Concern is mounting about the content of an international trade agreement on copyright being negotiated in secret at a conference in Wellington next week. All New Zealanders should pay attention.
The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) talks are ongoing. It’s Wellington’s turn next week. They’re being held in secret because dominant countries the US and Japan are refusing to allow the draft text of negotiations to be made public. Why is that?
ACTA is essentially about toughening the enforcement of a range of intellectual property rights. But what is the actual issue? Who needs protecting? And where is the public interest?
The NZ Government is calling for transparency. That’s good. It’s one of a a number of countries doing the same. But it doesn’t have enough clout. Concern has been mounting around the world over recent months about what these talks are about. Largely it’s been confined to the internet community. But it’s going mainstream, and it’s in our faces next week.
Last night, the TV3 website reported on a leak from Canada which suggests that Border guards would be allowed to comb through passengers’ personal computers, iPods and MP3 players looking for copyright protected material.
The leak says that the draft agreement – to be negotiated over five days in Wellington – would also place more responsibility on internet service providers to become content police who prevented users from sharing pirated content.
Punishment proposed for repeat offenders included a ban from the using the internet for up to 12 months.
Copyright legislation poised to come to the NZ Parliament does not go nearly as far as this. But it does include a provision to terminate internet accounts for repeat copyright infringers. The NZ Labour Opposition opposes this. For good reasons.
There are many questions to be answered around the ACTA talks on copyright and intellectual property.
For instance who will bear the cost of increased copyright enforcement? Who gains from it? And when will New Zealand do some economic analysis on what the net impact on NZ of ACTA would be?
In the meantime, the the digital economy bill was rushed through the UK parliament yesterday before the election. It goes a lot further than NZ’s proposed copyright laws.
Under the terms of the bill, internet service providers will be obliged to send letters to any of their subscribers linked to alleged infringements.
Copyright holders will be able to apply for a court order to gain access to the names and addresses of serious infringers and take action against them while ISPs would be able to suspend accounts of offenders.
A wave of opposition to this Bill is growing momentum. This is an interesting analysis
Why are law-makers heading down this route? It flies in the face of reality. What lies behind the Digital Economy Bill and ACTA?
The best thing the NZ Govt could do is to release its negotiating position to its citizens. Let’s all be in this discussion. Transparency is by far the best policy.
Background
ACTA is proposed as a plurilateral trade agreement for establishing international standards on intellectual property rights enforcement. It is being negotiated between the US, Canada, Japan, the European Union, South Korea, Mexico, Switzerland, Australia and New Zealand. Unfortunately, the negotiations have extended beyond trade and physical counterfeiting to potentially cover non-commercial infringement of copyright material by ordinary citizens and issues of digital rights management.
For more info see here
I’m guessing ACTA is the name given to cover who is really behind all this – the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) who are more interested in their own profits than the artists who produce the stuff.
All the artists I have talked to or heard about don’t mind people obtaining their work for free, it gets their name out there.
Personally, Im not going to spend $30 odd on a music CD to find out if the music is good or not, I will download the album first and if I like it, then I would purchase it.
It might be OK for the likes of Bill Gates to buy up a heap of music to find out it’s rubbish and for him it will be a who cares, but considering most people in this world are now struggling financially and making ends meet, the cost of music is just out of reach and would rather make an informed decision before purchasing.
Also if these people don’t want piracy, why piggyback on the digital era and use some media type of their own creation….
Clare just wondering if anyone in Labour is privy to the ACTA negotiations. If they aren’t does Labour intend to follow the international obligations the government creates for us by the treaty if they prove to be against the public interest given that it and the public had no role in the agreement?
We’ve frequently heard from opposition MPs on copyright. I want to hear this message from the party leader.
Very nice post Clare.
“But it does include a provision to terminate internet accounts for repeat copyright infringers. The NZ Labour Opposition opposes this.”
That is very good news.
“Border guards would be allowed to comb through passengers’ personal computers, iPods and MP3 players looking for copyright protected material.” WTF?
– Talk about treating people like criminals, almost as bad as those body scanners!!! 
The internet has a profound significance for people of the World in its role of freeing up information.
As much as commerce would like to use it for profit and have vast resources to achieve just that, such motives should be resisted vigorously as they are part of a wedge that eventually will deny people form the free access to information.
The freeware movement is about sharing and developing together and that is a powerful benign force showing how selfish protectionist marketing is not the only way. More power to it.
Copyright has been abused by corporate leaches sucking the blood of the very community that have given support in the spawning of ideas. No idea is created outside of a community. Limited incentives for creation of ideas for a limited period of time give framework to add community good.
Profiteering from aggressive copyright adherence to the detriment of community and for the riches of controlling corporations does not make any sense. Already our communities are wealth imbalanced by the very sector proliferating even more aggressive copyright extensions. They will continue to bleed the communities that support them without mercy or conscience. They are symptomatic of a grim side of human nature arguing their case with like minded.
Opposing them in any way possible is a civic duty.
Claire, Just what is Labour prepared to do to safeguard intellectual property? There will in the near future be a debate here regarding copyright and the commissioning rule for photographers. We were shamefully fielded by Judith Tizard on the issue. New Zealand is completely out of step on the issue. One of the few OECD countries that doesn’t allow retention of rights by photographers in contravention of the Berne agreement.
The DEB that was rushed through Parliament by the UK Labour Government had a clause which would have allowed the commercial use of orphan works this was defeated by a concerted campaign led by Editoral Photographers UK (EPUK) it would have enabled the wholesale ripping off of professional photographers. These debates will undoubtedly occur I hope we can rely on Labour’s support in protecting our intellectual property from theft by the freetard fringe and large media corporations who no longer want to pay a fair price for our creative talent.
People should be paid for what they do unless they waive that.
Claire said…
ACTA is essentially about toughening the enforcement of a range of intellectual property rights.
Oh, I see Claire, I didn’t know that you and your fellow Labour colleagues understand the concept of property rights (either tangible or intellectual). Or perhaps Labour is quite confused of its meaning.
By the way, it is pointless to talk about any forms of property rights when in fact Labour (David Cunliffe) had done the opposite when it chopped Telecom into pieces via legislation during the last time it was in power. See, the (property) rights of the owners of Telecom (corporations, financial institutions, ma & pa, etc,…) were not after all being protected. It was violated by Labour.
I think Labour is being hypocritical on this issue of property rights protection.
How about if I suggest to you some good readings from Not PC blog on the philosophical definition of rights.
You can start with the following:
Cue Card : Libertarianism – Rights
Even better, if you read a whole lot of articles from the link shown below (5 page) on related concepts as I have stated above:
Cue Card Libertarianism
Anyway, I support the protections of property rights (both intellectual & tangible).
Hi Clare
Thank you for pointing to the PublicACTA website. I hope you don’t mind if I let your readers know a bit more about the PublicACTA event:
This is a free event being held on Saturday in Wellington as a public forum/workshop to address the concerns that ACTA is raising, with the output to be a document that will be passed to the New Zealand negotiators. We have 108 registrations and still a dozen places available.
More detail at http://www.publicacta.org.nz
Regards
Richard, InternetNZ
The draft is already public.
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5425059/ACTA_Agreement_leaked_
For anyone (like perhaps Falafulu Fisi) needing a refersher course on the abuse of copyright by corporate holders (as opposed to original creators) a good quick read is the wiki page on the CTEA:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act
Copyright is a property right, sure. But so what? It’s a right cretaed to fulfill a purpose – and that purpose is abused by Acts like CTEA or Treaties like ACTA. Indeed the ACTA debate seems to be a a simple attempt by corporate interests to extend the wins they got under CTEA internationally.
Good on you for running interference Clare.
Locking the gate after the horse is well and truly bolted. Security and prevention measures will never stop the free flow of information. I’d like to see a border security person try and browse through my triple encrypted hard drive.
Peer to peer file sharing is the way if the future. Monitoring all internet traffic for unlicensed material is little more than a wet dream for ACTA.
Copyright? Copyleft for me.
Welcome to the second golden age of piracy.
Copyright for artists is easy to support. But most of the parties pushing for this kind of ACTA protection rip off artists themselves, and make large amounts of money from selling plastic eg CDs and DVDs manufacturers. They are the ones who want these changes. I bought a Radiohead album directly from Radiohead, and that’s how I would like to pay for music – reward the artist, not the middleman.
ACTA is the death knell of a dying business model. Wake up artists! You are getting ripped off too! If I could buy digital recordings directly from the artist, I would.
What a pity international governments don’t seem to be able to make an agreement to ration finite resources like tuna, atmospheric carbon or fossil fuels, but instead devote their time to making an international agreement enforcing controls over something that costs no resources to copy.
Beautifully put Colin. The publicACTA conference is reaching its end and has been very interesting. Many issues raised which need our scrutiny and some important matters for Labour to consider.
Shall be posting on it.
A bit old, but still relevant…
http://www.mafiaa.org/
@DeepRed
That’s funny. Naughty but funny. A bit scary too.
Colin I agree but when have greed on the one hand and survival ever been curbed by reason.
There are too many people and resources are being eliminated. The forecast possibility of Earth supporting more are at the best optomistic and theoretical. Even if we do move towards 9 billion people diet change that we are not adapted to will create massive health problems.
Politics, war, greed, disease and increasing break down in co-operation is a likely senario.
Having a class of obscenely wealthy and wasteful, controlling politics for greedy ends, doesn’t help nor set a path for better global management.
Copyright issues may be relatively insignificant in the bigger picture but fairness is always relevant.
It is unfair for a creator of an idea to get peanuts and corporate leaches to live off the sales.
It is also unfair for a society to support the environment and nurture of the idea yet let it be tied up forever in private ownership.
No man is an island nor is his work not built on what has come before.