknown]

I don't think America has more freedom in regard to digital rights. After all, look at how many lives the RIAA has made a living hell for.

Re:Incompetence By Design

[Ginger Unicorn]

It's not the only theory that explains what's going on. Of an infinite number of arbitrary and baseless hypotheses it's the one that you've selected that arbitrarily generates causation between a bunch of unrelated (anglo saxon? please....) occurrences. With nothing to back it up, your "theory" (actually an hypothesis) is eliminated by occam's razor. Since it relies upon an unnecessary and arbitrary assumption, it is less likely to be true than the null hypothesis.

Your unstated major premise is that there needs to be a explanation that connects all these events, when in fact there is absolutely nothing, other than your intuition, that suggests this. It's perfectly valid for there to be no "theory" at all.

Re:Incompetence By Design

[Insanity Defense]

How is it that the other Anglo-Saxon countries are all WORSE than the US when it comes to digital rights and freedoms?

Canada isn't worse than the U.S. on this matter. Not even as bad yet as we have so far managed to fight off attempts by the U.S. to pressure our government into making a Canadian form of the DMCA

Re:Incompetence By Design

[Shakrai]

Canada isn't worse than the U.S. on this matter.

At least in the U.S. I can buy CD-Rs without paying a tax to copyright holders whose copyrights I've never violated......

Re:Incompetence By Design

[corser]

Far as I know, in Canada, the bill keeps dying cause we have an election every 45 minutes. Lucky us I guess. As to why it would be worse, my guess is because we have government that is willing to bend over to ensure that exports don't stop and money keeps flowing into the country. The "little guy" is always eager to show the "big boys" he's willing to play by their rules by going one step further. Canada has a massive inferiority complex, to the point where we get excited when someone/something Canadian is mentioned on TV or becomes popular. It's sad.

Re:Incompetence By Design

[KillerBob]

That recordable media levy is the main reason that Canada doesn't have a DMCA. And the price is virtually non-existent. I can still buy a 50-pack of blank CD's for $20 at the local Staples, less if I go to somebody who actually specializes in computer gear.

It's also worth pointing out that any Canadian version of the DMCA is unlikley to gain footing... it's only supported by the Conservatives, and they have a minority. One that's so stable, actually, that they had to have the Governor General suspend parliament before Christmas to avoid a confidence vote. Parliament resumes next week, and the vote is likely to happen then.

Smart move by them, really... it gave the Liberals time to remove Stephane Dion, whose wishy-washy leadership is the main reason the Liberals didn't win the last election... had they allowed the Liberals to topple the government, they would have been able to fight another election against Dion. Now they're going up against Michael Ignatieff, who appears significantly more competent, and has a *much* higher approval rating. :)

Re:Incompetence By Design

[Shakrai]

That recordable media levy is the main reason that Canada doesn't have a DMCA. And the price is virtually non-existent.

That still doesn't justify it any better to my way of thinking. I have to help fund RIAA if I want to burn a copy of memtest86 or my favorite Linux distro? What's wrong with that picture?

Re:Incompetence By Design

[BarneyL]

Because in the case of the DMCA type issues most of these laws are introduced following the requests of US based companies with US government support?
Unfortunately unlike you guys over the pond whe can't vote the US government out of power meaning they have no need to moderate their requests.

Re:Incompetence By Design

[Pig Hogger]

How is it that the other Anglo-Saxon countries are all WORSE than the US when it comes to digital rights and freedoms? Canada's version of the DMCA is worse, NZ has this, Australia has its wonderful new Great Barrier Firewall planned, and don't even get me started on Britain and encryption. Seriously?

That's because anglo-saxon countries have this notion, derived from the magna-carta, that anything that comes from the State is bad, wrong, corrupted and whatnot.

The net result is that, since the Industrial Revolution, where the bourgeois have attained unprecedented wealth, to the point of eclipsing nobility itself, the effective political power has shifted to the bourgeois themselves. At the origin, democracies would only let rich landowners (bourgeois) to vote, and even though more and more people have been enfranchised over the centuries, the cultural notion that the Government/State is bad keeps bright people from seeking public office, leaving essentially failed businessmen into politics.

Being failed businessmen, they absolutely depend on wealthy contributors for re-election (elections cost money) so they are quite ready to listen only to their "benefactors" and not their true electors, the general public.

The "entertainment" "industry" is a master at bullshit and deception (it's their trade, after all), so it is no surprise that it has a disproportionate ear amongst lawmakers, hence the disproportionately lopsided laws that have been passed lately to unilelaterally give that "industry" an unfair advantage over everything else.

Remember some 6-7 years ago when the entertainment cartel was pushing to have every single storage device to be equipped with special circuitry that would ensure that it would not copy copyrighted information? I'm sure banks would have been thrilled to have less responsive disk drives to put in their transaction-processing mainframes, and doctors would have been glad to have less-performing CAT scanners to make sure that the profits margins of Hymiewood be preserved against pirates of the non-Carribean type.

Big business has nothing to gain from Democracy; a truly concerned Democratic government will follow the concerns of the population, one of which is not being ripped-off by croporate con artists. So it is therefore in the interest of the great bourgeois (billionnaires) to suppress Democracy as much as possible. For the last 30 years, they have embarked on a unprecedented smear campaign against democracy, one tactic of them being planting failed businessmen that make inept decisions, thus furthering the alienation the electorate feels for politicians. They have done wonders: 30 years later, the public trusts policicians less than used car salesmen!!! The general idea being that the electorate (that's YOU, citizens!) will gladly elect the fist politicians that will promise to streamline all that process by eliminating the inefficiencies.

This is exactly how Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933.

Anglo-saxon countries stand at a particular disadvantage there, since the anglo-saxon culture is rooted around the concept of an inept government, and it is virtually impossible to remove such key cultural concepts from a culture.

The late A. E. Van-Vogt said that "people get the government they deserve". Well, as long as anglo-saxons will elect failed businessmen in extremely expensive elections, they will be ruled by the puppets of big croporations, and there will be such intensely assinine laws passed.

Re:Incompetence By Design

[KillerBob]

The US is the only Anglo-Saxon country where free speech (or a limited slice thereof) is constitutionally protected.

Your argument fails here. First, there are exemptions to free speech in the US. You do not have a right to say anything you want without fear of repercussions. Certain forms of speech are actually illegal and can land you in jail: perjury, libel, and anything covered under the National Secrets Act. There's also concepts like "fighting words", and other cases of inciteful words. We have a concept in Canada called "hate speech", and while you don't call it the same thing in the US, it's also illegal: spreading hateful speech or literature with the intention of causing harm to a group within society.

Second, free speech, as it exists in the US, is also a protected right throughout most of the former British Empire, as well as most of Europe.

Re:Incompetence By Design

[Insanity Defense]

Bad as that may be it is still better than the DMCA. I can play those DVDs under my Linux system without violating the law. I can copy them to my hard drive without the tools or the action being illegal. Also my country is not trying to force others to create harsher copyright laws. The U.S. put Canada on a list of "copyright violators" (USTR Priority Watch List) for having our own laws rather than complying with those of the U.S.. Those on the list are to be "pressured" by the U.S. into recasting our laws in your image.

Use google to find the writings of Michael Geist on this subject. He presents the various conflicting stories put out by organizations like the RIAA and MPAA on who are the "worst" copyright offenders.

Re:Incompetence By Design

[russotto]

Your argument fails here. First, there are exemptions to free speech in the US. You do not have a right to say anything you want without fear of repercussions. Certain forms of speech are actually illegal and can land you in jail: perjury, libel, and anything covered under the National Secrets Act.

Perjury, yes. Libel is a tort but generally not a crime (there's probably exceptions, though). As for the National Secrets Act, I'm unaware of any law called that in the US (the UK has an Official Secrets Act). Perhaps it's a secret.

There's also concepts like "fighting words", and other cases of inciteful words. We have a concept in Canada called "hate speech", and while you don't call it the same thing in the US, it's also illegal: spreading hateful speech or literature with the intention of causing harm to a group within society.

Such "hate speech" is not illegal in the US. Laws have been passed against it but generally struck down in the courts. "Fighting words" can be illegal, but they have to meet the Brandenberg test of being likely to cause "imminent lawless action".

Re:Incompetence By Design

[operagost]

Just thought I'd mention that, although only slightly less heinous, the copyright protection period is actually 95 years.

Re:Incompetence By Design

[Shakrai]

Bad as that may be it is still better than the DMCA

And being raped is better than being murdered but that still doesn't make it a good thing. In the ideal world we would have neither a DMCA nor a RIAA tax.

Also my country is not trying to force others to create harsher copyright laws

Your country would be doing it if it had a large and powerful industry that regarded copyrights as an important part of their business model. Canada has it's share of tariffs and other policies designed to protect domestic industries regarded as important. Note that I'm not saying that this makes it right -- just saying that the United States isn't the only country that looks out for the (perceived) best interests of domestic industries.

Re:Incompetence By Design

[operagost]

We have a concept in Canada called "hate speech", and while you don't call it the same thing in the US, it's also illegal: spreading hateful speech or literature with the intention of causing harm to a group within society.

The left wants this, but thought crime ("hate speech") is not yet codified in the US.

Second, free speech, as it exists in the US, is also a protected right throughout most of the former British Empire

... but it's not written, as the GP stated.

Re:Incompetence By Design

[kalirion]

Because the U.S. government is, by design I believe, very slow to get things done. It takes claims of National Security to push through a bullshit bill. Anything else, no matter how much money the corporations throw at it, takes a while. But it gets there eventually, just wait.

Re:Incompetence By Design

[rickb928]

Your screed could be written by many a U.S. citizen. Most of the Left here would believe you are writing about America, not New Zealand. You are, aren't you?

But this is the best part:

"...make sure that the profits margins of Hymiewood be preserved..."

How genuinely tolerant, fair, and honest of you. Well, honest at least, I guess.

Sad. Certain prejudices are longer-lasting, aren't they?

Re:Incompetence By Design

[mog007]

You can't go to jail for libel.

Re:Incompetence By Design

[Zerth]

But at least in the case of libel and slander, the USians require the words to be false. In the UK, you can be sued for slander/libel even if the words are true.

And they can put out press gag orders because it is a state secret that Minister Important-Wanker was pulled over while intoxicated. Oops, sorry: he's "tired and emotional" because saying someone is drunk, even while visibly intoxicated, is slander/libel.

Re:Incompetence By Design

[DrgnDancer]

I don't know what the law that governs the behavior is called, but you can be arrested and prosecuted for revealing classified information. I am annually informed of this fact as part of my security clearance briefing.

Re:Incompetence By Design

[JesseMcDonald]

And the price is virtually non-existent. I can still buy a 50-pack of blank CD's for $20 at the local Staples, less if I go to somebody who actually specializes in computer gear.

In the US, without the levy, one can find 50-packs of decent (Memorex) CD-Rs for under $10. As I understand it, the levy itself is around $0.25 per disc, whereas without the levy CD-Rs often sell for about $0.20 per disc. Do you really consider a 100% markup "virtually non-existent"?

Re:Incompetence By Design

[Richard Steiner]

At least in the U.S. I can buy CD-Rs without paying a tax to copyright holders whose copyrights I've never violated......

Not if those CD-R blanks are explicitly labeled for Music use.

In that case, part of the profits *does* in fact go to the music industry.

Re:Incompetence By Design

[Anonymous Coward]

Canada hasn't actually passed their DMCA into law yet, it died an ignoble death multiple times.

Re:Incompetence By Design

[Anonymous Coward]

The US is the only Anglo-Saxon country where free speech (or a limited slice thereof) is constitutionally protected.

Yeah, we even have special "free speech zones"! Suck on that, New Zealand!

Re:Incompetence By Design

[Anonymous Coward]

I also wanted to add that whether the coalition inherits the government or Harper manages to defeat them, the resulting government will be much too instable to try to introduce a controversial bill such as this. Hopefully, if such a coalition or government manages to last 1-3 years, the canadian dmca will have been revealed to the canadian public as the incredible power grab that it is.

Re:Incompetence By Design

[HeronBlademaster]

A friend of mine (who lives in Canada) said the following just now when I asked him about it:

Yes, there's like a 40c per blank disk tax we pay. Some stores get [around] it by calling them "data" discs and not "music" discs, some just ignore it completely. Also, I think in the past 20 years, not any of the collected taxes have been shown to make it back to any artist.

Just some food for thought.

Re:Incompetence By Design

[MaskedSlacker]

I grouped the anglo saxon countries--namely the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand togther because of their common legal traditions inherited from their shared status as former colonies of Britain.

Re:Incompetence By Design

[Anonymous Coward]

The levy doesn't apply to data CD's, just blank music cd's. Yes, there is such a thing as a "music" blank cd.

Re:Incompetence By Design

[Anonymous Coward]

Canada doesn't count.

Re:Incompetence By Design

[Anonymous Coward]

What's wrong with this picture is that the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) is American, hence the name...Canada has the CRIA.

Re:Incompetence By Design

[DamnStupidElf]

I always laugh at the higher priced "audio" discs sitting next to the data discs and wonder who actually buys them. I suppose if I blew the dust off of them I might be able to find a date of manufacture...

Re:Incompetence By Design

[Edgester]

Because they are patient and wait to see how the new rules are broken in the US. Then, they craft more effective rules and use the US as a bad example of why the rules need to be harsher.

Re:Incompetence By Design

[Anonymous Coward]

The levy means downloading isn't illegal in Canada... that's good enough.

Re:Incompetence By Design

[compro01]

The torries future depends on if they impress the professor with their budget.

Re:Incompetence By Design

[davolfman]

Because we're the country who actually rebelled. Everyone else seemingly got independence when the UK was tired of complaints.

Re:Incompetence By Design

[DeepHurtn!]

I refer you to s. 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Re:Incompetence By Design

[HJED]

How is it that the other Anglo-Saxon countries are all WORSE than the US when it comes to digital rights and freedoms? Canada's version of the DMCA is worse, NZ has this, Australia has its wonderful new Great Barrier Firewall planned, and don't even get me started on Britain and encryption. Seriously?

Really?
I thought America had been a British colony as well!

Re:Incompetence By Design

[Kalriath]

Tip of the day: this article is based off absolutely ancient information. The "cut off" clause you're all up in arms about is section 92A, WHICH DOESN'T EXIST.

Re:Incompetence By Design

[Pig Hogger]

Like the prejudices that assume that the jews can do no bad? (Hint: go look what is happenning right now in Gaza).

Re:Incompetence By Design

[rickb928]

And the assumptions that there are only those who love Israel and tolerate any behaviour on it's part, and those who love the Palestinian people and tolerate any behaviour on their part?

That's so narrow. The conflict is much more complex.

Perhaps a good question to ask is, would you tolerate Israel randomly bombing Gaza?

I can't imagine any caring person accepting that. And why would any caring person tolerate Hamas doing the same to Israeli targets?

And yet, it is even more complex than that.

Re:Incompetence By Design

[Anonymous Coward]

But give me the choice between 99 year copyrights, [...] and getting my internet permanentally cut off for suspicion of infringement and I'll take the former.

The comparison that began this thread was that between the USA DMCA and countries such as Canada. One poster even specifically said that Canada's copyright laws are worse.

Canada's copyright terms are (not yet) as long as those in USA and Canada's law does not (yet) have anything comparable to the nastiest parts of the DCMA.

Posters in this thread have said that it is better to have USA's copyright laws than to be subjected to a tax in the form of a blank media levy. Now I am not saying that tax isn't theft. But saying that the DCMA is better than a tax which you think is unfair is tantamount to saying that the insane penalties for copyright infringement in the USA (jail times which can be argued to be unconstitutional, and statutory damage amounts which are effectively grand larceny) are better than an unfair tax of 20 cents (Canadian) per CD which gives me, as a Canuck, the right to make copies of any piece of music that I have access to (whether I bought the CD, borrowed the CD from a friend, borrowed the CD from the library, recorded the song from the radio, downloaded it from a legal site on the Internet, or downloaded it from an illegal site on the Internet) and gives me that right even if I never buy a CD (and so never actually pay that particular tax, whether it is unfair or not), that to me is a really warped ideology.

Re:Incompetence By Design

[Anonymous Coward]

... we will have the very happy consequence of the Canadian DMCA's final death.

Except that it won't be the final death. The bill that died on the order paper in September was the third such bill to die that way.

The Conservative party has stated as their policy that they will bring in such a bill. And the Conservative party has a history, especially so recently, as led by Harper, to kowtow to the US which has been pressuring Canada to match the US's draconian DMCA. So if Harper ever gets a majority government, which is possible (from my point of view, unfortunately), then such a bill becoming law is almost a certainty.

And the first such bill to die on the order paper was tabled by a Liberal government. So a Liberal majority government still leaves open the possibility of such a bill becoming law.

There hasn't been a party other than the Conservatives or Liberals in government in Canada since the days of the Tories and the Wigs, so this was in no way the final death of the bill.

Re:Incompetence By Design

[Pig Hogger]

Perhaps a good question to ask is, would you tolerate Israel randomly bombing Gaza?

The West apparently does. The US has said nothing to disparage the savagely disproportioned sionist retaliation against Gaza, and instead has blamed the victim (as is usual for extreme right-wingers).

The fact is that it is the sionists who violated the cease-fire by shutting down supplies to Gaza, then by sending commandos to kill militants. It is only after that time that the rockets were fired.

You should get your information through non-jewish-controlled media, say though the CBC or the BBC or even Al-Jazira.

Re:Incompetence By Design

[rickb928]

Actually, I get a fair amount of my news from NPR and the FT, but accusing me of having limited sources of news is preposterous. Dude, I'm a /.'r. I get INUNDATED with news, MOST of it NOT from the 'Jewish-controlled media'. As if the Jews control the media in any significant way. CBS, ABC, and NBC prove that daily, and more.

But more to your point, that it is the Zionists that violated the truce by halting supplies to Gaza and hunting Mamas militants with commandos, consider this:

The Wikipedia page on the Qassam rocket has a cute chart on what Israeli Intelligence counts as the number of rockets fired into Israel. from 2006 to 2008, I see no month where they claim there were zero rockets fired into Israel. do you have information to the contrary?

According to the BBC, A cease-fire between Israel and Hamas began on or about June 18, 2008. I say 'on or about', because I cannot find any reports that Hamas stopped launching rockets against Israel at that time.

This report, from a Chinese news agency, seems to point out that Hamas continued to lauch rockets against Israel.

This link, sadly, is from a thoroughly Zionist site, but offers a calendar of rocket attacks, with distinctions between the Qassam rockets and Katyusha rockets usually launched from Lebanon. You have many months of data here.

My first point is that Hamas seems to have violated the truce continuously. They have their explanations, of course.

My second point is deeper.

Israel should not be expected to tolerate the rocket attacks from Hamas, not to mention those from Lebanon, nor suicide attacks by various aggressors. Neither should Israel indiscriminately kill civilians in reprisals. However, Hamas and others hide amongst the civilian population, on purpose. This must also stop.

Probably, there is no option for peaceful co-existence between Israel and any form of Palestinian state. This must change, and the Palestinian people must decide if they will live alongside Israel or not. Do they really have any choice?

If you would like to continue this discussion and delve into the legitimacy of the Jewish state of Israel, just let me know how far back in history you want to go. The premise that the Jewish people have no place in their ancestral homelands does not hold, in my opinion. If you want to blame someone for this trouble, I propose either the Roman Empire, or the UN. Both took their turns at crafting a Middle East. The British sure didn't help, but their contribution was less.

Re:Incompetence By Design

[Ginger Unicorn]

and why is it relevant? and what about all the other former colonies of britian like india and south africa? and what about all the countries with similiar legal tradition thats aren't former colonies of britain like sweden and france? you've selected the countries that fit your arbitrary pattern and tried to retrofit some kind of causal link between them that is "the only explanation" for something that exists purely in your mind.

Re:Incompetence By Design

[Pig Hogger]

Youâ(TM)re obviously american, and therefore culturally unable to understand other cultures, so it is pointless to argue with you as your mind is already set in concrete.

Re:Incompetence By Design

[rickb928]

You seem to think you know Americans and their culture.

That is not yet obvious to me. But the device of accusing your detractor of arrogance is, in your example, well, delivered with a substantial measure of arrogance itself.

Your mind seems made up as well. If you object to my sense of certainty, why do you seem to be just as certain? And again, is your point just that you are right, and I am not?

Really.

The solution

[kimvette]

I am repeating this ad nauseum but it's really the best, most effective solution.

1. Stop buying new music
2. Stop going to shows of new acts
3. Don't "pirate"[sic] music, just KILL the demand. P2P only lends credence, however tenuous, that they are "losing" money due to "theft"[sic].
4. Don't listen to top 40 radio
5. Did I mention stop uploading/downloading music on P2P networks? Boycott the big labels.

Bankrupt the RIAA(or whatever it's called in your respective country) members. Then, sanity will be restored to copyright.

Oh, in case you think your favorite label is an indie, remember this family tree - it's a little out of date but you'll see that a lot of "indie" labels you like, aren't! Check it out:

http://www.arancidamoeba.com/mrr/whoownswho2.html

Re:The solution

[Cor-cor]

6. And get everyone you know to play along.

I agree with you wholeheartedly, but I'm really hard pressed to believe that the readership of Slashdot is what's driving the demand for the Big 4.

Re:The solution

[calmofthestorm]

They just make up the figures for pirated copies anyway. They count copies that aren't *bought* in the numbers they expect as pirated. Not pirating is better than pirating, but not by much

Re:The solution

[QuantumG]

I've heard this nonsense a few times. Haven't you heard? They're already going out of business and it has nothing to do with P2P file sharing. The "problem" is simply that musicians don't need them anymore. Was a time when they controlled the distribution and the means of production. Now they control neither. Any idiot with a Mac and a copy of Garage Band can cut an album now. More people buy from iTunes than buy CDs. So where are the labels going to make their money? Promotion? Ha! There's marketing companies out there that are a hundred times better and, importantly, cheaper.

The music industry is beat.. but they have a war chest and they intend to spend every dime before they give up and go home.

Re:The solution

[Slisochies]

Then this decrease in demand will be blamed upon priacy, probably resulting in a blanket tax on internet connections, or blank media to make up for lost revenues.

Re:The solution

[Gerzel]

1. Only works for labels that are under the RIAA. Otherwise you are hurting actual artists and depriving yourself of music.

2. WTF? This is what is to be ENCOURAGED to show that there are other venues for a band to profit from other than just selling mass produced bits of plastic or wax with their music printed on it. Only do this for bands that explicitly support the RIAA and its ilk.

3. I actualy agree on this. Don't pirate music or rather infringe on it. DO make use of fair use and exersize your rights under copyright as the consumer.

4. Why anyone would do this in the first place is beyond me...

5. This should be read up on copyright law and send your representatives a letter experssing your dismay over the abuse of copyright by the RIAA. Perhaps Donate to the EFF or similar agencies. Work to reduce the term of copyright to a reasonable level(did you know it was originally intended as lasting 14 years before public domain?).

I would love to see copyright brought back into an equitable status for all with the rights of everyone recognized and the ability for artists to outlive the so-called ownership of their works.

An artist/creator should be able to temporary have some control over his or her work to utilize and profit from it. He or she should not be able to sit back and profit for the entirety of their lives as well as kick back a good profit for most of their children's lives.

Re:The solution

[91degrees]

And how do you propose I stop anyone who doesn't read Slashdot from buying new music?

You're spitting in the ocean here. If everyone who read Slashdot stopped buying music, the record industry might put it down to piracy. They'd be more likely to consider it a seasonal blip in sales.

Re:The solution

[Mr_eX9]

Very true--"indie" has become a completely corporatized/meaningless word, much like "Alternative"/"Alt" in the 90s. I have to use the unabbreviated "independent" to describe bands like Withered (from Iceland) (whose label is now defunct.)

Re:The solution

[SanityInAnarchy]

I agree with you wholeheartedly, but I'm really hard pressed to believe that the readership of Slashdot is what's driving the demand for the Big 4.

And that's if you can even convince us. I'm not convinced these steps will actually do much.

Re:The solution

[SanityInAnarchy]

1. Stop buying new music

RIAA: "Hey, our sales are down! It must be piracy!"

2. Stop going to shows of new acts

For the record, this is one place that isn't affected by piracy. If I were a legitimate artist wanting to stay out of the whole debate, I'd give away MP3s, sell physical copies for those who want them, and make the real money from touring.

3. Don't "pirate"[sic] music, just KILL the demand. P2P only lends credence, however tenuous, that they are "losing" money due to "theft"[sic].

This solves nothing. They obviously have no need for real proof, anyway, or why would they have sued dead people, and people who have never used computers? Filesharing could stop, overnight, and they wouldn't notice.

Because it was never about piracy. Piracy is just a nice scapegoat that they use as an excuse to do whatever they want. Right now, that's laws (which give them the right to hit up random people for cash), more DRM (to make it that much more difficult for third parties to compete, while opening the door for selling the same crap to you many more times), and whatever else they feel like doing.

As long as piracy exists, life is good -- they can do pretty much whatever they want, and get away with it.

So, if piracy no longer existed, they would need to create it. I have little doubt that employees of major record labels would be distributing their own files, just so they could pretend that it's still a threat.

4. Don't listen to top 40 radio

Then the question becomes, what should you listen to? Where should you get your music from, if you're to stop buying new music?

All you're doing is sending them a message that you personally no longer care about music, or movies -- and, very likely, they will assume you're a pirate. What you should be doing is sending them a message that also tells them how you want it to look. Show them demand, but on your terms.

Re:The solution

[daBass]

Any idiot with a Mac and a copy of Garage Band can cut an album now.

Just like any idiot with a toolbox can make you a sofa and everyone with a camera can shoot a wedding - but that doesn't mean its going to be any good.

Personally, I like companies investing in artists, allowing them to not have to have a day job and focus on writing and recording an album. Working with people - producers, engineers, session musicians - that really know their craft and inspire the artist to do their best work. A nice studio environment with top equipment and great acoustics doesn't hurt either.

Not everything that the major labels put out is 13-a-dozen Top 40 R&B crap, there are some really talented people in the system. Yes, some of the established ones could finance their own recordings, but there are some wonderful debut albums by people who can't. Not to mention those that need a couple of albums to hone their craft before finally breaking and recouping costs. If they financed it from their own savings, that first flop would have been all they ever put out.

No, you don't always need them, but if we lose the investment major labels make, the music world will be lesser for it.

Re:The solution

[Hydroksyde]

Isn't slashdot awesome. No distinction at all between seasoned professionals in the entertainment industry, who have spent many years learning their craft as a sound engineer/promoter/distributor, and some idiot with a mac.

Re:The solution

[Anonymous Coward]

You're falling into the "zealous internet boycotter" trap.

1. Observe an injustice by one or more large companies.
2. Encourage a boycott among an enormous, disorganized group of consumers.
3. Predictably see only a tiny fraction of a percent of those consumers join your boycott.
4. Have no real effect other than denying yourself access to something you might have enjoyed.

I really want to change copyright law too, but I don't see the point in trying to bring down a mountain by hacking at it with a spork. You need to find more effective means. Encouraging discussion and writing your lawmakers are probably your best bets.

Re:The solution

[umghhh]

Come to think of that is probably the plan - that is why they do not do anything sensible and piss off the customers by suing them, by restricting the usage of the products they still purchase and by making the product expensive (have prices of music CDs gone down last 20 years?).

At the end there is no customer to serve so there is no need to do anything. But in any EU country there is a fee people have to pay when they buy goods that can potentially be used to record and replay music - there is no escape from it as the fees are included in prices and paid directly to organisations like RIAA in US and GEMA in Germany. So what we have is no costs except bank account and secretary and steady income as people by all the said goods.

Now how does it feel to be a prophet?

Re:The solution

[RegularFry]

No argument about the sound engineers (hell, I was one for a while. Colour me biased) but the promoters and distributors? There's a *lot* of dead wood there. It doesn't matter if you've spent years learning a craft if that craft is obsolete.

Re:The solution

[speedingant]

and some idiot with a mac.

Hey! I take offence. And I have a right to do so!

Re:The solution

[GrahamCox]

Any idiot with a Mac and a copy of Garage Band can cut an album now

Ah, that would explain the sheer unadulterated crap that passes for popular music these days. And so much of it!

Re:The solution

[u38cg]

Once upon a time, we had this thing called live music. Except we just called it music, because we didn't have anything else. The idea that recorded music is an essential part of a musician's income is tendentious at best.

Re:The solution

[hasdikarlsam]

Know their craft, do they?

Due to the loudness war, I've been basically unable to listen to anything released over the last fifteen-twenty years. Fortunately we have a large cache of older records.

If the labels died, there'd be an increase in dud records, but right now almost *all* of them are duds to me. There'd also be an increase in records I can actually listen to.

Re:The solution

[arkhan_jg]

Businesses other than the big 4 are capable of loaning money to a startup small business, which is effectively what a self-producing artist is. There are also smaller truly indie labels that perform the same function.

Artists see such tiny percentages of the gross from a big 4 album, they can even end up owing the label money.

The main reason to go with a big label is the marketing effects from the big 4 being embedded so deep in other media channels such as TV and radio, thus giving you exposure that it's very hard to get even now on an indie. This is changing though, and were the big 4 to go away, it would open up the door to lots of artists having moderate success, instead of a tiny handful getting mega success and everybody else going nowhere.

Nothing the big 4 does now can't be replicated by a host of other smaller, more artist and listener focused businesses, instead of the profit-at-any-cost current ones that try to control the market and the artists rather than supply what they want and need. For example, people wanted easy to download non-DRM music on-demand. It's taken 15 YEARS for the music industry to finally deliver. I remember my mate introducing me to MP3/BIT files downloaded off the internet in 1994. Here we are in 2009, and amazon has finally just launched its non-DRM MP3 download service in the UK, with major label backing. Speedy response to the market there guys.

Re:The solution

[evanbd]

I won't get involved in most of the above, but...

4. Don't listen to top 40 radio

Then the question becomes, what should you listen to? Where should you get your music from, if you're to stop buying new music?

All you're doing is sending them a message that you personally no longer care about music, or movies -- and, very likely, they will assume you're a pirate. What you should be doing is sending them a message that also tells them how you want it to look. Show them demand, but on your terms.

There are plenty of non-RIAA artists out there. But how do you find them? Web radio is a good option. There may be local community radio stations in your area (and they'll likely be streaming on the web). Your local college radio probably has a wide variety of things on it. If you look for them, there are clubs that play mostly indie music. Finding the right sort of small music store will get you hours of staff recommendations. And, of course, there's the old standby of getting recommendations from people you know.

Re:The solution

[daBass]

It is, however, an essential part of my enjoyment of music.

Re:The solution

[TheTurtlesMoves]

Some of these professionals use Macs ;)

Also there is not shortage of *independent* professionals. Profession quality sound equipment is very cheap these days, and even building or renting a sound studio is also cheap. Dam even getting your own CD's pressed is cheap too. All up you can do the above for the price of a new car.

Re:The solution

[mabinogi]

Feel free to go back to 1850 any time you like.
In fact, you'll have to go back much further than that, because musicians were making money of printed music even before they were doing it off recorded music.

Unless you were planning on commissioning a piece? Or maybe become a patron?

Don't fool yourself that playing pubs ever put food on a musician's table and paid for his instruments.

Re:The solution

[azenpunk]

but these companies rarely invest in actual artists. much more often it's just some plastic talking head that teenagers will bully thier parents into buying music from and whos skirts the paparazzi will shove cameras up.

if we lose the major lables the world will be lesser *for a little while* any decent bands with major labels will either break up, go with a smaller more indie label, or start their own. we don't need millionaire rockstars, we need good musicians who can make a better living doing music than they can being garbage men and that's about it.

the fact that these labels got that big tells us that the money is out there, we can still have huge albums with lots of engineering and technical marvel, but instead of having 8 vocal tracks of the exact same lines just to get some certain effect we can put that effort and money into making really interesting stuff instead of just making mediocre people sound better.

as for the newer artits that need 'a few albums' to hone their craft, that's what live shows are for, that's what a whole afternoon with your cheek down on your guitar so you can hear the sound through your bones is for. yes the bar will be raised, the labels that remain will be less willing to spend resources on a band that's not as talented. but the current labels aren't willing to spend the money on bands that they don't think are 'safe' or that they don't think they can mold into something boring and safe.

i want to hear musicians making an album without that investment, i want to hear them having to invent new ways of doing things. recording a guitar and getting decent quality sound is easy, i can do that with a peice of foam, a good mic, audacity and cooperative roommates. what's hard is making the recording worthwhile.

and high quality recording, to be honest, is way overrated. how many fantastic songs from way back sounded like shit? hedrix's "burning of the midnight lamp" was low fi at best, and it was magical for it. the stone's "street fighting man", how many underground bands that had talent but not equipment whose homemade cd's did you love?

and if you truly believe that the quality of a recording is essential to the enjoyment of music then you need to get a clue and learn to love music for the sake of music. there are instruments that you need to hear recorded very well or live to appreciate because they sound fantastic. but you will never ever need that just to appreciate the construction of a song. go buy a buddy holly 'best of' sometime for proof.

the major labels are doing more harm than good, the sooner they die the better. the decline in quality that we may get after that happens will be nothing more than the soreness after surgery.

you can die of cancer, or if you're lucky you can have the tumor removed. well guess what, we're getting lucky.

we can't keep the cancer around for the welfare of a few pretty good bands.

Re:The solution

[Hal_Porter]

I am repeating this ad nauseum but it's really the best, most effective solution.

1. Stop buying new music
2. Stop going to shows of new acts
3. Don't "pirate"[sic] music, just KILL the demand. P2P only lends credence, however tenuous, that they are "losing" money due to "theft"[sic].
4. Don't listen to top 40 radio
5. Did I mention stop uploading/downloading music on P2P networks? Boycott the big labels.

Bankrupt the RIAA(or whatever it's called in your respective country) members. Then, sanity will be restored to copyright.

Oh, in case you think your favorite label is an indie, remember this family tree - it's a little out of date but you'll see that a lot of "indie" labels you like, aren't! Check it out:

http://www.arancidamoeba.com/mrr/whoownswho2.html

Actually most people over about 35 tend to do these things by default. The music that gets hyped, mass marketed and pirated is basically ephemera anyway - it is hyped ruthless and sells a vast number of copies for a few months and then disappears completely. It's the cultural equivalent of pumping and dumping some worthless stock.

I suspect DRM only makes sense for pump'n'dump media. The point of it, and legal threats to sharers is to delay the time when it is available for free on P2P networks and try to intimidate people into buying rather than pirating. If you expect to sell a lot of copies for a few months and then have it disappear, the more time it is unavailable on P2P the better.

I read some article on Gamasutra about video game protection. It was cracked of course, but it took a few months. The vast majority of sales for the game took place in those few months, by the time it was cracked the pumping had stopped. Very few sales were likely by that point, so the publishers weren't concerned about the crack. In fact no one was even concerned about the game at that point.

If you ignoring the pumping, you won't even know what you're missing with things like this most of the time. As you get older you tend to be more immune to this sort of thing naturally.

Re:The solution

[Genda]

I have a friend who has been making music for about 40 years now. He's amazing, literally one of the founding fathers of guitar synthesis. He's played the US, Asia, and Europe, and he's currently playing concerts in California. His name is Timo Laine. He makes albums in his own home studio, and I can honestly say that he sounds as good or better than anything produced by a major label in his genre.

You can sample his music as easily as performing a Google Search. What need do we have for the "Big 4" when there is so much excellent talents and the ability to make great music has been so democratized?

Re:The solution

[rimskij]

Umm. No Top 40's in my country. Top 10s, Top 100s, even Top Fives -- but no Top 40s :). Is this somehow related to Imperial system?

Re:The solution

[zotz]

"The music industry is beat.. but they have a war chest and they intend to spend every dime before they give up and go home."

Wonder if they would get better returns investing the war chest with Madoff instead?

But seriously, they can adjust, the question is, will they do so in time?

all the best,

drew

Re:The solution

[zotz]

"What you should be doing is sending them a message that also tells them how you want it to look. Show them demand, but on your terms."

So, pay attention to and support music that is under a Free license, cc BY-SA or BY, the Free Art License, etc.

Check out kompoz.com. ccmixter.org, jamendo.com, etc. If you try this though, avoid the non-Free stuff as that will lead you right back to where you start.

Thoughts?

all the best,

drew

Re:The solution

[betterunixthanunix]

I have a better solution: stop using the Internet. Get everyone to agree to start a new, private, NZ only network using modems and UUCP.

Re:The solution

[Shakrai]

And how do you propose I stop anyone who doesn't read Slashdot from buying new music?

Baseball bats and firearms? ;)

Oh, you mean how do you convince them ;) Well, (in all seriousness) I'd start by showing them Ray's blog.

Re:The solution

[Hurricane78]

Point is: They are not big anymore. More like the Tiny 4.
I have had a friend in music business, who was a personal friend of some high music bosses (especially SonyBMG), and he told me, that the whole music industry isn't bigger than some irrelevant industry like the toilet brush industry (can't remember the exact industry, but it was tiny!).

Think of it: Count the income or the people that work for those four. And then compare them so other industies. They're a joke!
It would not take long to completely kill them off. Just a little bit more DRM fuckups, and they're gone for good.

Meanwhile, small independent labels are booming, since P2P is the best marketing they ever got (to quote the CEO of such a small label).
I can only say that this is true, because since I'm listening to ShoutCast-radios, I've heard of so many new cool bands that never made it to the charts, normal radio or tv.
I'm listening to British DnB, French house and Russian big beat. It's the best thing that ever happened to music!

Re:The solution

[ImOnlySleeping]

Don't listen to top 40 radio Then the question becomes, what should you listen to? If you're in a decent sized city you should have college radio, local artists and a stream of smaller independent artists coming through your town. Additionally, there are any number of websites, podcasts and streaming radio stations online. Top 40 radio is ridiculous, greatest song ever one year and forgotten the next. It's the radio version of disposable society.

Re:The solution

[JasterBobaMereel]

Anyone can produce their own records like any small business they can get a loan or sponsorship for their debut album, with this they can hire a good studio, collaborate with a good producer engineer and session musicians, and make far more money on the deal than they could hope to with one of the big 4 ... the only thing they are lacking is publicity ... but when did you last hear a good new song by a new band that was signed to one of the big 4? Usually you hear them *before* they sign up, so what are the record companies actually doing for their money?

Re:The solution

[91degrees]

I think the response will be "So it looks like the record industry is suing a load of people who are ripping them off. Can't be bothered reading the legalese".

Or possibly tl;dr.

Re:The solution

[Jason Levine]

I'd suggest a slight alteration of rules 1 and 2:

1. Stop buying new music from RIAA affiliated labels
2. Stop going to shows of new acts signed up with RIAA affiliated labels

There are plenty of good artists whose music you can buy and whose shows you can attend who aren't affiliated in any way with the RIAA. Don't punish them for the RIAA's sins. In fact, let's reward them for not being part of the RIAA-mess. If artists see non-RIAA artists doing well, they'll realize that they don't need the RIAA. I recommend signing up with http://www.emusic.com/ and http://www.amiestreet.com/ and purchasing some songs from there.

Re:The solution

[Shakrai]

I think the response will be "So it looks like the record industry is suing a load of people who are ripping them off. Can't be bothered reading the legalese".

Then you need to be prepared to explain to them the actual reality of the RIAA campaign:

1) The people who are sued have no chance of successfully defending themselves, regardless of whether or not they actually "ripped off" RIAA. "Success" against the well financed RIAA legal team still leaves you broke.
2) RIAA has sued deceased Grandmothers that didn't even have a computer in the house.
3) RIAA's legal arguments (such as "making available") have been shot down time and time again.
4) RIAA typically has zero actual proof that you've shared anything.
5) RIAA has been known to use unlicensed and unaccountable "investigators" in violation of state law.

If you aren't prepared to explain the actual facts of the RIAA campaign to your friends and colleagues then you might as well be working for them. The reason John Q. Public is going to respond with "people are ripping them off" is because of people like you that don't want to make the effort to educate him.

Re:The solution

[Jason Levine]

The real useful function of the labels was traditionally separating the hits from the duds. They weren't perfect at it, of course, but that was their job. They seem to have forgotten their job function, however, and instead chase trends ("hey this singer is hot, let's sign a dozen more like her!"), interfere with the artists ("we think your song would be more marketable if...."), and generally just try to get away with ripping off as many people as possible ("pay for play" musician law, "losing" the addresses of well known artists so as to be unable to forward on payments, P2P lawsuits, etc).

One of the things I like about Amie Street is that the users take on the label's job. Songs start out as free and rise in price to a maximum of 98 cents as people buy them. So if you buy a 98 cent song, you're guaranteed to have something that many people like. Otherwise, you could buy a free/very-low-cost song, taking a risk that it is as good as the song preview makes it out to be, and not risk much money. With the $15 that you might use to buy one 12-song CD, you could buy 15 hits and 6 nickel-priced possible hits. 21 songs versus 12 songs and that's not even counting free songs you could take a chance on.

Re:The solution

[theanorak]

This is an excellent point.

The biggest drawback to the "write and release yourself" school of music publishing is that it requires musicians have production/engineering/mixing/mastering/studio tech skills, as well as being able to play their chosen instruments and write good songs.

I *know* that you can go out and hire a studio, an engineer, a producer or whatever yourself, but if you don't know what you need it's difficult to get the best out of the experience.

It's (arguably) easier for people making music electronically, as they have a decent chance of going from creative idea to ready-to-master with the skillset they've acquired to be able to make the music, but I'm not sure how well that applies to a singer-songwriter, or a guitar/bass/drums/vocals band, or chamber music or whatever.

Re:The solution

[russotto]

Businesses other than the big 4 are capable of loaning money to a startup small business

That's so early-2008.

Re:The solution

[Anonymous Coward]

I know production is expensive for a small time band. However, the top 500 cds released each year could probably go through the production phase such that 2 albums are produced - the "loud" one that is sold to the masses and a more normalized "good" one that can be bought from the band's website, amazon, and other places that don't need to keep many copies in stock.

Re:The solution

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure the record industry is losing sleep over the pretentious audiophile demographic ...

Re:The solution

[AK Marc]

Just like any idiot with a toolbox can make you a sofa and everyone with a camera can shoot a wedding - but that doesn't mean its going to be any good.

Sofas take specialized hardware to make. They have things to hold the wood pieces as they build the frame, machines to pull the cloth for attachment, special-cut padding and other such things that make it near-impossible for someone with a toolbox, a pile of wood and some cloth to make a similar sofa of competing quality. However, the shooting a wedding one is relevant. I've shot two weddings. I did as good or better than the pro at each. I may be a little more than the average person with a $100 pocket camera, one can get near-pro gear for under $1000 now, so it's easily in the reach of the "prosumer" to have the gear, and with a little practice, take adequate photos.

No, you don't always need them, but if we lose the investment major labels make, the music world will be lesser for it.

I really hate where the asshats shout "citation needed" but this cries out for a similar demonstration that you are asserting fact from nothing even remotely supporting it. They stifle competition. As such, it doesn't show their usefulness in just providing the name of one that they supported for multiple albums until they did reach commercial viability, but to also show that they didn't impede others not in their system from doing the same. Perhaps the abolition of record labels would hurt a small few and help many, in which case the music world would be the greater for it, even if you were able to prove actual usefulness of the labels for some limited cases.

Re:The solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Then the question becomes, what should you listen to? Where should you get your music from, if you're to stop buying new music?

All you're doing is sending them a message that you personally no longer care about music, or movies -- and, very likely, they will assume you're a pirate. What you should be doing is sending them a message that also tells them how you want it to look. Show them demand, but on your terms.

Listen to radio and music that's not Top 40/Big 4 - certified indie stuff. Me, I go to CBC Radio 3 to find out great acts, and there are similar channels elsewhere online.

Re:The solution

[Anonymous Coward]

They should be. Who else will buy their isotropic-silver with directionally stressed polymer coated CDs for extra-pure digital sound at 50,000% markup?

Re:The solution

[Just Some Guy]

I'm sure the record industry is losing sleep over the pretentious audiophile demographic ...

Like me, I guess. I was listening to the newest Dropkick Murphys CD in my car - an Oldsmobile with the factory-upgraded stereo - and it sucked. What's the point of listening to Irish punk loudly when you can only barely tell what the drummer's playing?

My ears are probably shot from a misspent youth and lots of concerts, but even I can tell when an album is horribly, almost criminally ill-mastered. It's not just the audiophiles with their $40,000 oxygen-free gold systems who are affected by this stuff.

Re:The solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends on the sofa. You can learn upholstery pretty quickly, and a standard sofa isn't that involved structurally. You can make a futon, for instance, using a saw and router, pretty much.

Re:The solution

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they don't know their craft, or they wouldn't be spending months of 'studio time' producing what should take them all of 20 minutes. There's been nothing technically challenging (from a musical standpoint) produced by the 'hit parade' mentality of music production since its very beginning in the 1950s, and very little which is massively creative. There is talent in that industry, but it's on the part of the engineers who manage to turn the 'artists' input into anything vaguely coherent at all.

And yet we (collectively, rather than as individuals) go on listening not only to the mass produced pap of the major labels, but also praise those who attempt to imitate the same for smaller financial gains. We're at a point where many people don't even know how to listen to what they're hearing - of my younger friends in the 15-25 age group, there's no critical response to sound at all, only an emotional attachment to the circumstances in which a sound effect was first heard. Good old Reception Theory. Seeing one guy's eyes light up when he first spotted leitmotif in Howard Shore's soundtrack to the Lord of The Rings films - about the 14th time he'd seen it! - was nice, until it transpired that he couldn't actually identify what he'd heard, just that something sounded familiar.

The 'loudness war' - although real - is a red herring. The descent started much earlier than that, when we allowed an industry to form which fostered the creation of markettable packages much more than it did music. It's hard to admit, but 'popular' music really was much more complex and varied before the second world war. Perhaps it's because far more people were in a position to judge the actual difficulty level of a performance. Perhaps not. It'd be very hard to produce meaningful figures about that.

I'm sure I had a point when I began this rant, but I've forgotten what it was, so: right now, and for at least three decades, we've had a huge lull in music production. The long and short of it has to be: like whatever you like. We're stuck with it for a while, at least. And when we come out of it, your 'better' might not be the same as everyone elses.

Re:The solution

[Anonymous Coward]

I am repeating this ad nauseum but it's really the best, most effective solution.

1. Stop buying new music
2. Stop going to shows of new acts
3. Don't "pirate"[sic] music, just KILL the demand. P2P only lends credence, however tenuous, that they are "losing" money due to "theft"[sic].
4. Don't listen to top 40 radio
5. Did I mention stop uploading/downloading music on P2P networks? Boycott the big labels.

Bankrupt the RIAA(or whatever it's called in your respective country) members. Then, sanity will be restored to copyright.

Oh, in case you think your favorite label is an indie, remember this family tree - it's a little out of date but you'll see that a lot of "indie" labels you like, aren't! Check it out:

http://www.arancidamoeba.com/mrr/whoownswho2.html

1. If you stop buying music, the revenue loss will be blamed on piracy. IF they go bankrupt, the government will bail them out, which means you'll pay through your taxes. Better to actually get something out of it. Besides, the labels only get about $4 from a new CD sale, the rest is markup through distributers, shipping, and retail.

2. Most live shows & merchandise revenue go directly to the musicians. The RIAA makes money from album sales, the Concert promoters make money off of ticket sales. So by boycotting the concerts/shows/merchandise you are hurting only the artists, not the RIAA.

3. Get into the Indy music scene, there's a lot of small bands who are worth listening to, and many do their own CD's, promoting, etc.

Re:The solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Try somafm.com, specifically the channel called Digitalis.

Re:The solution

[LordKronos]

Due to the loudness war, I've been basically unable to listen to anything released over the last fifteen-twenty years.

Wow. Somebody sure is a drama queen. Unlistenable? Granted, I'd gladly take a properly mastered recording over what they tend to do these days, but I'd hardly call a modern release unlistenable. Maybe you've confused the loudness war with the death metal genre.

Re:The solution

[91degrees]

Then you need to be prepared to explain to them the actual reality of the RIAA campaign:

But then you get to the point where I don't care any more either. I care about it but not enough to waste my time going through the same tedious argument to try to convince people not to buy records from major labels, after which they're still going to decide it doesn't affect them.

I'll try to persuade them to avoid Nestle instead. There are obvious substitutes and the victims aren't wealthy westerners.

Re:The solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuddy duddy!

Re:The solution

[nurb432]

1 - most of us did that long ago
2 - That is where most artists get their income
3 - Get real.
4 - there is still a radio?
5 - see #3

Re:The solution

[Anonymous Coward]

NPR all day, every day. Weekends are best.. that's when Car Talk comes on.

Re:The solution

[Anonymous Coward]

6. And get everyone you know to play along.

I agree with you wholeheartedly, but I'm really hard pressed to believe that the readership of Slashdot is what's driving the demand for the Big 4.

They aren't, like any good parasite they can change hosts. And have.

The RIAA now collects huge licensing fees from governments and radio stations for music played, even music that isn't theirs.

On top of that, the music divisions are only one part of larger companies. You really think Time Warner is gonna go out of business because you stopped buying CD's?

Stopping retail suppourt of the RIAA and their ilk is a good start but its not enough. Their music labels would have to start losing money LOTS of money to make their executives want to see them killed off.

The only way we'll see the end of the RIAA, and not soon) is for artists to wise up. No new bands signing with the major labels will eventually dry up their income sources. Alas thanks to US copyright even if every act the RIAA owns ended its contract today we'd still have over 100 years to wait.

So the only answer to see them gone in our life times is legislation.

Re:The solution

[Shakrai]

But then you get to the point where I don't care any more either

Well congratulations I guess. You are part of the problem and not part of the solution.

Re:The solution

[91degrees]

And I don't even care!

See how effective the boycott is. You can't even persuade me and I'm nominally on your side.

Re:The solution

[DrgnDancer]

When I was younger and my parents poorer, my father built a sofa with hand-tools (he may have had a few hand held power tools, but nothing even as fancy as a table saw). It wasn't fancy, basically he built a rectangular frame with a piece of plywood across the top, and the legs attached on the inside of the bottom. The arms were attached to the outside of the frame. My mom made a single large cushion for the bottom, and another that lay on a slightly backward inclined back. It was ugly and not horribly comfortable, but it met all the requirements of "sofa". That was GP's point, you CAN make a sofa with hand-tools, but the ones you buy are generally much nicer.

Re:The solution

[AK Marc]

That was GP's point, you CAN make a sofa with hand-tools, but the ones you buy are generally much nicer.

Understood, and acknowledged in my post (perhaps not stated as simply, but you can't make a "professional" sofa without "professional" tools). My point was that many people, with basic tools and minimal training, can take acceptable wedding photos (you can take "professional photos without professional tools). My point was that it is also not necessary to have professional marketers to have a thriving music industry. My point was that just because there exist things which require specialized tools to get a professional result does not mean that all things are impossible unless you hire a professional. And I used one of his own examples to show how his premise was wrong.

Re:The solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Due to the loudness war, I've been basically unable to listen to anything released over the last fifteen-twenty years. Fortunately we have a large cache of older records.

Then you're looking in the wrong section. Maybe try the "easy listening" or "soft rock" sections instead of browsing in the "heavy metal", "gangster rap", or "Alternative" sections.

I'd also recommend against buying any Classical music, as you'll find some of the loudest, heaviest music in that section.

I once worked in a music store, & there were no end of jerks coming in, walking right to the "top 100" section, and bitching because the music is too loud. Point out the "easy listening" & they freak out about that being "old people" music. Well, time to face the facts, you're a soft hits, classic country, or pre-rock 'pop' fan, so shop in the right area.

Oh, and there is a volume button & an equalizer on your stereo, try using them. They do work.

Re:The solution

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is not to be on the legal side. It's to cut their oxygen supply.
Pirating top40 crap increases its mindshare and thus its sales as well. This is why you want to avoid it - not because it's "wrong".

Re:The solution

[Yakasha]

I've been basically unable to listen to anything released over the last fifteen-twenty years.

Darn those kids with their rock music and slick hair! In my day we had to walk uphill both ways in the snow barefoot to buy records. RECORDS mind you not these new fangled 'ate tracks' or whatever you kids are calling them now.

Let me tell you something! Elvis is a fad that will be gone tomorrow. He just mindlessly whacks his geetar to generate noise. That no-talent hack is...

Well, I think you get the picture oldie.

Re:The solution

[atraintocry]

Once upon a time, we had something called plays. But no one confuses them with movies. Weird.

Re:The solution

[atraintocry]

The music industry is incredibly vertical...there are links in the chain between the labels, the stores, the radio stations, and the venues. Small business money isn't going to cut it. Besides, bands are regularly sponsored by beer companies and music equipment makers, and if that ever put anyone over the top, it's been a rare occurrence.

I agree with you that that there's no theoretical reason why the music industry couldn't return to previous days, where things were more local and there was less pressure to go 100x platinum. But unlike a lot of Slashdot, I have a grasp of the sheer size of these guys, and how diverse their holdings are. A unified recording industry isn't going to go away in my lifetime, no matter how magical the internet is. Not as long as they can buy litigation like we buy a gallon of milk.

Re:The solution

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Businesses other than the big 4 are capable of loaning money to a startup small business, which is effectively what a self-producing artist is. There are also smaller truly indie labels that perform the same function.

I don't think it's even necessary to get loans to get the equipment to become a self-producing band. Quality equipment can be had for cheap and slowly accumulated over many months or a year or so. The skills and knowledge required to operate them aren't that hard to learn. Basically, it's just work, either you pay someone else a lot of money to do the work, or you spend a lot of time learning how to do it yourself.

Re:The solution

[Anonymous Coward]

CDBaby. Independent music: digital downloads, physical sales shipped internationally. The money goes straight to the artists, minus CDBaby's 9% cut, which compares favourably to iTunes' ~30%.

Even better if you consider that signed bands seldom see better than an 18% cut of sales (usually after the label has recouped recording and marketing costs, which are of course paid back at that 18% rate). No ogg vorbis yet though...

Full disclosure: my band has an album for sale on CDBaby. We're a completely independent New Zealand group, and proof that you can produce something of quality if you work (and save) hard, and love it enough.

Re:The solution

[badkarmadayaccount]

What do you have against death metal? Seriously, the only type of music that is truly unlistenable is Britney Smears & Co. That just plain hurts my ears.

Re:The solution

[LordKronos]

I love lots of types of metal, but the death metal I've heard (and maybe it's not even death metal in general, but a certain fringe of it, and I'm not specific enough in my terminology) is often stuff that has no real discernible melody and rhythm. I'm a musician myself, and to me it sounds like a bunch of random people picked up instruments and started playing random notes as fast as they could without any thought to composition or coordinating their playing with anyone else in their band. On top of that, I'd be lucky to figure out even a handful of the words being screamed (they often don't even resemble words). I've heard more musical stuff come from accidentally spilling the contents of my toolbox on the floor.

Sorry if I offend your tastes, but considering the stuff I'm talking about, I'd actually much rather listen to [shudder]Britney[/shudder], as at least I have some idea of what she's trying to accomplish musically.

Re:The solution

[badkarmadayaccount]

I know that death metal is sorta too fast for most people, even musicians, so you can't quite catch the melody but trust me, it's there. It's like how some some people can see 120Hz flicker, and others can't, I think.

BTW, that was kind of tongue-in-cheek. Just saying.

In other news...

[djupedal]

...Guilt Upon Accusation has been followed by:

• Guilt Upon Acquisition
• Guilt Upon Acclimatization
• Guilt Upon Accentuation
• Guilt Upon Accessioning
• Guilt Upon Accessorizing

Anyone that feels they are guilty of the any of the above are expected to voluntarily report to the gas chambers in the basement. Out.

How to disconnect any Kiwi's Internet Connection

[CuteSteveJobs]

More proof that politicians pass laws to please their political donors and lobbyists, without understanding their implications. These infringement notices have been shown to be unreliable and easily spoofed.

http://dmca.cs.washington.edu/
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080605-study-paints-grim-picture-of-automated-dmca-notice-accuracy.html
http://torrentfreak.com/study-reveals-reckless-anti-piracy-antics-080605/
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/05/the-inexact-science-behind-dmca-takedown-notices/

So now any New Zealander can have their internet connection cut if anyone knows their IP address: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/95089

So today's Political Enemy of the Internet Award goes to New Zealand's Judith Tizard, who joins Australia's Stephen Conroy and Britains Andy Burnham. I could handle it when all politicians did was rort the system, but this is getting really annoying. I don't recall voting for any of this stuff, and I'll put them last on the ballot next time.

I accuse

[Chrisq]

I accuse everyone in New Zealand of file Sharing, including the government departments and the police.

Welcome back to the mid 20th Century New Zealand, you are all going to be disconnected.

Re:I accuse

[DeadPixels]

It was New Zealand on the Internet with the Candlestick!

Re:I accuse

[MichaelSmith]

I accuse everyone in New Zealand of file Sharing, including the government departments and the police. Welcome back to the mid 20th Century New Zealand, you are all going to be disconnected.

I must remember to snap up their TLD.

Re:I accuse

[Anonymous Coward]

fu#k you now im going to loose my internet connection :(

What.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever read.

Guilt upon...

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess it won't take long until "Guilt Upon Existence" will become a reality. Then we will be back in medieval times, where the king decided "you are guilty because I said so" (if we aren't *&%! close to that already)

Re:Guilt upon...

[pintpusher]

Catholics (I should know, I was one) have this all wrapped up already. They call it Original Sin. The theory is that we are all stained with the sins of Adam and Eve from birth and have to actively pursue innocence from the moment you're born.

flippant American answer

[Trepidity]

Because all the other Anglo-Saxon countries still have the visage of a hereditary monarch on their coins. ;-)

Re:flippant American answer

[MaskedSlacker]

They've modded me flamebait, but really the reason I'm pissed about it is because I wanted to emigrate to New Zealand.

Re:flippant American answer

[DrugCheese]

Yeah I understand where you're coming from, for awhile there New Zealand looked like a great place to move to. Then there are things like this law getting put down and antagonists from Mordor that really make me double think that.

Re:flippant American answer

[dbIII]

Come on, you guys are so jealous of our hereditary monarch that you gave Bush more power than any King since John.

Re:flippant American answer

[Grimbleton]

Who's John King?

Re:flippant American answer

[MaskedSlacker]

Stupid mordor in the middle of new zealand...

Re:flippant American answer

[Tubal-Cain]

Why not? The rest of Middle Earth is there.

Re:flippant American answer

[chris_mahan]

Because people in the US have guns and use them. There's a long history of US politicians having been killed/shot at by US citizens.

(Lincoln, a couple of Kennedys, Reagan come to mind)

And they can't get the laws changed because, well, people have guns.

I personally think that's a good thing (The gun ownership part, not the (shooting at|killing) politicians part).

Re:flippant American answer

[TeraByte911]

One does not simply accuse filesharers in Mordor!

Re:flippant American answer

[HungryHobo]

and the sad thing is you really believe this.

If what you said held any weight then bush would have been gunned down years ago.
But he wasn't. despite the vast numbers of people who hated him.
Not one of them got a shot off.

You know how much difference it makes that you have guns? Sweet Fuck All.
Your senator isn't scared by your penis extension. He has a security team who can use theirs much better than you can.

Re:flippant American answer

[Chris Mattern]

Who is John Galt?

Or should that be who is John of Gaunt?

Re:flippant American answer

[LordLucless]

You think Mordor would give you trouble? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AIppqNePdM&feature=related

Re:flippant American answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Corrupt politicians love when their population has guns. They always antagonize a group they hate into doing something stupid, then get instant public support to crush them.

Re:flippant American answer

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be the special toilet that was installed at the white house for bush. It was the name that everybody gave it, so that george would use. Of course, it was a little kids toilet.

Re:flippant American answer

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought your coins only had dead Presidents?

(+1, fashionable dig at Bush)

Re:flippant American answer

[LEMONedIScream]

Why do you feel that one individual with a gun should have so much power as to decide whether he wants to remove a single politician person of his choosing permanently from society?

Living fear is something I choose not to do, and I would prefer to extend that to everyone, including politicians.

Re:flippant American answer

[Muad'Dave]

Who's John King?

Distant cousin to Rodney King, Martin Luther King, and most famously, The Burger King.

Re:flippant American answer

[Hurricane78]

Exactly. The ones who get shot are the good presidents. Lincoln, Kennedy... and I hope not, but it would not surprise me: Obama. :(

You can guess by whom. (Hint: Not the normal people!)

Re:flippant American answer

[Shakrai]

Why do you feel that one individual with a gun should have so much power as to decide whether he wants to remove a single politician person of his choosing permanently from society?

Didn't he say that he disagrees with the shooting at politicians part? I think you can be pro-gun without being pro-assassination.....

Re:flippant American answer

[hot soldering iron]

All authority is based upon the threat of violence. Even school children know this. Only pretentious pseudo-intellectuals think "group concensus" grants "authority". Bush concealed a lot of what he did, and had the media paint him as a conservative patriot. Clinton got painted by the radical conservatives as a murdering liberal psyco and that's why the White House facade is now bullet resistant (drive-by shootings) and there are Stinger missles emplaced on the roof (cessna intentionally crashed into the lawn). Your argument isn't worth a bag of poo.

Re:flippant American answer

[JasterBobaMereel]

Which Bush? ... or for that matter which Kennedy, Clinton etc ....

You seem to be working on having a hereditary system yourselves, with a near absolute ruler?

Whereas NZ,Australia, and Canada the monarch is little more than a figurehead and is only slightly more in the UK ?

Re:flippant American answer

[HungryHobo]

So you're saying there wasn't a vast number of people who hated him anyway? If the grandparent were correct then one really pissed person would be enough. In 8 years out of hundreds of millions of people, not one of the pissed assholes amongst them managed it.

Authority does tend to be based on the threat of violence but in the case of your handgun vs the US government it's basicly spitting at a thunderstorm. Even if you and everyone you know stands spitting at the storm you still achieve nothing.

Re:flippant American answer

[Attila Dimedici]

The people who thought that Bush should be shot were overwhelmingly the same people who think that guns are inherently evil.

Re:flippant American answer

[MiniMike]

If what you said held any weight then bush would have been gunned down years ago.
But he wasn't. despite the vast numbers of people who hated him.

Not one of them got a shot off.

Nope. Cheney either scared 'em all away, or shot first.

Re:flippant American answer

[TehZorroness]

I see your schwartz is as big as mine! Now let's see how you handle it!

Re:flippant American answer

[russotto]

Stupid mordor in the middle of new zealand...

Mordor's not so bad. It's was a cold, wet, tough climb, and the descent wrecked my knee, and the smell of sulfur was in fact present. But there were no armies of Orcs or Urak-Hai (just level 1 Tourists, mostly friendly), and no giant spiders either.

http://www.tongarirocrossing.org.nz/

Re:flippant American answer

[Anonymous Coward]

If they'd actually do their jobs, and defend their constituants, and pass laws that are beneficial to them, they wouldn't NEED a security team...

Re:flippant American answer

[operagost]

You're the first person I've heard say this on Slashdot-- probably because leftists don't want to admit this would put Reagan in the "good President" category.

Re:flippant American answer

[operagost]

If what you said held any weight then Bush would have been gunned down years ago.

That's because the people who hate him the most are also gun-control advocates.

Re:flippant American answer

[operagost]

Clinton got painted by the radical conservatives as a murdering liberal psyco and that's why the White House facade is now bullet resistant (drive-by shootings) and there are Stinger missles emplaced on the roof (cessna intentionally crashed into the lawn).

The media planted Stinger missiles on the White House? By the way, the Cessna crash was an accident. I guess the Stingers didn't work.

Re:flippant American answer

[kubrick]

Rephrase it to 'the ones who get shot and die', and we can add McKinley and exclude Reagan. Still left with Huey Long though.

Re:flippant American answer

[gbjbaanb]

If what you said held any weight then bush would have been gunned down years ago.
But he wasn't. despite the vast numbers of people who hated him.
Not one of them got a shot off.

well, someone tried to beat him to death with his shoes, but if you listen carefully you can hear him "being interviewed" in the room next door as Bush gave his "oh well, I just dodged them, aren't I great" interview to the press.

Good job you guys spent so many lives liberating that country so being tortured for your political views no longer happens, eh.

Re:flippant American answer

[Anonymous Coward]

*Checks the list of past president's names* Nope, no Obamas, the one getting sworn in this month is the first one.

Re:flippant American answer

[mog007]

Do you view Lincoln and Kennedy as good presidents who got shot, or good presidents BECAUSE they got shot?

Lincoln is the one who's responsible for the modern view that the president is allowed to issue edicts which have the full force of law, without consent from Congress. With Johnson following in his footsteps, he was impeached for his actions.

Kennedy was responsible for getting us involved in that fuckwit war in Vietnam, and he's responsible for the embargo that's STILL in place on Cuba to this day. You'd think that after half a century we could get over it, and revitalize their economy.

Now, Kennedy might have signed a couple of laws with regard to segregation, and that's nice, but Lincoln didn't free any slaves. The Emancipation freed the slaves in territories that didn't recognize the President or Congress as their leadership. Would be similar to Obama outlawing child prostitution in Indonesia or something, it just has absolutely no legal merit.

And why does nobody talk about Garfield?

He should have been your first pick for assassinated presidents. He died after only about a year in office, which isn't enough time to do much good or much bad. However, his death DID lead to the invention of the metal detector, or at least the first use of a device to find a bullet.

Re:flippant American answer

[Anonymous Coward]

guns useless? what kind of asshattery is this? OH you thought the republicans were upset? na, they like busy. it's the mostly gunless libs who wanted bush gone.

but tell me, captain insight, what are you going to do in the uk? throw avacadoes? sharpen the dull knives since the sharp ones are going to be banned soon?

this is the stupidest "insightful" i've seen on slashdot, and that's really sayin something :(

Re:flippant American answer

[HungryHobo]

I don't live in the UK.
Where I live we have a certain amount of gun control laws but they're not illegal.(basicly you have to show you know gun safety and get some forms stamped saying you're not insane or a criminal in order to own a shotgun)
Our head of government didn't have to kept behind 6 inches of bullet-proof glass. Hell I have a friend who raised a bit of noise(a very small bit) with the papers after he kept walking up to him and asking the same embarasing question and trying to get an actual answer (gay marriage rights related) until one of the 2 security guards threatened to have him arrested.
Do you think any joe slob where you live would be allowed to walk up to your head of state on the street? Granted my friend didn't get a straight answer but he didn't get put through 12 hours of questioning before being allowed within a kilometer.

Re:flippant American answer

[networkBoy]

Hey,
Regan was the best most recent republicrat president. IMHO better than either Bush or Clinton. And, while I have my serious doubts about Obamma I genuinely hope I get to eat crow on them...

Re:flippant American answer

[AK Marc]

Kennedy was responsible for getting us involved in that fuckwit war in Vietnam,

There was American support on the ground before that, and after that. To pick the guy in the middle that escalated it when every president involved before and after escalated it as well is a little absurd.

and he's responsible for the embargo that's STILL in place on Cuba to this day.

Then I blame Bush for not ending it, since he was the most recent able to do so. We'll see if Obama does. He probably will and will use the excuse of Fidel Castro's death as the reason to end it.

You'd think that after half a century we could get over it, and revitalize their economy.

I agree. Why didn't Bush end it (just picking on him because he's the most recent)? He's the most directly to blame for it being in place because he's the one that can end it now. Yet, it's there, and you are blaming some dead person for us continuing an embargo? That seems absurd. Though you do point out one problem I have with our form of goverment. It's too consistent. It's consistent to the point of absurdity. "Case Law" is an abomination which lets judges legislate from the bench. It's been a part of common law longer than the US has existed, but it is something we should have not inherited. I'd be for changing it so that rather than remanding it to a lower court after making findings of law, remanding it to the legislature. If the law isn't clear enough that judges can figure it out, how can the people? Yet, the confusing law is the only law available to the people, and "case law" is something that is made up on the fly so that no law is consistent.

Lincoln didn't free any slaves. The Emancipation freed the slaves in territories that didn't recognize the President or Congress as their leadership. Would be similar to Obama outlawing child prostitution in Indonesia or something, it just has absolutely no legal merit.

I didn't realize the US had claim on Indonesia. At the time, the USA claimed legal standing over the Confederacy. As such, he freed every slave there, but was unable to enforce it. That's a minor distinction like the minor distinction between being alive and dead.

Re:flippant American answer

[halcyon1234]

If what you said held any weight then bush would have been gunned down years ago

Not if you make nice with the NRA =)

Re:flippant American answer

[Anonymous Coward]

You know how much difference it makes that you have guns? Sweet Fuck All.

Actually, it makes a huge difference. So long as they are brainwashed into believing that their guns protect their freedoms, they are quite resistant to the realisation that their rights are being taken away. After all, if they still have their all-powerful rights-protecting guns, how on earth can they have lost their rights?

Re:flippant American answer

[HiThere]

Unfortunately, it's the wrong politicians that usually get shot. (Not always, though. Huey Long was reasonable. And Wallace. Reagan was just senile and malleable...the one they should have shot was his handler. JFK was dangerous!!! 90 seconds from nuclear war was just crazy! But I liked most of what he did [domestically]. And 52 soldiers in VietNam wasn't unreasonable.)

Re:flippant American answer

[Cryacin]

Not one of them got a shot off.

Yes, but one guy threw a shoe!

Re:flippant American answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this insightful? Parent is just talking convenient bullshit.

Re:flippant American answer

[mog007]

I didn't realize the US had claim on Indonesia. At the time, the USA claimed legal standing over the Confederacy. As such, he freed every slave there, but was unable to enforce it. That's a minor distinction like the minor distinction between being alive and dead.

What use is a "law" that's unenforcable? Oh yes, it's illegal to carry an ice cream cone in your pocket in North Carolina. Big deal. It's irrelevent, and the point is, that the emancipation is what Lincoln is most remembered for, and it's usually why he's in the top five list of greatest presidents. The Confederacy had drafted, and adopted their own constitution, and they had no representation in Congress with all their senators and reps walking out in protest, as such, they were NOT part of the country anymore, and Lincoln had NO control over them.

The emancipation was a brilliant idea on the Union's part, because it meant that the United Kingdom wouldn't render assistance to the Confederacy, because it made the entire war an issue on slavery.

Re:flippant American answer

[AK Marc]

What use is a "law" that's unenforceable? Oh yes, it's illegal to carry an ice cream cone in your pocket in North Carolina. Big deal. It's irrelevant,

Are you saying it's unenforceable because you aren't in North Carolina, or are you saying that it's unenforced? Unenforced is not the same as unenforceable. It was intended to be enforced and was. Just delayed due to the enforcement agents getting shot. Or have you just shot everyone that tried to enforce the ice cream rule, so it's the same thing?

The Confederacy had drafted, and adopted their own constitution, and they had no representation in Congress with all their senators and reps walking out in protest, as such, they were NOT part of the country anymore, and Lincoln had NO control over them.

Shoot, so if I draw up my own constitution I can just secede and the government has no jurisdiction over me? Didn't work out for any of the militia nuts or such so far. But if that's all it takes for any actions against me to be illegal or to not count or whatever, then it's a pretty simple deal.

Re:flippant American answer

[theaveng]

>>>Shoot, so if I draw up my own constitution I can just secede and the government has no jurisdiction over me?

Sure why not? That's how the United States was formed in 1776. Hello new country - goodbye British government and law. The State of West Virginia used the identical approach in 1862 when it said "goodbye" to the Virginia government. The People have the right to abolish government and form a new one, according to the Declaration of Independence. It's happened thrice in U.S. history, twice successfully.

Re:flippant American answer

[theaveng]

Unless the soldiers are unwilling to fire on their own neighbors. That is what happened when Eastern Europeans rose up; the governments ordered citizens to be shot, but the soldiers refused to comply, so the governments toppled.

I suspect the same would be true in the U.S. if the combined population rose up and started rebelling.

Re:flippant American answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Take your pick: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_King

Summary internet disconnection?

[geekgirlandrea]

So if you commit a burglary at night and use a flashlight, are you banned for life from ever using electricity? If you get caught dealing drugs and taking orders by cell phone, are you banned from ever having a telephone again?

Cutting someone off from access to communications technology for an indefinite term in modern society is a *very* harsh punishment. It's like these things all get written by some geriatric lawyer who's thinking "Those damn whippersnappers aren't doing anything important on that intarthingy anyway".

Re:Summary internet disconnection?

[calmofthestorm]

No, those are just stealing physical property. Pirating media is far worse because it deprives hardworking musicians and other artists of their well-deserved profits, which is far worse, really, than most felonies -- hardly a civil matter.

Clearly we need to realign enforcement priorities to take into account the seriousness of the crime.

Note for the completely oblivious: see sig

Re:Summary internet disconnection?

[Tubal-Cain]

No, you just need to be accused of burglarizing (burgling?).

Re:Summary internet disconnection?

[Anonymous Coward]

trust me i know quite a few copy right infringes who will be doing this & they have access to some information which will help there cause of creating the notices which will be faked & sent to the right isp ....

this is a declaration of war, those mother fucking politicians want internet ? they are not fucking getting any tubes in this country ....

Re:Summary internet disconnection?

[QuantumG]

It's like these things all get written by some geriatric lawyer who's thinking "Those damn whippersnappers aren't doing anything important on that intarthingy anyway".

umm.. they're written by lobbyists for the music industry.. an industry of which "geriatric" is a gross understatement. They've failed to keep up with technology and now they're sinking fast. If they could get the Internet banned outright, they would.

Re:Summary internet disconnection?

[flinkflonk]

Pirating media is far worse because it deprives hardworking musicians and other artists of their well-deserved profits, which is far worse, really, than most felonies -- hardly a civil matter.

Hmm, do I have to point out the obvious mistake you made here? It's clearly not the musicians and other artists who deserve the profit, it's the record companies for their hard, hard work of making those little plastic discs and promoting hopeless no-sell artists like Rihanna, Take That and Britney Spears. Surely you don't want them to do that for free, like, well, make one of those newfangled websites everybody seems to think are so hip these days.

Interweb, bah!

Cluedo .. or is that Clueless?

[Anonymous Coward]

I accuse the members of the NZ Government, in the House of Representatives, with the fluffy Kiwi bird.

No seriously, for a moment think about this. All it would take would be for one person who has a copyrighted item, to accuse every single member of the NZ Governement of copyright infraction.

Suddenly they find out how painful a badly written and enacted law can be.

Re:Cluedo .. or is that Clueless?

[Kierthos]

I double dog dare you to do this.

Re:Cluedo .. or is that Clueless?

[seeker_1us]

I TRIPLE dog dare you to do this.

"With but a prick I damn him"

[seeker_1us]

This law was written for the *AA and their international ilk.

They can shut down independent musicians simply by saying so (like Shakespeare said "With but a prick, I damn him"). Furthermore, they can shut down anyone who legally downloads any independent work through Bittorrent (it's filesharing) just by claiming it violates their copyright.

None of these laws were ever about protecting artists. They are all about giving the established monopolies a method of protecting their predatory business practices.

Re:"With but a prick I damn him"

[khallow]

With but a "spot" (also meant a bit of blood). The term was used interchangeably with "prick" (which also had the double meaning of a stab wound) in that scene. For context, this was from the play "Julius Caesar". Mark Antony had previously spoken out in Julius Caesar's funeral against the assassins of Julius Caesar (who was earlier stabbed to death by a number of Roman Senators including Brutus, his former best friend). In this scene, Antony, Octavius Caesar, and Lepidus draw up a list of people to execute (including the assassins above). The "spot" is the chilling act of Antony writing in the name of his nephew and thus marking him for death. Definitely appropriate for this slashdot story.

yea...great.

[Urza9814]

Reminds me of a couple years ago when I created a myspace music page for 'music' created from 'cat [some file] > /dev/audio'. I uploaded two files, and on the third one, myspace claimed it was copyright and locked the page up. It's _still_ locked up. Years later. Because whatever the hell they use to determine copyright screwed up.

Re:yea...great.

[Tubal-Cain]

Ubuntu won't let me try that even with sudo.

Re:yea...great.

[Urza9814]

That's 'cause Ubuntu sucks. Get Mandriva. lol

Re:yea...great.

[totally bogus dude]

If you're doing "sudo cat foo > /dev/audio", the redirection (i.e. opening /dev/audio for writing) occurs under whatever user you're logged in as, not as root. This is because file descriptor redirection is sorted out by the shell before the command is actually invoked. I would expect most desktop users to have write access to the audio device though so that may not be the problem.

Re:yea...great.

[Rangataua]

Try mpg123 instead:

cat <file> | mpg123 -

Re:yea...great.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's probably because you're trying to create a file in /dev, and you don't have the permission to do so (see the other post for why sudo won't help you here: > is filtered out of the command before it is passed to sudo). However, you should be able to do:

cat foo > /dev/dsp

Provided that no other app is using the sound card (or you have a decent card that supports hardware mixing)

Re:yea...great.

[Anonymous Coward]

try cat file > /dev/dsp

Re:yea...great.

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI, it's RedHat based distros that do not follow the standards. They fuck everything up and clueless people like you think it's normal.

Ever get the feeling every single other (non-RedHat) distro is broken? Maybe it's not them.

Re:yea...great.

[slimjim8094]

was [some file] named britney_spears_song.wav? ;)

Re:yea...great.

[TheGratefulNet]

'cat [some file] > /dev/audio'

[balou_the_bear] "maaan! what a SWINGING beat!" [/balou]

those cats are really, like, with-it, man.

Re:yea...great.

[halcyon1234]

It probably just thought you were ripping off Lou Reed's last record in his RCA contract

IP Spoofing anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

When the ip's of all the government agencies and commercial entities get out, the hackers and spoofers are going to have a really fun time downloading copyrighted material under the spoofed ip addresses. This is going to bring down NZ's internet system and the government will be shown for the sub morons that they are.

This is beautiful....

didn't he run British Airways?

[Trepidity]

Wikipedia confirms, but since being made a life peer in 1983, that's now Baron King to you.

Which of course requires a similarly flippant American comment about how in the UK, "industrial baron" and "robber baron" and so on aren't just figures of speech!

little australia

[timmarhy]

ahh NZ, i'm going to burn some karma here and state the truth - NZ is Australia if Australia was run by women. just hear me out, all their top bureaucrats are women, business is owned by women hell this crazy plan is brought to you by a female minister.

Re:little australia

[MassiveForces]

It's more of an Australia run by socialists, though with the current parties recently put in power there's hope for some good change in NZ by National while you Australia will no doubt suffer more tyranny from Labour.

I think the real problem here is that NZ lacks a decent constitution, it has none. More cause for becoming a republic.

Re:little australia

[Carewolf]

The UK doesn't have a constitution either. That's a feature of common law countries. Only the US has both common law and a constitution. I would be surprised if Australia or Canada have constitutions.

Re:little australia

[NeuralAbyss]

Australia's had a constitution since federation, back in 1901.

Re:little australia

[hemebond]

I don't understand your post. This law was brought in by a Labour Party minister, and supported whole-heartedly by the National Party ministers. Meanwhile, a more socialist party, the Greens, would repeal section 92A of the Act.

So... are you full of shit?

Re:little australia

[Domstersch]

You do realise every single MP for National voted for the Copyright Reform Bill, right? You realise that they strongly support section 92A, right?

Re:little australia

[GodKingAmit]

Canada has a constitution

Re:little australia

[MassiveForces]

It means National adopted a lot of Labour's policies to get votes. I don't think National or more importantly Act would have supported something like this. But I still hope that National will do better than Labour in times to come.

Re:little australia

[BiggerIsBetter]

ahh NZ, i'm going to burn some karma here and state the truth - NZ is Australia if Australia was run by women. just hear me out, all their top bureaucrats are women, business is owned by women hell this crazy plan is brought to you by a female minister.

To be fair, we have just got a new Government, headed by men. Tizard is from the previous government, and is not even an MP any more. I urge the National government - and her replacement, Chris Finlayson - to stop this bill in it's tracks. I live in Wellington (the capital) so when is the protest?

Re:little australia

[Aussie]

Australia has a constitution, it's a Bill of Rights we are missing.

Re:little australia

[AK Marc]

Only the US has both common law and a constitution.

I think that common law is in direct violation of any reasonable constitution. The Constitution provides that the laws must be equitably applied. However, common law provides that laws found to be confusing may have their meaning and application changed by the courts after written, with no changes to the written law. For me to be required to follow case law which isn't clearly defined, rather than statutory law requires an inconsistent state of law in direct violation of the Constitution. But it's so ingrained that anyone with enough law studies to understand the argument is already indoctrinated. I guess I got out of that by taking classes at a law school without actually being enrolled. But then, I hear "you didn't make it far enough to *understand* how it all works." That it works to maintain a governmental system doesn't mean it's necessarily consistent, but that argument also falls on deaf ears...

Re:little australia

[w0mprat]

New Zealanders certainly act as if we have our rights protected by a constitution. We speak our minds and generally take a lot of liberty as if we were entitled to it. Yet most Kiwis would be shocked to learn they don't have the legal protection they think they do, it's a rather well kept secret.

Re:little australia

[w0mprat]

"To be fair, we have just got a new Government, headed by men."

Our out-going female leader had more balls than most male politicians.

Re:little australia

[compro01]

Canada has had a constitution since 1867 (the British North America Act, a.k.a. the Constitution Act, 1867), which was then patriated with the Constitution Act (and accompanying Canada Act) of 1982.

Re:little australia

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course they would supported it. First of all, National got in with almost no policies. Secondly they always support business, regardless of any adverse effects it may have on the average person.

Re:little australia

[Kalriath]

What bill? I just searched for it, and no bill exists (except a modification to the commissioning/work for hire section, and a provision requiring royalty payments for resale of artworks - what the fuck is with that?). The Copyright Act itself has already been amended with the New Technologies Amendment Act, except that Section 92A has mysteriously disappeared. This whole story is a non-story.

revenge

[fourclaw]

If there is no appeal process and no punishment for false accusation. A person might create some music (quality does not matter) copyright it then accuse every riaa ip address of pirating it then do the same to every politician that voted yes on this bill

No. Actually it doesn't

[91degrees]

"The controversial act provides 'Guilt Upon Accusation,"

The law is vaguely drafted, but requires ISPs to reasonably implement a disconnection policy. Now, I don't know about you, but since everyone thinks that immediate disconnection upon accusation is not reasonable, this is probably not a reasonable disconnection policy.

Ohh no!

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck I live in NZ. I have only been here for 3 years and already want to move to aus.

Here comes the encryption!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like Tor and I2P are going to become very popular in New Zealand!

Yes, Actually, it does.

[thesupraman]

You are missing the subtle half of the plan.

If the policy implemented by an ISP is found upon later inspection to be too lenient on the 'evil pirates' then the ISP becomes legally responsible for the copyright infringement.

Then again, if someone gets incorrectly disconnected, I suspect the ISP could at worst be forced to reinstate their connection, IF they can prove this.

So, the only 'sane' thing an ISP can do is disconnect anyone at the slightest hint of trouble - anything else could result in the blame falling in their lap.

I bet the ISPs are very happy at providing free policing services to the music/movie industries.. after all, they make SO much more money :/.

Re:Yes, Actually, it does.

[mqsoh]

So, the only 'sane' thing an ISP can do is disconnect anyone at the slightest hint of trouble - anything else could result in the blame falling in their lap.

That would be great news because we could expect corporate backing for rejecting laws like this.

I bet the ISPs are very happy at providing free policing services to the music/movie industries.. after all, they make SO much more money :/.

You're right that they seem very happy to help those industries out, but they aren't altruistic. There's some other reason. (I don't know what it is.)

Re:Yes, Actually, it does.

[Anonymous Coward]

You are missing the subtle half of the plan.

If the policy implemented by an ISP is found upon later inspection to be too lenient on the 'evil pirates' then the ISP becomes legally responsible for the copyright infringement.

Then again, if someone gets incorrectly disconnected, I suspect the ISP could at worst be forced to reinstate their connection, IF they can prove this.

So, the only 'sane' thing an ISP can do is disconnect anyone at the slightest hint of trouble - anything else could result in the blame falling in their lap.

I bet the ISPs are very happy at providing free policing services to the music/movie industries.. after all, they make SO much more money :/.

Yes but ISP's don't WANT to disconect customers in droves.

How many lawsuits has the RIAA filed? some 17 thousand?

Thats actual court appearances, pretty impressive.

What happens when they can use form letters? How many more would be disconnected?

at 17000 customers at 50 bucks a month your looking at 850,000 dollars a month in lost revenue. over 10 million dollars a year.

Oh yea the ISP's are just dieing to cooperate with the media companies on this one.

Re:Yes, Actually, it does.

[HeronBlademaster]

The problem is that they're not happy to do it, they just feel that they have no choice. Who likes spending money to do someone else's job under threat of lawsuits?

Re:Yes, Actually, it does.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yea the ISP's are just dieing to cooperate with the media companies on this one.

TelstraClear's head of corporate services, Matthew Bolland, has stated that from 1 November 2008, TelstraClear are taking down websites upon a single accusation of copyright breach: "We don't check or verify," he says "We take it down." ISPs like TelstraClear do not and cannot identify copyright infringement which is why this law forces them to take actions such as these.

Re:Yes, Actually, it does.

[Anonymous Coward]

Then again, if someone gets incorrectly disconnected, I suspect the ISP could at worst be forced to reinstate their connection, IF they can prove this.

reviewing claims takes time, and money

there's no incentive for an ISP to sit down and review your evidence that proves you innocence - so they won't get doing so.

Simple solution

[Cyberllama]

Find out what ISP's each lawmaker responsible for this bill is using (by gathering email addresses or whatnot) and then contact those ISPs and inform them of the gross copyright violations said lawmakers are guilty of. Let's see how long a law like this lasts when *they* suddenly find themselves disconnected without any means of appeal.

Easy solution

[jazman]

(unless there's something more formal in NZ law about accusation; maybe you can't formally accuse without evidence or something, in which case this is a lot less of a problem than the article makes out. IANANZL(IFINEAUKL).)

Just accuse back. Then your accuser will also be disconnected, and it'll be considerably worse for them as a company than for you as an individual.

When you are asked for proof you've got them, because if proof is needed before your accusers can be disconnected then you have ample grounds for demanding equal treatment, i.e. proof against you before your disconnection can take place.

Stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

As a New Zealander I am surprised that I haven't heard of this before.
And all I have to say is th....---

Re:No. Actually it doesn't

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah it does mate, "as ISPs transmit data across their own network (for their users) they're open to copyright infringement claims themselves unless they comply with [section 92]. ISPs are therefore put into the role of policing copyright infringement accusations without judicial oversight against their customers, all while risking their business if they get it wrong. It's in this impossible situation and this poorly thought out law that bypasses the courts that ISPs are saying they will be forced to disconnect customers. When you bypass the courts and due process in favour of a free market of risk-averse ISPs the true nature of [section 92] becomes clear. Guilt Upon Accusation". it's not as clear as 92c but it's the same in practice.

The actual legalese

[Anonymous Coward]

*snip*

Internet service provider liability

92A Internet service provider must have policy for terminating accounts of repeat infringers

(1) An Internet service provider must adopt and reasonably implement a policy that provides for termination, in appropriate circumstances, of the account with that Internet service provider of a repeat infringer.

(2) In subsection (1), repeat infringer means a person who repeatedly infringes the copyright in a work by using 1 or more of the Internet services of the Internet service provider to do a restricted act without the consent of the copyright owner.

*/snip*

Interpret it as you will, I personally don't see it as a "I'm an idiot MPAA lawyer and I say that whoever was on 123.231.6.250 at 1850hrs NZDT downloaded the latest Britney music video on the youtoobsmachine so therefore he/she/it is guilty!!! Jail for a trillion years!"* like the FUD being bandied about. It's flawed and retarded, sure, but it's not a sign of the apocalypse. Maybe some of the wannabe-faux-lawyers here can decipher it otherwise?

As I read it, the idiots at *AA still have to complain with a cease and desist orgy, the ISP's will just be legally bound to give multiple warnings before disconnecting a user.

As it currently is in NZ, a few ISP's will send you a warning and you simply respond with "NZ is none of their business or juristiction, tell them to bugger off and read the Berne Convention" and said ISP's will tend to leave it at that. Other ISP's shrug and say "not our responsibility Mr RIAA-tard, so kindly go and stab yourself in the face with a cricket bat." This change seeks to sort this situation out to make things clearer for all parties involved, it's just a shame that it seemingly puts too much power on the side of the accuser. Still, not as much power as the uninformed blogots seem to think.

My personal feeling is that there is a disconnect between the *AA, their friends and the consumers. They want to keep throwing physical media at us. What did the SACD vs DVDA battle show us (and DCC vs MD before that)? People were satisfied with mp3's or CD's. "Good enough" is exactly that, especially when "good enough" goes hand in hand with "easy". HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray was the same deal: Plain ol DVD is good enough for most people. Once they bump up to a 50"+ screen, then sure, the resolution vs viewing distance is required. Apart from that, the only interest I had in either format was as a mass storage media. And I still don't want to sit through 10 minutes of "Downloading is stealing" BS when I just want to watch the damn movie that I paid for.

The *AA crowd missed the boat on capitalising on the internet as a delivery platform, and because of their litigious nonsense, we're probably 5-10 years behind where we should be. Assuming an appropriate platform would have driven a higher rate of broadband expansion than we've had. Spotify without the stupid country requirements might be a good start.

* Jail for a trillion years in NZ is like three months real jail time

Re:The actual legalese

[holloway]

See the responses to this comment

Re:The actual legalese

[MarkTina]

Sadly I doubt quoting the Berne Convention would work as New Zealand is a signatory.

Re:The actual legalese

[Kalriath]

Yeah, but here's a copy paste of the sections in force of the Copyright Act, with amendments included:

Internet service provider liability

92B Internet service provider liability if user infringes copyright

92C Internet service provider liability for storing infringing material

Notice how 92A is gone?

Re:The actual legalese

[Anonymous Coward]

*snip*

* Jail for a trillion years in NZ is like three months real jail time

Does this mean that the numbers in NZ go:
              1, 2, 12 trillion
?

What about company internet links?

[thesupraman]

An interesting question is what happens if a companies internet link is used to download 'copyrighted material'?

Surely by this same measure, that companies link will be removed and they will not be allowed to have one? That should make staying in business interesting.

Should, for example, some foreign 'pirate' decide to share a large quantity of copyright material, log the IPs downloading it, scan for NZ companies static IP addresses, then forward all of that data to the ISPs/Authorities involved it would create quite a problem..

Could ALL the large companies/govt. dept. in New Zealand guarantee none of their staff will do such a thing?

That is after all much the same situation as cutting off a families internet connection when their 10 year old discovers music downloading before their parents notice (quite a common occurrence I suspect..).

We're the great fudgers

[kaiwai]

yeap, we're the great fudgers - we avoid confrontation, heck, recent study showed that if New Zealand was offered a benevolent dictator and ran things better than now - most would ok it.

Sure, there will be a few loud people who will kick up a stink, but the rest of NZ will comtinue moving. The anti-smacking bill isn't going to get removed, nor any of the other reforms introduced by Labour. Both parties talk about change but the reality is that they keep the status quo once they get it - then add more of their own laws to the sporgusboard.

Its unfortunate that the green's are the only part who have their IT sorted out - and yet their economic and social policy royally sucks. How come there are so many idiots on the right - specifically, complete ludites when it comes to IT?

Re:We're the great fudgers

[MaskedSlacker]

I don't know whether to read the beginning as a troll or as serious. If the latter, I am horrified.

Re:We're the great fudgers

[Xest]

What happened to the great New Zealand from World War II that quite courageously proclaimed after Britain entered the war something along the lines of "Where Britain goes, we stand by them"? ...Oh wait perhaps that's actually the problem here ;)

I always figured New Zealand was a pretty liberal country, is that not the case?

Re:We're the great fudgers

[Petrushka]

What happened to the great New Zealand from World War II that quite courageously proclaimed after Britain entered the war something along the lines of "Where Britain goes, we stand by them"?

Hey, if someone were to invite us to become a full member of the EU, I'm sure we'd be willing.

Re:We're the great fudgers

[Anonymous Coward]

That entirely depends on what you mean by "liberal".

It has completely different meanings depending on the context and your point of view and none of them bear any resemblance to the "liberal" from American politics.

Re:We're the great fudgers

[KDR_11k]

I think I've read about that in more countries than just NZ. Maybe in part people imagine a dictator running stuff well to be a dictator who follows their own political persuation or something. Generally humans tend to prefer hierarchies (even in a group of equals you'll quickly see a de facto hierarchy forming with some taking initiative and others just following their orders) and as such will accept a ruler even if it limits freedoms (though people would probably assume they'd only lose freedoms they don't care for like the freedom to elect someone else which would be unnecessary if the ruler was really a competent guy).

Of course in practice dictators don't tend to run things well (though I heard jokes that the only politician to ever keep his election promises was Hitler).

Re:We're the great fudgers

[Seriousity]

Too right mate. To my shame, the thought ofttimes occurs to me that as a nation, us Kiwis are the biggest bunch of complacent sheep out there.

We can tell our fellow New Zealanders about what needs fixing in this country until we're blue in the face, and the majority will say "Nah mate she'll be right" and keep drinking tui and worshipping the All Blacks.

I saw Richard Stallman's copyright vs community speech at the Otago University, and a speaker from the Greens party did the introduction - she made it quite clear that her party was genuinely more concerned about the rest about IT issues; however she mixed tripe about intellectual property and indigenous rights into her speech, which made her look like a silly fool who had no idea what she was talking about, and was trying to make copyright a pulpit for her crappy social policies. Stallman was making faces of agony behind her, and she seemed to have a hard time trying to figure out what we were all laughing about.

Needless to say, the first thing RMS did after her speech was debunk 90% of it.
/rant

Re:We're the great fudgers

[Shakrai]

ecent study showed that if New Zealand was offered a benevolent dictator and ran things better than now - most would ok it.

The only problem with that is that for every Augustus or Marcus Aurelius you also you have a Nero or Commodus.

I'll take my checks, balances and inalienable rights over a "benevolent" dictator any day of the week.

Re:We're the great fudgers

[quantum bit]

Both parties talk about change but the reality is that they keep the status quo once they get it

The status is not quo.

The world is a mess, and I just need to... rule it.

Re:We're the great fudgers

[Anonymous Coward]

There's nothing wrong with benevolent dictators...the problem is knowing if they're benevolent before they get started.

Re:We're the great fudgers

[Haoie]

If the Greens were a little less idealistic with policy, I figure everyone would [or rather, should] vote for them.

Another 3 years, eh?

Re:We're the great fudgers

[MaskedSlacker]

It's not the benevolent dictator that's the problem, it's his (or her) successors.

Re:We're the great fudgers

[HiThere]

Augustus wasn't all that benevolent. And Nero wasn't all that bad (unless you were a christian, and thus a designated scapegoat). Or prominent in his circle of acquaintances. (He may or may not have poisoned his mother, but she deserved it. She was much worse than he was.) There's a rumor that Nero appointed his horse to the Senate, but this may have improved the average intelligence. (More seriously, he may have been making a point over who held power. And it may well have been total fabrication. I couldn't find any evidence.)

And you left out Caligula.

Re:We're the great fudgers

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah I'm a kiwi, and I'd (seriously) take a good dictator over democracy any day. Look what democracy did to to America.

Re:We're the great fudgers

[dangitman]

Somebody stood next to Stallman on a stage, and came across as more ridiculous than him? That's unpossible!

Re:We're the great fudgers

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't find a reference because it was Caligula who planned to appoint a horse as Consul (The consuul was, among other things, President of the Senate).
That's at Suetonnius, Life of Caligula 55.3

why dose NZ care so much?

[segagman]

I just did a quick search top hit i clicked at http://www.rianz.org.nz/rianz/chart.asp thats NZ's top 50 and at a quick glance there all American. So why dose NZ care so much about American artist/profits? Is this just a test bed for the MPAA/RIAA's new tactic because they fired media sentry? Also in my opinion these people are dinosaurs and dont realize it is to late. Pandora's box will never be closed.

A Kiwi point of view

[ESarge]

As a Kiwi I'm very embarrased by this legislation. I did write a submission against the more egregious bits but was ignored. If it helps any, the guilt by accusation bit was added at the last minute before the final vote and some NZ Internet people have pointed out the problems to Judith Tizard, the then minister responsible and she was rather chastened.

It will be interesting to see what happens. Enforcement of those sections of the bill has been delayed while the ISPs try and sort out a code of practice with the government. As has been pointed out this now becomes a nuclear option. I would suggest that anybody who gets hit with this will just get their friends to send out disconnection notices to everybody they don't like.

Therefore, I do expect the ISPs to exercise some discretion. However, if anybody is happy to fund a court case then the ISPs can be forced to enforce the disconnection notices.

I really don't think this law will last long as written.

I'm very glad to have emigrated away though.

Re:A Kiwi point of view

[baker_tony]

I've been living away from NZ for the past 8 years and the pathetic lack of quality, cheap, un-capped Internet is keeping me away I'm afraid. Laws like this do my head in further, could be a slit throat for some companies!

Re:A Kiwi point of view

[Kalriath]

As a Kiwi I'm very embarrased by this legislation. I did write a submission against the more egregious bits but was ignored. If it helps any, the guilt by accusation bit was added at the last minute before the final vote and some NZ Internet people have pointed out the problems to Judith Tizard, the then minister responsible and she was rather chastened.

The submissions succeeded. Section 92A (what all this hoo-hah is about does not exist in the current in-force law.

no snakes - without legs that is`

[Anonymous Coward]

I,who am New Zealand born, and who have served the Australian armed services long enough to receive a military pension [10 years navy, 12 years army] now find myself without a home worthy of taking my wife back home to.

It was always doubtful that I would return but I knew my heart was there when I started learning Maori -- which was actively discouraged when I went to school back in New Zealand.

I'm not the first to lose a home, I won't be the last, but I hope that my army time made it possible for others to go home - specifically in Timor.

Re:How to disconnect any Kiwi's Internet Connectio

[Rangataua]

That would be the former member of Parliament Judith Tizard (she lost her seat during the last General Election in November). Now would be a really good time for all New Zealand based Slashdot readers to contact Steven Joyce (who is the minister for Communications and Information Technology). It would probably also be a good idea to contact your local electorate MP to voice your concern.

with drug dogs in concerts sure

[cheekyboy]

The more the police have drug dogs in parties/concerts the better.

Then all the young people will stop going, and start making their own ipod parties at home.

I mean seriously, paying $120 to $250 for a concert, yeah maybe once, but then dont bother, get 10 friends, spend $500 on booze, have fun. Screw the corporate party machine.

Out of government reach?

[Epsillon]

I can't help thinking there's a larger issue at play here. It seems that governments the world over have suddenly realised that we were serious about a space beyond government control and are taking steps to "rectify" this and using the likes of the MPAA/RIAA as their diversion. I wonder if the various industry associations know they're being used? Let's look at what we've got so far:

• Filesharing being rapidly beaten down by oppressive and draconian laws
• Filtering and censorship akin to that of China's great firewall in supposedly "free" countries
• Wiretaps, supposedly illegal, being inserted into ISPs and backbone nodes
• Encryption becoming dangerous by dint of the UK's stupid RIPA which will throw you in prison if you can't decrypt something for the police

And that's just off the top of my head. Are the governments becoming threatened by the Internet's open architechture? More to the point, how far are they going to go to destroy it before we decide enough is enough? The biggest problem for them, as I see it, is that the Internet, with millions of people in open and free contact, has the power to keep them honest. They don't seem to like that, do they?

Re:Out of government reach?

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who has actually forgotten an encryption key I would be worried to live in the UK where I could go to jail simply because I forgot something and can't decrypt my files for police.

Believe it mate

[kaiwai]

Believe it mate. New Zealand is in the current sorry state thanks to the two major parties doing very little to improve on the status quo.

Re:How to disconnect any Kiwi's Internet Connectio

[NoobixCube]

Don't make any promises about where you'll put them on the ballot right now. Human stupidity, greed and ignorance know no bounds. No matter how stupid you think a public official is, chances are you'll come across one stupider right when it's least convenient for you. Judith Tizard might become the most educated of a reject bin full of dunces by the time this is over.

Come 2012, all politicians will get Raptured

[cheekyboy]

Jesus will come back like T1000 Arnie, and make sure all pollies, are gonnies. (While smoking gods own green goodness a spliff).

If god exists, we the people win, pollies will be raptured. If god doesnt, then screw em all, we can do what we like - no sins exist.

Either way, all the old useless idiots will die off, just hope todays youth and 30+ people are cool enough.

Re:Come 2012, all politicians will get Raptured

[ben0207]

To be pedantic: Arnie was never a T1000. That was Robert Patrick. Arnie was a T-101, T-800 and some other bullshit I ignored in the third film.

Re:Come 2012, all politicians will get Raptured

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently you didn't ignore the third film, because they never referred to him as a T-101 except in the third film. Previously they said "Cyberdyne Systems Model 101", but not T-101.

Reality check

[Anonymous Coward]

For all that it is worth, this is what is actually happening. The plummetting profits are blamed on the filesharers, and they (or randomly picked scapegoats) are sued for compensation.

This in turn stops people from listening in on anything, and profits drop further, and file sharers are made more responsible for that.

We'll eventually get the death penalty for file sharing, and no evidence required.

The original witch hunt all over.

All musicians are sex addict drug addicts

[cheekyboy]

If all/most musicians are crack/heroin addicts, then arrest them all put em all in prison for 30 years plus, then no music will be made at all.

Suck on that RIAA, your $$$$ are the proceeds of drugs. Can the DEA arrest the RIAA for spreading the positive aspects of drugs, like an advertizer.?

Concerned Kiwi

[speedingant]

This is appalling. The fact that general users are being processed as guilty before any kind of court action is disgusting. No chance to defend yourself with actual facts. If this law gets bought into play, we may as well bring in burn the witch while we're at it.

Re:Concerned Kiwi

[CavemanKiwi]

Only sanctioned corporations can burn witches.

BTW I completely agree with your comment.

I find this deeply worrying

[shin0r]

This is disconcerting. Why is it always the stick and not the carrot with these people?

The entertainment industry treats its customers as criminals. The real crime is the price of a DVD or album. Piracy will exist as long as the prices and distribution models remain untenable.

I hope the UK government never act so heavy-handedly. My own ISP, Super Awesome Broadband http://superawesomebroadband.com/ is totally opposed to such bullshit.

Has anyone actually read the legislation?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2008/0027/latest/DLM1122643.html#DLM1122643

It doesn't seem as bad as some posters here are making out.

Re:How to disconnect any Kiwi's Internet Connectio

[Timinithis]

So, why not just send notices for every government IP, music company and others accusing them of infringement. By law they would lose access immediately.

Would be terrible if the government could no longer conduct business with their lobbi...briber...umm...constituents.

nail the politicians who voted for it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Since there is no penalty for false accusation just accuse all the politicians who voted for the thing... The will fix it quick!

Re:nail the politicians who voted for it.

[djmurdoch]

They will probably be happy to be off the Internet, because they won't get so many complaints from their constituents.

Falsely accuse businesses, especially those who are members of RIANZ.

Re:nail the politicians who voted for it.

[francium de neobie]

That won't work. Politicians mostly think the Internet is just a bunch of tubes.

Re:nail the politicians who voted for it.

[Kalriath]

Actually, there's a penalty.

Use it against them

[Anonymous Coward]

The obvious thing to do is to start reporting government departments, politicians, media companies etc. and have them summarily disconnected. Start perhaps with 202.175.143.76, 203.96.69.2 and 202.160.117.122, for instance.

Time to accuse the RIAA

[Anonymous Coward]

:)

Corruption

[Anonymous Coward]

It's too bad that politicians can't be found guilty of corruption through the same process.

Re:How to disconnect any Kiwi's Internet Connectio

[mpe]

It would probably also be a good idea to contact your local electorate MP to voice your concern.

Best not to try and email them since they are unlikely to have an ISP connection for much longer.

Put Internet Rights into the Constitution

[wikinerd]

The citizens of NZ should ask for a constitutional amendment to include internet rights as a basic human right, just as Greece did in its 2001 constitution:

1. All persons have the right to information [...] 2. All persons have the right to participate in the Information Society. Facilitation of access to electronically transmitted information, as well as of the production, exchange and diffusion thereof, constitutes an obligation of the State [...]

Of course even if something is codified into the constitution it could be limited by law (as it does in the case above if you read the PDF) or not implemented at all, but it is in general a good idea even just for the sake of the symbolism itself to have internet rights codified into the constitution.

Re:Put Internet Rights into the Constitution

[Anonymous Coward]

New Zealand doesn't even have a constitution, so thank goodness we won't have to worry about that problem. Phew!

Re:Put Internet Rights into the Constitution

[Anonymous Coward]

The citizens of NZ should ask for a constitutional amendment to include internet rights as a basic human right, just as Greece did in its 2001 constitution:

New Zealand has no constitution. We have a ripped up bit of paper called the Treaty of Waitangi and a heap of F***ed up laws and by-laws. We have no real constitution as the likes of the US.
Sure its one of the better places to live in the world but the government pretends to control and we pretend to live to their stupid laws (not that most of the country does anyway).
I'm glad I did't vote national - John Key really is NZ's first elected female prime minister.

Re:Put Internet Rights into the Constitution

[MarkTina]

A true American response :-) Here people are supposed to do as they are told, not do what they want ... in theory ... If you'd like to see what rights we do have, go here : http://www.justice.govt.nz/pubs/other/pamphlets/bill_of_rights/bill_rights.pdf Don't worry it's a very short document ;-)

Re:Put Internet Rights into the Constitution

[Anonymous Coward]

AC because I don't have an account. NZ doesn't have a constitution - there's the Treaty, and the Constitution Act, but no entrenched constitution.

Re:Put Internet Rights into the Constitution

[Anonymous Coward]

The citizens of NZ should ask for a constitutional amendment to include internet rights as a basic human right, just as Greece did in its 2001 constitution:

Thats well and good except for one small detail. New Zealand does not have a constitution.

Re:Put Internet Rights into the Constitution

[Anonymous Coward]

As New Zealand does not have a constitution, this would be difficult to accomplish.

Summary disconnection from the Net?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well that is much better than the "summary executions" the RIAA is pushing for.

Coming Soon: Internet Tax

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Are the governments becoming threatened by the Internet's open architechture? More to the point, how far are they going to go to destroy it before we decide enough is enough?

They will try to regulate it, like they regulate other things: they will tax it.

And, no, I don't like the idea either, but I have this ugly feeling that this is the next step that governments will be taking.

Anonymous liar

[DaveV1.0]

The in question:

Internet service provider liability
"92A Internet service provider must have policy for terminating accounts of repeat infringers

        * " (1) An Internet service provider must adopt and reasonably implement a policy that provides for termination, in appropriate circumstances, of the account with that Internet service provider of a repeat infringer.
        * " (2) In subsection (1), repeat infringer means a person who repeatedly infringes the copyright in a work by using 1 or more of the Internet services of the Internet service provider to do a restricted act without the consent of the copyright owner.

Oh, look, "repeat infringers". Nothing about "guilt on accusation".

Looks like the submitter is just another asshole using lies to feed the outrage machine.

Re:Anonymous liar

[HeronBlademaster]

Actually you're being an idiot for no reason. Assume *AA sends this notice:

Dear ISP,

Your subscriber on IP 123.456.789.1 repeatedly infringed on our copyrights at 4:23PM local time by downloading the following files:

- BarneyTheDinosaur.mpeg
- BritneySpearsInConcert.zip
- ILikePieYesIDo.mp3

Please disconnect the customer attached to said IP address immediately.

Love,
Your friendly neighborhood *AA

The "repeat infringer" clause adds no additional restrictions over a first-time infringer. After all, who determines what "repeat" means? Does it mean multiple notices? Does it mean multiple files? 92A certainly doesn't define it.

Re:Anonymous liar

[Petrushka]

Oh, look, "repeat infringers". Nothing about "guilt on accusation".

To be fair, versions of the bill that were circulating before it was passed did indeed provide for guilt on accusation, absolutely explicitly, and also explicitly without any recourse or appeal process. This was up until it went to committee for the last time. Unfortunately I can no longer find the older version of the text anywhere online, and I deleted a copy I had on HDD when the act was passed.

The relevant section (92) was by far the most heavily debated part of the bill in the last round of committee discussion, and it's a lot better now.

Re:Anonymous liar

[Petrushka]

I take it back, it wasn't debated at all. I should have read more extensively. One of the speakers (Chris Finlayson, National) reports,

The Minister knows, and I certainly know, that we have all had approaches from various commercial entities, as a result of which the Minister has come up with a number of amendments.

In context it's pretty clear that the commercial entities he's referring to are ISPs.

Re:Anonymous liar

[Anonymous Coward]

How does one be noted as an infringer without ISP's actually looking at our internet traffic?

Re:Anonymous liar

[DaveV1.0]

To be fair? Basing one's submissions and comments on old information and not bothering to actually read what is being passed is fair?

I think not.

To be fair, the anonymous liar who submitted this piece of drek should have bothered to keep himself informed.

Re:Anonymous liar

[Petrushka]

I only meant fair in the sense that there was at one time good reason to be very, very scared of this bill. That time was a year ago.

As for this article's scare-mongering about the bill as enacted, on the whole I agree with you. (At the same time I also agree with the ISPs that the enacted bill is too vague, but that's hardly grounds for panic.)

Re:Anonymous liar

[Kalriath]

For bonus points, Section 92A which you quoted is not even present at all in the Copyright Act.

Reverse prosecution

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are guilty upon association for file sharing then...

Share only CC licensed works and when the ISP cuts you off sue them and the government for rights infringement for preventing you from sharing Creative Commons works.

Also use P2P for FLOSS sharing and again sue them if the cut you off.

All you commonwealth countries...

[swb]

...considering a real constitution?

Re:All you commonwealth countries...

[mjwx]

...considering a real constitution?

You mean like that thing that's "just a piece of paper". It's clearly done the US a world of good over the last 8 years.

I'll keep my non politicised, proof requiring courts instead, but thanks for your concern.

Maybe now it is time to start work on a real cure

[symbolset]

Like the abolition of copyright. In self defense.

Simple solution to force-change the law

[freedom_india]

1) An individual developer puts up an interesting and very-useful piece of JavaScript/Java/RPG code that specifically appeals to the RIAA/MPAA website designer. He puts up a small 3-point font legal notice stating that the code is free as in beer BUT the user MUST put up the original writer's(the author) notice and acknowledge the copyright remains with author.
2) Advertise this code heavily. Wait until RIAA/MPAA web designer contractor downloads, rips off the copyright and passes it on as RIAA code.
3) Establish repeated infringment of the code with proofs. (The law requires repeated infringment).
4) Send an email to RIAA in Latin or Esperanto or Ancient Italian (UN Languages) seeking cease-and-desist notice. Send an English copy of the same notice to local Justice of Peace (Talk to her beforehand).
5) RIAA will definitely not reply (hey who understands Latin or Ancient Italian?)
6) Wait until time expires, get the justice to sign an order establishing RIAA as "guilty".
7) Send the notice to ISP and ask them to disconnect and NOT reconnect RIAA.
8) Send copy of notice to all ISP so that RIAA cannot connect to internet now or in future.
9) Watch as RIAA hurriedly buys up a few parlimentarians/congressmen and changes the law.

 

Re:Simple solution to force-change the law

[mjwx]

That would work if the RIAA or their international equivalents weren't immune to the law. It's a case of do as we say not as we do.

Don't forget music blogs!

[tpz]

4. Don't listen to top 40 radio

Then the question becomes, what should you listen to? Where should you get your music from, if you're to stop buying new music?

I haven't listened to the radio in years, let alone crappy top 40 radio, except for when my alarm clock goes off and is tuned to that crap so as to cause me to jump out of bed to turn the damn thing off. :D And guess what, I'm up to my ears in new music. Drowning in it, actually.

Here's how: There are tonnes of great music blogs out there, and I visit them regularly (via RSS, of course.)

Here's why you can do the same and feel good about it: Music blogs (the legit ones, at least) are provided license to release tracks on a promotional basis, so download away!

Pirates

[phorm]

How does the RIAA get their goods to New Zealand? By Ship?

Maybe everyone can chip in and hire a few "real" pirates to capture a few boatloads of CD's. I wonder how much the Somalis charge.

NZ vs Australia

[chris-chittleborough]

The post and the first FA are misleading. The law does not create a presumption of guilt; it just requires every ISP to "adopt and reasonably implement a policy that provides for termination, in appropriate circumstances, of repeat infringer['s accounts]". It's a really bad law, with no explanation of "appropriate circumstances", how the ISP is supposed to decide that a customer is a copyright "infringer", etc ... but it is not as terrible as people are saying.

Meanwhile, here in Australia the Federal government still plans to introduce a censorship system that is as bad as people are saying.

So the latest tussle in the ongoing trans-Tasman rivalry sees Australia easily win the Stupendous Stupidity in Internet Governance award for summer 2008/9.

Re:NZ vs Australia

[Kalriath]

Actually, it no longer even requires that. Section 92A never passed, and that section is the one requiring this.

Define infringer?

[phorm]

What defines somebody as an infringer?

Accuse the Prime Minister...

[gkearney]

John Key of infringement and have his internat (202.160.117.122) disconnected. See how long it takes to have some method of dealing with false accusations then.

Civil Disobediance 2009 edition

[Anonymous Coward]

I was just going to state the same thing. Once the entire country is knocked off the internet, perhaps they will see the wisdom of having to prove accusations before making judgements. Start with a listing of their governmental leaders, their offices, etc etc.

Sadly, they won't be able to email anyone regarding whatever lessons they learn.

What's the difference?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is it a copyright infringement to download and listen to an mp3 you don't own, but not a copyright infringement to download and read a website you don't own?

Re:What's the difference?

[HeronBlademaster]

One could argue that, as the owner of the website's copyright, by making a website available to the public on a web server, you are granting viewers permission to download and view the website, and therefore it's not a copyright violation.

The difference (legally) is that the music copyright holder is not personally distributing the mp3, however the website copyright holder is personally distributing the website.

Well Damn it!

[Wellington Grey]

New Zealand was on the top of my non-crazy countries to move to list (here - NSFW, maybe) in nine months. Any other suggestions out there?

Re:Well Damn it!

[MarkTina]

Well your blog says you like to steal from churches .. you might have issues getting through the police checks before they let you live here ;-)

Fair copyright?

[cdrguru]

Absolutely the only "fair" copyright is one that gives me the right to copy any damn thing I please and do whatever I want with it. Including sharing it with the rest of the planet.

Of course, the side effect to this is Sony and WalMart will be the only entites that make any money from recorded music. All off the wages of people without high-speed Internet access or those too ignorant or guilt-ridden to download their music for free.

Why will those companies specifically get money while nobody else does? Simple. Without copyright they can publish collections and albums from the past without paying anyone for that privilege. Plenty of people (see above) will pay for CDs with such material on them, at least for a while.

Yes, this revenue source has to dry up - when the last person on Earth gets broadband or the last guilt-ridden over-30 person finally dies then there will be no more revenue from old recorded music.

NZ

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we please expand NZ to New Zealand, I keep reading it as "Nazi" every time I see it.

Don't confuse the UI with the Kernel

[SgtChaireBourne]

How is it that the other Anglo-Saxon countries are all WORSE than the US when it comes to digital rights and freedoms? Canada's version of the DMCA is worse, NZ has this, Australia has its wonderful new Great Barrier Firewall planned, and don't even get me started on Britain and encryption. Seriously?

Because they're all running a different kernel than you expect, despite the nice UI

None of those coountries have a tradition or legal framework for freedom of information. The former colonies, including the US, take their leglisative heritage directly from the UK. The UK there is the Thirty Year Rule, which mandates that even the most mundane material from public agencies is by default secret for thirty years. Further, all that is needed to extend the secrecy beyond the original thirty is a request from even the most petty bureaucrat.

Vellum, paper, microfilm all survive more or less for 30 years even with mediocre storage conditions. Maybe the information contained on those storage mediums will no longer be of use, but it will be there. Throw digital storage media into the mix and you have data-deletion-by-default: backup tapes last up to 15 year depending on quality and optimal storage and handling, including not just humidity and temperature control but also periodic respooling. CD-R, DVD+R,DVD-R, etc, use dyes which oxidize over a few short years. CD-RW, DVD+RW, DVD-RW use layers of polarizing chemicals, but aren't much better. Compact flash? who knows. Those problems are easily solved through period migration. The real problem has been and still is one of the data formats.

Contrast the Thirty Years Rule with the (former) Nordic countries where material from public agencies is by default not just publicly available but also published. That's not just a law, it's part of the constitution in Sweden, Finland and Norway. It's not new either, it originates from 1766 -- a decade before the US was founded -- as a result of ousting an administration that used control of information to lock out opposition, run up debt and ruin the economy, engage in graft, start unpopular wars, and generally avoid accountability. Hmmm. Dejavu...

Guilt Upon Accusation

[nurb432]

Cool.

So in 6 months when the ISP has ZERO customers and everyone is in jail the might get a clue.

Re:Guilt Upon Accusation

[HeronBlademaster]

They don't get jailed for infringement accusations, they just get their internet disconnected.

Re:Guilt Upon Accusation

[nurb432]

Yet.

The more stupid the better

[KissForThePeople]

I think that we shouldn't make a fuss about this, as people will soon realise that it's stupid, and won't bother enforcing it.

Horrid horrid law

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a Kiwi and I'm really disappointed by this law.

I have room mates. If they download, I get cut off. Totally stupid.

Imagine the UN Security Council dinner table

[Anonymous Coward]

teh intarwebz!
em fuggin bloggurzz r doin 2 much noize!
shut em with a fuggin set o'loaz!

And so we see these legislations getting passed all around the place - democracy was hidden oligarchy.
the oligarchs now find that real democracy is shining too much light on them and their deals.

This will be a fun prank...

[w0mprat]

Since there are no repercussions for false complaints... this will be the most popular prank of 2009.

Just like Salem

[Sta7ic]

Burn the filesharers! Burn! Burn, I say! There's a file sharer, and there's a file sharer... Allowing guilt with accusation creates an atmosphere no better than that of a witch hunt.

Our Lawmakers, in their own words:

[w0mprat]

Quoting from: TheyWorkForYou.co.nz blog

Section 92A - "cut off anyone who *might* be breaking the law"

Minister Judith Tizard made comments related to Section 92A of the Copyright Act half-way through a bfm radio interview on 10 November 2008. It required a response. Here's a transcript and my comments:

Interviewer: "The concern with the IT people though is that when they came and expressed concerns about, say, the potential that people would be disconnected from the Internet for civil offences - it perhaps was not the exchange of ideas which caused the main problem, but the feeling that you'd almost sort-of prejudged the case when you'd came and sat down with them."

Judith Tizard: "We'd made - the law had changed, they came about a year too late - and I tried to explain the process by which laws are made - and to be, to be, um, [sigh] to be specific there are a couple of people who are upset, ..."

Judith Tizard: "...most of the rest - and to be blunt they're talking bullshit - um, you know, if - yes it is easier for ISPs, Internet Service Providers, to cut off anyone who might be breaking the law, um, but you know, you can go to a library and use the Internet, and you can go to another ISP.

So my argument was that there was commercial sense in having a process, ar, by which we could - it's a combination of education and enforcement.

You can't say to copyright owners we will legalize the theft of your creative work, nor, could we say to citizens you can't use music that you own and, you know, an ipod together."

Will this get you out of a contract?

[WiiVault]

I don't know about NZ but here in the US many telecoms require you to sign a contract for a reduced rate. These generally range from a year to 2 years. If you get shut off doesn't that mean you are no longer bound by the contract. Seems kinda like a good way to get out contract. I wonder if I could get At&t to drop me if i tether my iPhone enough- cheap way to avoid the $179 termination fee.

Greens are the only party with a conscience.

[refactored]

Let's face it, there is only one party left in NZ with any conscience. That's the Greens.

Most (non-troll) slashdotters would be quite in agreement with all the Greens 'net policies and get a comfortable feeling that these guys actually understand and like the 'net.

The Main Stream Media tries damn hard to portray the Greens as dope smoking hippy nutters, but thats because they're the only party in parliament not deep in the pockets of big business.

If you actually look closely, the Greens are the only ones that give a shit about the environment, freedom, the poor and little guy. The rest of them only care about campaign funds, and a recursive frenzy between the media irrelavent sensationalized "human interest" stories and the politicians saying whatever ill-thought out thing that will make them look good on TV. Law and Order is a favourite.

Re:Greens are the only party with a conscience.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm hoping you are a troll - otherwise, you are obviously a complete and utter moron.....

the points you make:
Environment - they may mean well, but their lack of scientific knowledge about the environment leads them to support all kinds of ideas that sound good on the surface, but would in fact be detrimental to the environment. e.g. their endorsement of biofuels.
Freedom - Uhhhhh.... do you know anything about the greens at all?
poor and little guy - giving poor people hand outs does not help them in the long term, and would further cripple our country economically.
The poor and little guys need to be taught taht only they can help themselves - this includes better education, something that the greens oppose with a passion.

Re:Greens are the only party with a conscience.

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in New Zealand. Always have.

Here's something that I've noticed about the Greens: they don't need the media to paint them as nutjobs, because they do a damn fine job themselves.

Re:Greens are the only party with a conscience.

[refactored]

Gerry Brownlee? Is that you?

Environment - they may mean well, but their lack of scientific knowledge about the environment leads them to support all kinds of ideas that sound good on the surface, but would in fact be detrimental to the environment. e.g. their endorsement of biofuels.

Still gullibly eating MSM sound bites?

This tragic little Energy (Fuels, Levies, and References) Biofuel Obligation Repeal Bill, rushed through all its stages under urgency by a Minister of Energy and Resources who is ignorant of most aspects of his portfolio--apart from perhaps sexy coal--will do exactly the opposite of what the Minister says it will do. It will replace the potentially sustainable local industry--stable, secure and well known--with intermittent imports of biofuels from unknown sources, which are likely to include palm oil from South-east Asia grown where the tropical forests, the last refuge of the orang-utan, used to grow, and corn ethanol with a higher carbon footprint than petroleum, subsidised by the US Government. That is what this bill will do

Looks like she's done her homework to me.

Freedom - Uhhhhh.... do you know anything about the greens at all?

Green MP Keith Locke is calling for an inquiry into the Police Special Investigation Group following evidence it is planting paid informants in legitimate protest groups.

This morning the Sunday Star-Times carried details of activities of a Police informer who infiltrated and spied upon Greenpeace and groups active on animal rights, climate change and peace issues. The informer was operating under the instructions of the Police Special Investigation Group.

"Such Stasi tactics are unacceptable in New Zealand," said Mr Locke, the party's Police spokesperson.

"Peace and environmental protesters are the conscience of society, not enemies of the state.

I know it is very hard for you to digest more than a sound bite, but try actually read the whole of Gordon Campbell's analysis of the Zaoui case. Oh yes, Campbell is the Green's media rep. Oh yes, What is the difference between myself and Zaoui? I have a letter of recommendation from a police force that murdered thousands and Zaoui is a democratically elected representative. Guess who the Labour (and certainly the National) parties imprisoned?

NZ has one of the highest prison populations on the planet (tiny compared to Gulag America I know), but which parties want to build more prisons?

Opposing better education for a small elite, yes they oppose that bitterly.

Good. They support better education for all, personally this policy will help my kids quite a bit.

Re:Greens are the only party with a conscience.

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely the term "Big Business" is an oxymoron when applied to a country with a GDP the same size as Algeria and the population of South London?

Re:Greens are the only party with a conscience.

[Anonymous Coward]

If they're anything like the Australian Greens, they are dope smoking hippy nutters. Mind you, most dope smoking hippy nutters have stronger humanist, democratic values than your average main stream politician. The peace movement wasn't founded on alcohol, lets face it.

Re:Greens are the only party with a conscience.

[refactored]

NZ is a remarkably "Feudal" society with a remarkable divide between the man in the street and established power and wealth.

This is point that is simply not seen by the casual tourist or life long Kiwi.

Re:Greens are the only party with a conscience.

[refactored]

Actually there is a interesting correlation between generations "recreational psycho-active pharmaceutical of choice" and zeitgeist,

I suspect the arrow of causation goes both ways.

My recreational psycho-active pharmaceutical of choice is Coffee.

Re:Greens are the only party with a conscience.

[Anonymous Coward]

Definitely. The greens were the only ones with any actual policy on the internet in New Zealand (apart from nationals hurrr new pipes new pipes scheme which they haven't really delivered on).

Labour and National don't care. They seriously don't

copyright?

[eleuthero]

In the US at least, mail is owned fully by the recipient. If you send it to me, I can do whatever I please with it--sell it, burn it, use it to build a papier mache house, whatever. I would think the same applies to emails, including those that say "only for the recipient"

Re:copyright?

[mspohr]

This is not correct. You do not own the copyright to mail that is sent to you.

See this link for an amusing take on this situation. A Utah law professor estimates that he could be liable for several billion dollars of fines each year due to email copyright violations as well as other infringements.

Wired Campus

Re:copyright?

[eleuthero]

Thanks - I was confusing copyright with ownership... (which honestly is probably where a lot of people think they have a right to file share) I can still at least make the papier mache house and then burn it down.

The disconnects have already started

[ykiwi]

New Zealand ISP Xnet had already started taking down customers based on this law, and based on only one alleged infringement at that. There is a good discussion on geekzone. What is really sad is that they market themselves as the P2P ISP.

Hey politicians?

[Anonymous Coward]

This may be news to you, but copyright infringement is minor compared to the lovely joy of a global recession!

How about fixing the major problems then deal with things like making sure that all versions of the RIAA get all their riches? Right now a big cause of pirating is going to be the fact that people are flat broke.

Here's the key

[HermMunster]

The key to this is to find out who the ISP is for those that are responsible for the law and send the accusatory letters to their ISPs in order to get them cut off.

Re:How to disconnect any Kiwi's Internet Connectio

[Gideon Fubar]

Sad thing is that they all probably genuinely believe that they're trying to help people.

Re:How to disconnect any Kiwi's Internet Connectio

[Kalriath]

So, why not just send notices for every government IP, music company and others accusing them of infringement. By law they would lose access immediately.

No, they wouldn't. BECAUSE SECTION 92A DOESN'T EXIST.

Slashdot, as usual, is 4 months behind.

So what about open source?

[Jaazaniah]

You realize how many corps might be vulnerable to serious interruptions if it was revealed that providing the source code for something they were using was required? I'm missing the link to the specific story at the moment, but I recall something about a DMCA takedown notice being issued to a firm associated with the RIAA for this very issue.

If that happened, it would likely be one of the fastest-overturned pieces of legislation in human history.

Re:No. Actually it doesn't

[Kalriath]

Actually, section 92A required a disconnection policy. Section 92A disappeared from the law when it was passed (as per the ACTUAL LAW: http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1994/0143/latest/DLM345634.html?search=ts_act_Copyright_resel&sr=1)

You know, this article is all bullshit

[Kalriath]

Section 92A is the one which everyone is getting all up in arms about, and straight from the actual law, section 92A is GONE. No replacement, the whole thing about ISP disconnection DOES NOT EXIST.

Making this article a complete fabrication.

Reasons why people vote Green in NZ

[jesterzog]

I don't agree with the Green party about everything, but I actually ended up voting for them this time based almost entirely on their IT policy. Not something that many people understood because it's not exactly their most recognised policy, but you have to admit that they actually do get up and take part in IT issues, taking stances that are generally consistent with what their stated policy is.

I think a lot of people also get confused about why people vote for the Green party, because many of its policies don't get so much attention. I noticed quite a few people noting after the election, in blogs and elsewhere, that most of the Greens' support came from metropolitan areas whereas their policies tend to be most obviously aimed at rural and non-metropolitan areas. The obvious assumption is that ignorant people who live in cities are sacrificing everyone in rural areas, simply because the Green Party has tree-saving policies (allegedly economically crippling) that help those people feel good about themselves, or something. Just as with people in cities, however, people in small towns and living in agriculturally-centric communities also notice and think about what's affecting them most directly. In other words, they'll see the policies that are negative for agriculture, but not the policies that directly affect urban areas.

The Greens actually have quite a few policies that appeal directly to people who live in urban areas which aren't matched by any alternatives. The reasons people vote for them are often far more localised and closer to home than many non-Green voting people think.

Wellington Central had by far the highest turn-out for the Green Party (something over 20%). It's a very diverse electorate which includes a lot of students and that might explain part of the high vote. It also has a lot of renting professionals who either don't own cars or don't want to drive cars because doing so in Wellington is very expensive. One of the Green Party's major policies is to promote public transport. Good and reliable and plentiful public transport is a huge thing for people in Wellington Central because they rely on it so much -- if it's the most important thing in someone's life, they'll think about it and quite possibly vote for the Green Party. Another example near Wellington is Transmission Gully (one of the major proposed road projects that's been around for 40+ years), which is controversial and yet the Green Party is the only one that really has a firm stance against it. Anyone who really opposes the project will think about things, and quite possibly vote for the Green Party.

If there's such a problem with people voting Green in New Zealand, then someone else really needs to stand up and create a serious party with policies that cater to that demographic of people in metropolitan areas without having the agricultural and forestry policies that are supposedly so economically crazy.

Re:Reasons why people vote Green in NZ

[theaveng]

"Your land has been determined to be a preservation zone, which may not be sold for any other purpose except agriculture, and requires the approval of the government."

Thereby devaluing my property by half its previous value. THAT'S why I hate Greens. I can not lay my hand on any part of the Constitution that allows government to decide when, to whom, and why I sell MY personal property. It is my investment that they devalued by HALF what I originally paid, and I strongly object to that.

Re:Reasons why people vote Green in NZ

[refactored]

The Green's are quite correct in that what little is left of our natural ecology is in urgent need of conservation.

My guess from what I have seen is Labour and the Nats watered down the law so you weren't adequately compensated. (That would cost them real money! Schlock Horror!)

Yes, it is an entirely accepted point of common law for eons that the government for the greater good of the people _can_ decide when / whom / why you sell your property. The matching flip side is you should be adequately compensated.

Re:Reasons why people vote Green in NZ

[theaveng]

Government is not supposed to serve Tyranny of the Majority while squashing the individual, or the minority, underfoot.

Stalin claimed, "You have to smash a few eggs to make an omelet," but I don't buy into that philosophy. The individual matters. The individual is not meant to be smashed into the ground or used like just another cog in a machine. Your philosophy sounds like jsut another in a long line of Tyrants who feel the individuals are worthless shit.

Anyway I will sell my ground to whoever offers the highest bid (a housing developer most likely), and any politician who gets in my way will pay the full measure of devotion to his Green philosophy (read: eat a bullet). I am near death anyway - it matters not to me how I go out.

I will NOT be a black slave again.

My forefathers were slaves. I will NOT allow that to happen again.

I. Will. Be. FREE.

Re:Reasons why people vote Green in NZ

[jesterzog]

Thereby devaluing my property by half its previous value. THAT'S why I hate Greens. I can not lay my hand on any part of the Constitution that allows government to decide when, to whom, and why I sell MY personal property.

In what part of New Zealand do you own property and why was it declared a preservation zone, and what kind of affiliation do you have with NZ? We don't actually have a constitution in the same sense as the USA, although there's a Bill of Rights which is similar but not the same thing. You also implied in another thread that you live in Pennsylvania, and further down in this thread you were referencing having some kind of black slave heritage.

Are you referring specifically to your experiences with the Green Party in New Zealand and its specific policies, or are you're referring to experiences with environmentalist political groups generally.

A policy for ISPs

[Anonymous Coward]

According to http://www.tcf.org.nz/news/01078523-35f5-41c4-b8bc-7ed0b4d07848.html
the actual statement of the law is:
"An Internet service provider must adopt and reasonably implement a policy that provides for termination, in appropriate circumstances, of the account with that Internet service provider of a repeat infringer."

If you're an ISP, surely a reasonable policy is: if a user is convicted of copyright violation where this was committed using their account with us, then we'll disconnect them.

That's even going beyond the letter of the law, they'd only have to be convicted once, not repeatedly.

That's why the Greens introduced MMP...

[refactored]

The problem with voting is that it only takes something like 16% of the population to be motivated morons to outvote the 15% of people on the other side.

Valid issues of concern to minority groups have received more attention in the last few years of MMP than in decades before.

Alarmism

[Anonymous Coward]

I think an alarmist interpretation of section 92 is being taken here and I don't think it is justified.

The bill doesn't say that not cutting people off will make ISPs liable for copyright infringement.
It simply says they must have a policy that provides for termination of the account of a 'repeat infringer.'
The bill doesn't even specify a punishment for failing to do this.

Note also that ISPs are to cut repeat offenders off only "in appropriate circumstances." The ISP is free to decide what appropriate circumstances are and make them as lenient as they like. Which they will, because they have no interest in cutting off customers- particularly not customers who use a lot of bandwidth.

(In fact, my contract with my current ISP already specifies that copyright infringement is ground for them to terminate my contract. They don't, act on it, though)

Finally, they are also required to implement that policy "reasonably." Finding users 'guilty upon accusation' (A phrase which is not present in the act) would not be reasonable. That means that if they do start cutting people off willy nilly then those who are cut off can argue that the policy is not reasonable.

This law isn't going to change anything.