Gareth Hughes, Greens Party

While much of the world considers how to take rights away from the public and remix artists alike the Dutch have other plans,

Much to the displeasure of the wider EU, the Dutch want to liberalize their copyright laws to explicitly allow remixes and mashups. The irony is that their inspiration is not political movements like Sweden’s Pirate Party, but America’s laws about fair use.

In the U.S., fair use protects the use of copyrighted material for commentary, criticism and the like. But automated tools for detecting copyrighted material (on e.g. YouTube) and the overly-broad Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which allows anyone to request that an infringing work be taken down, put the burden of proving that a work constitutes fair use on the content creator. This has a chilling effect on the kind of work everyday people release on the web.

Here in New Zealand the Green’s Gareth Hughes is supporting a change to allow parody and satire remixes. If New Zealand is going to have an trade agreement with the U.S. that includes copyright changes (TPPA) then wouldn’t it be fair to get the same rights as U.S. citizens?

...

Peter Griffin talks to artists and technologists about the ongoing digital changes,

“The TPPA is secret; we don’t really know what is in it. It’s making sure we aren’t selling ourselves short just so we can get some milk powder into the United States.” With three-strikes laws passing around the world and the shadow of SOPA and PIPA online piracy legislation looming large in the US
[...]

“Copyright was founded on the premise of giving artists rights to make money, to have a temporary monopoly where they can control their work and to try to monetise it so they can make more work,” she acknowledges. “But the second half of copyright is about enabling public rights. As long as that pressure is coming from copyright holders to expand rights in their direction, we are going to need to keep up the pressure to maintain the public rights.”

Read more at The Listener.

Stop SOPA Ireland

Wired UK report that “Ireland is soon to have a law similar to SOPA passed that would give music and movie companies the power to force Irish ISPs to block access to sites suspected of having copyright infringing material on them.” (emphasis ours)

“Irish citizens won’t have a chance to lobby their democratic representatives because there won’t be a vote on the law [...] in the Irish Parliament. Instead the law is being enacted by ministerial order because it is being prepared in the form of a Statutory Instrument.”

Sign at the petition against it at StopSOPAIreland.com.

Paolo Coelho

As a highly talented and internationally successful writer we won’t even attempt to explain his case better than him:

“I have nothing against people earning money from their books; that’s how I make my living. But look at what’s happening now. [SOPA] may disrupt [the] internet. This is a REAL DANGER, not only for Americans, but for all of us, as the law – if approved – will affect the whole planet. And how do I feel about this? As an author, I should be defending ‘intellectual property’, but I’m not. Pirates of the world, unite and pirate everything I’ve ever written!…

Some people will say: You’re rich enough to allow your books to be distributed for free. That’s true. I am rich. But was it the desire to make money that drove me to write? No. My family and my teachers all said that there was no future in writing. I started writing and I continue to write because it gives me pleasure and gives meaning to my existence. If money were the motive, I could have stopped writing ages ago and saved myself having to put up with invariably negative reviews…

When you’ve eaten an orange, you have to go back to the shop to buy another. In that case, it makes sense to pay on the spot. With an object of art, you’re not buying paper, ink, paintbrush, canvas or musical notes, but the idea born out of a combination of those products.

‘Pirating’ can act as an introduction to an artist’s work. If you like his or her idea, then you will want to have it in your house; a good idea doesn’t need protection. The rest is either greed or ignorance.”

SOPA Protestors. Photo: Demand Progress

Here’s a summary of the biggest ever day of online protest.

Australia got this in 2006, and the US has had it for aaages, so its about time NZ caught up and gave its artists the same protections.

Hughes will be holding an online Q&A session from 6-7pm tonight (9 November 2011). Check it out here.

The impetus for the review was noted as: “developments in digital content distribution and the need to ensure clarity to copyright users, rights-holders and internet service providers as to what constitutes copyright infringing material…the Copyright Act 1994 is currently silent on the issue of parody and satire.”

The inquiry was begun under former Labour MP and Associate Minister of Commerce Hon Judith Tizard but under the new National government passed from Minister of Economic Development Hon Gerry Brownlee to Minister of Commerce Hon Simon Power who halted the review.

Australia implemented an exception to copyright for the purpose of parody or satire as part of it’s 2006 Copyright Amendment Bill and many other international countries have similar kinds of copyright exceptions including the US, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, and Germany. The UK and Canada are currently considering similar exceptions as part of their broader copyright reforms.

Considering NZ has just implemented a law providing Copyright holders with a system for enforcing their rights online, now would be a great time to balance this by protecting artists making transformative works ie remix, mashup, satire, parody, pastiche, and caricature. These creative methods have been around for centuries – wouldn’t it be great if NZ recognised them and protected them in it’s law?

The law comes into effect on the 1st of September 2011 and the fees will be reviewed by cabinet on 1st March 2012.

We’ll update this story as analysis comes out…

Chris Keall at the NBR says,

An MED paper on the regulations, however, revealed Mr Power wanted a $20 fee which the minister judged more than adequate for ISPs to recover administrative costs. Cabinet obviously disagreed.

Rights holders may also be disappointed that they have to provide internet service providers with a laundry list of information about an alleged offerender. The MED’s regulations paper calls for 13 items of information about the alleged offender, and the time, date and other details of their alleged offending.

The MED paper sees a “$0.060m” shortfall, or what most humans would call $60,000, during the new law’s first year of implementation.

It projects the $200 fee for taking a case to the Copyright Tribunal will lead to a 6% cost recovery.

A Stuff.co.nz article that’s quickly attracting comments says,

The new Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Act – christened ‘Skynet’ by opponents – comes into force on September 1. The three-strikes warning system aims to stamp out illegal file sharing.

“Skynet” was first associated with the law by those who voted for it while demonstrating an embarrassingly poor understanding of copyright and the internet.

TechLiberty summarise the news,

1. The cost of making a complaint will be $25 (rights-holders argued for $2, ISPs for higher). This is to be reviewed after 6 months. (Minister recommended $20, Cabinet raised it to $25.)
2. The paper recognises that this fee will not allow for full cost-recovery by the IPAPs and will therefore push up internet costs for subscribers (point 25 on page 7).
3. Rights-holders can appoint an agent to act on their behalf to send notices.

(read more at TechLiberty)

See also: CFF submission on the regulations [PDF].

Read more at LawGeekNZ