“Artists in particular are tetchy about their creations. Understandably they don’t want the meaning of their works twisted or distorted. And of course they don’t want others to reproduce their work without permission. But with everything being online these days, what tangible rights do artists have? Should they just go with the digital flow, or should they use all the legal weapons available to them?”

The discussion between interviewer Damien Carrick, Professor Matthew Rimmer of ANU Law School, and Brent Salter, legal academic at Macquarie University Law School covers issues ranging from Michael Palin and Monty Python’s response to various copyright situations, the YouTube vs Viacom dispute (recently won by YouTube), and several interesting case studies of moral rights disputes in Australian theatre.

“That’s what makes it strange that the film industry apparently hasn’t released the film to Australia. There are a *lot* of New Zealanders living there. And it’s not surprising, after all the promotion, that people there want to see the film however they can get it. According to a press release yesterday from the industry, they are indeed getting it, via infringing downloads on the Internet. The film apparently got to the Internet via a member of the industry itself, since the copy uploaded is a “pre-screener” available only within the industry.”

Read more on Colin’s blog.

The PDF of her talk can be found on her project website: Ready to Share. “The Ready to Share project explores the fashion industry’s enthusiastic embrace of sampling, appropriation and borrowed inspiration, core components of every creative process.”

Food for thought…

Of course, we will be making a submission based on feedback we’ve been getting from members. Let us know if you’ve got something to add by contacting us, or commenting on this post.

Founder, Ian “Blink” Jorgensen, writes:

“A few years ago while on tour, me and some friends discussed the future of music distribution.

We were all well and truly over the CD as a format, it wasn’t only the wasted resources and environmental impact of the production of the CD that was annoying us, it was just that we didn’t even feel the one saving grace of purchasing music in a physical format anymore (the artwork) was even represented well with the CD, and getting vinyl pressed was simply too expensive and an elusive luxury.

It seemed so blindingly obvious. We loved the portability, affordability and no boundaries distribution of the MP3, but missed the collection and appreciation of the associated artwork. So I boiled it down to its bare necessities, removing all the unnecessary packaging and have decided to make the bulk of my future releases simply digital downloads with hand-printed artwork.

Many have been aware of my obsession with screen printed art over the years. I love the fragility of it, that every print is different. You know that each piece is unique and were created from scratch. It helps remove ourselves from the soulless world of mass-manufactured CDs and landfills full of unsold plastic jewel cases and discs.

The beauty of the MP3 is its availability to anybody with an internet connection, I didn’t want postage to become a hindrance to presenting this artwork, so have made postage free, anywhere in the World!”

* A Low Hum is the home of New Zealand’s internationally renowned annual music festival Camp/Campus A Low Hum. The outfit organises tours, releases records, makes music videos, organises one-off events/festivals and publishes magazines & books (some text from Wikipedia).

At the time of writing a poll on the Stuff.co.nz site has only 14% against parody protection, 21% in favour of parody protection unless they put the entire movie up, and 65% in favour of complete parody protection. Under New Zealand law we lack protection for parody and satire and so many popular forms of public commentary are illegal.

Naturally, Hitler has already responded to the removals:

Analysis of the text to follow later today.

UPDATE: See KeiOnline analysis:

“It’s late, very late, and missing a key element of transparency — the country positions. Governments had to be forced by civil society groups to make the ACTA text public. Let’s hope that the precedent for the future is to publish the texts, and to publish them much sooner. Now that the text is out, it will be easier to have public debates about its contents. It is unfortunate that the country positions were eliminated from the published version, but positions as recent as January 2010 are available from the earlier leaked texts. KEI has focused on the changes in global norms for injunctions and damages, and the lack of civil rights and consumer safeguards in the text. Clearly the text goes way beyond counterfeiting and copyright piracy, into several categories of intellectual property rights, including patents, semi conductor chip designs, pharmaceutical test data and other topics. Governments should engage with consumer groups, civil rights organizations, educators, libraries, generic drug manufacturers, technology companies and others to re-balance the text, or abandon the negotiation if this is not possible in the current political environment.” James Love, Director, KEI

As we quoted earlier, “Negotiations over the past two years have been conducted in secret. Leaks of the draft text have sparked a public outcry, mainly because of how the text deals with online copyright infringement [...] they don’t plan to reveal their individual negotiating positions”

Although New Zealand has so far avoided a Guilt Upon Accusation-style law the UK haven’t been so lucky. The Digital Economy Bill was hurried through before their election, but it seems that some political parties are already talking about repealing it:

“We did our best to prevent the Digital Economy Bill being rushed through at the last moment. It badly needed more debate and amendment, and we are extremely worried that it will now lead to completely innocent people having their internet connections cut off,”

Yes, quite.

As noted in our ACTA submission they give only one example of a compliant policy for the public and that is ‘3 strikes’, or a Guilt Upon Accusation-style policy. Also ACTA seeks to remove privacy by making ISPs liable “for the content being distributed on their networks”.

The rights given to ISPs directly affect how artists and the wider public use the internet, and if ISPs are blamed for what customers do then they will have no choice but to snoop on internet connections.

The US Government recently declared piracy losses to be unreliable, and to learn more about ACTA watch to this presentation by Michael Geist who was recently in New Zealand.

UPDATE: The New Zealand Government have now issued a media release confirming this.