Sometime in the next couple of weeks the revised Section 92A of the
Copyright Act will have its first reading in the House.
It took a long time for the government work out that it needed to revise S92A, then longer to decide how.
The big question now is, after all that work, involving a lot of participation by passionate stakeholders in the copyright debate, will it be superseded by international law that takes the copyright issue out of the hands of our sovereign state.
In mid-April, at a secret location in Wellington, the latest in a
series of negotiations of the Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) will occur. The intentions of ACTA are causing growing consternation around the globe.
Like the exact location of the meeting, the text of ACTA is a secret. We don’t know for sure what’s in it, but the latest leaks suggest that a goal of ACTA will create an extra-governmental body that effectively controls copyright law around the globe, with little input from the governments or the people
they represent.
The leaks suggest a new organisation would be set up to manage ACTA
after it was implemented, tasked with continuing to update ACTA’s rules
- sort of a parallel organization to WIPO which is part of the UN.
Michel Geist, one of the prominent international proponents of
transparency in the ACTA talks has factually blogged about the latest
leak here.
The big question is, having gone through the intense public discussion
of establishing a new law on copyright, will it be overtaken or subsumed
if New Zealand signs up to ACTA?
There’s a lot of water to flow under the bridge yet in the ACTA negotiations. But the difficulty of these issues and their potential to cut across national sovereignty highlights the need for transparency and public input.
New Zealanders need to be reassured that our negotiators have New Zealand’s best interests at heart, not just those of international copyright-holding organizations.
In a previous post I called for the NZ position on ACTA to be made
public to show real engagement and good will and that there is nothing
to hide.
I think that’s even more imperative now.
I’ve also put the following written questions to Simon Power:
Curran Clare : At what venue will the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade
Agreement be negotiated in Wellington between the 12-16th of April?Curran Clare : Has the Minister refused to name the venue for the Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement in Wellington next month? If so when will he make the venue public, given the high degree of public interest in the issue
Curran Clare : Does the Minister support the European Parliament’s call to have full access to ACTA documents?
Man I think this should be discussed widely
So scary to think that some dodgy leglislation is about to ruin our surfing 
I see on Twitter that the venue for ACTA talks in NZ has been leaked from Europe.
#ACTA NZ meeting will be at the Intercontinental Hotel in Wellington. Leaked agenda from Europe (PDF) http://bit.ly/9w1D9t
The power of twitter!
It’s not that citizens (I prefer that term to “consumers” because individuals also generate content) will have little representation under ACTA. One of the main thrusts as far as we can tell is to explicitly limit citizen input.
Vik :v)
Those who want to follow this, and learn more about what we (in NZ) know can look here: http://acta.net.nz – note: this is not a government sponsored site, it is the work of concerned stakeholders/citizens and is result of volunteer efforts and sponsored services.
Good work Clare. ACTA is a potentially dangerous agreement being forced on us by an industry that just refuses to acknowledge commercial and technical reality. Trade agreements can be negotiated in secret, IP can not and should not be.
[...] at the RedAlert blog Clare Curran asks “Like the exact location of the meeting, the text of ACTA is a secret. We don’t know for [...]
Good luck getting an answer from Simon Power. I recently asked him to back up his claims that the music & movie industries were suffering financially due to piracy, and he blew me off by saying he had no statistics, but “everybody knows” piracy is harming sales.
The people running this show, from the ACTA to all these “digital copyright bills” at the national level, aren’t interested in transparency, or facts, or what’s best for the public. They’re interested in protecting somebody else’s business model. Once you realize that, all these behaviors lock into place.
It’s pretty sad, really.
itunes just sold their 1 billionth single. I think that shows how business is prepared to adapt to new technology in the face of things like piracy without panic induced govt intervention.
Looks like the secrecy’s a moot point:
http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/security/acta-wellington-agenda-and-venue-leaked
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4886/125/
I don’t know about you, but I’ve got extra confidence in these people to tell me how I can and can’t access information, when they’re so good at keeping secrets.
Pathetic.
I’m still astounded by this. There’s an awful lot of effort going into protecting a business model which has been reluctant at best to change it’s business model to suit the times.
If the technology was used to enhance the experience and add value to it, rather than efforts made to limit it, I don’t think they’d have as big a problem as they now claim.
Instead, as one of America’s biggest exports, the old business model is still being protected on a world wide scale without the consultation of stakeholders (those customers they seem so keen to brand as criminals).
The most insulting bit about it is the fact that they decide to “negotiate” terms of an agreement behind closed doors. Shouldn’t this effort instead be focused towards ending more pressing matters such as that of child pornography?
Don’t worry Nevyn, they’re failing at child porn too, and using that to ram a filtered Internet down our throat.
Thomas Beagle’s site has several recent articles on that debacle, which is right up there with ACTA:
http://techliberty.org.nz/
Isn’t it lovely when corporate interests create our laws, instead of fact-based decision making?
Yet again Business wants Govt out of business, yet looks to rely on Govt to protect its business instead of innovating and moving with times.
Given John Key’s own history of copyright infringement its interesting to note that he’s also taken down his site http://www.johnkey.co.nz . Perhaps National Ltd™ knows in advance that there are some issues there – or perhaps they just haven’t paid the bill.
UPDATE: The site is back up now.
Congrats to LAbour making a big deal about this.
So…
…how much of the preliminary work did Labour take part in during its time in office? How much of it was hidden from NZrs eyes by Labour MP’s?
How much did Helen agree to do to NZrs for the American Corporations?
Lack of copy write laws & enforcement has never stifled human creativity or the ability of business to turn a buck. These laws have served only to turn a 50c Cd into a $30 CD. Interestingly a lot of bands are now pumping their tours as ‘whole’ entertainment packages.
Hollywood is enjoying record profits,the most downloaded movies prior to official release are also the most successful at the box office.Filesharing is the reason their business is doing as well as it is at the present time.No losses have ever been proven by INDEPENDANT analisys.ACTA will only enrich corporations and lawyers and start us off on a very slippery slope.