Sometimes it takes me a while to feel as if I understand an issue. Especially one that involves the digital world.
When I’m trying to get my head around something I try to take it back to a principle. Is it fair? Who to? Is it too complex? Will it work? Is it fostering innovation and creativity? Is it where we want to be heading?
Copyright is one of those issues.
Copyright in 2010, has become a brand, or a code. The prevalence of illegal downloading both in NZ and globally is a very real and important issue. The balancing act between protecting the rights of creators of content and allowing and encouraging access to information and material is a delicate and increasingly tricky issue which is currently exercising the minds of parliaments across the world.
Intellectual property, who owns it, who should have access, how they should have that access and what should be the penalties for infringing the rules around that access are all very live issues being hotly debated.
There’s a bunch of international treaties and agreements currently being negotiated where intellectual property features large. The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and more recently the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) are just two. There is intensive lobbying going on, driven largely from the US.
It seems that the big elephant in the room is who’s interests are being served.
I’ve just come across this piece on The Hill which could cast some light on what is really going on behind the scenes.
Three key US tech industry groups have urged a rethink on the US position on ACTA. The Consumer Electronics Association, TechAmerica and the Computer & Communications Industry Association plan to oppose the current draft of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.
Though the groups favor copyright enforcement, they worry the agreement will not include copyright exemptions that currently benefit some technology companies under American law.
The agreement may lack a “fair use” standard that allows using copyrighted content in limited circumstances. Google, for instance, relies on this exemption to store Web content in its search engine memory.
Wikipedia defines “Fair use” as a doctrine in United States copyright law that allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the rights holders, such as for commentary, criticism, news reporting, research, teaching or scholarship.
The lack of “fair use” could make American tech companies vulnerable to repercussions abroad, these groups say.
“We would expect the administration to be as concerned as we are about the existing trend of foreign countries imposing unjustified civil and criminal liability on U.S. technology companies and their executives,” the groups wrote.
ACTA has drawn widespread criticism as serving corporate interests. So just who are these corporate interests? Who do they serve and why do they have so much influence? And what principles do those interests serve?
And does our government really understand these issues?
In the Commerce Select Committee on Thursday I asked Commerce Minister Simon Power whether the government was considering a wider review of copyright issues in the light of all the controversy around Section 92A. “No” was the response. They just want their re-write of S92A passed.
I think that’s short-sighted. And not serving the interests of NZ creators and our emerging digital industry. As well as the public interest.
Hat tip @Tom_Watson
Down with bleepin 92a!!!!!!!!!!!!
Clare, what is your definition of fair?
“Sometimes it takes me a while to feel as if I understand an issue. Especially one that involves the digital world.”
Guess what? I feel like that too when trying to read this post and many of your other posts on IT/Communications/Digital World. And that’s even though I make my living from IT. When I read posts like this, I feel like I am reading minutes from a technical committee meeting. Too technical or esoteric perhaps.
Please accept my humble apologies if I have caused offense to Clare, readers, moderators or anyone else — it wasn’t my intention. Just my humble and honest feedback
Sorry
That’s okay Idad. No offense taken. Will try to be more clear. Clare
As opposed to Judith Tizards section 92a, which represented the pinicle of masterful copyright law?
There can be a big difference between the interests of those who create music and film and those claiming “corporate” intellectual property right. I am not referring here to the corporate distributors of music and film, but to corporates which use copyright as a loop hole around anti-trust/monopoly rules. Such copyright enforced around the world is problematic.
For example the Americans should have broken up Microsoft and forced it to operate as competing companies with the same copyright – this would have created competition to improve the product (for consumer advantage).
There has always been this irony about Microsoft in so much as one is using a product that is so unstable (unsafe at any broadband speed) that its source has to pass on a message to users each time it fails – should use choose to unfreeze windows any work you lose is your own repsonsibility. They are claiming this software copyright, to protect their intellectual property but denying any responsibility for the failure of their product when it impacts on the loss of intellectual property of their users.
Open software and open office … power to the people.
The only legitimate role of government in relation to the internet is to ensure its provision to every citizen. Meddling about with last century concepts such as copyright and censorship is little more than an exercise in futility. Get over it.
@sean14 My definition of fair is about who benefits as opposed to who is disadvantaged. Free from favouritism, self-interest, bias or deception. Honest.
Wow its a difficult proposition. I think elements of protection are indeed very important. Still there is an element of King Canute in trying to regulate internet based stuff.
Its a bit like suspending the presumption of innocence, inhibiting citizens going about their lawful business, and invalidating the concept of privacy by stopping every single car on SH1 for a search’n'seizure in case anyone is carrying a molecule of dak. And then, should such a molecule be found, holding the owner of the highway just as accountable for the actions of its users.
Who benefits – the “few”. Who’s disadvantage – the “many”.
Thank you Clare.
Having gone and made a submission to the Select Committee in person on the last revision to the Copyright Act, it was interesting to see who else was in the room – it was exclusively PR flacks and lawyers paid by the likes of Sony. There wasn’t a single musician, artist or film-maker in attendance, only these multi-hundred-dollar-an-hour types in suits. Presumably the actual artists were busy starving in garrets someplace, and the fact that the recording industry reputedly pays less than 5% of the revenue from CD sales to the artist probably has something to do with that state of starvation.
A few days before, that well-known champion of recording artists everywhere, Campbell Smith from RIANZ, was busy lamenting to the Committee the fact that Bic Runga’s third album only sold around 50,000 copies, which he attributed to piracy. Leaving aside any argument about the artistic merit or otherwise of the album (which – naively – I thought would be the primary influence on how many people wanted to buy it), Campbell busily stated that due to the low sales (piracy! It’s all piracy I tell you!!) Bic might be forced to get a second job as she couldn’t make a living as a full-time musician on those kinds of sales.
Which sounds fine, until you do the actual maths. 50,000 albums times $30 at retail equals about $1.5 million in revenue …. so little of which reaches the artist that Bic might need to find a second job. So I wondered, where did all the money go, you know, the other 95% that the recording industry thought was in it’s best interest not to give to the artists? And looking around that Select Committee room at the dozens of people in $3,000 suits, I bet I’ve got a fair idea.
Those people weren’t there to defend creativity, or the rights of artists, or anything similar – they were there lobbying for the continuation of their gravy train.
These are the people who have largely shaped ACTA, yet for reasons that seem completely opaque to me both National and Labour pretend that they are something other than economic leeches and continue to perpetuate their outmoded business models and their dead-weight drag on the creative industries.
I think Bic Runga is very talented, but I have to say that there aren’t really enough people here in New Zealand to support a proper music industry. 50,000 albums is pretty impressive for a small country.
@Clarke – remember when the MPAA’s Jack Valenti infamously compared the home VCR to the Boston Strangler, during the Sony vs Universal case? How ironic that Sony has since joined the Big Media establishment.
And before we rush in to an FTA with Washington, we need to remember that the Aussies had the DMCA foisted upon them as part of the deal.
@NickC: Don’t know if you’re old enough, but in the mid-1990s former Nat MP Trevor Rodgers actually sponsored a bill to effectively censor the Internet in NZ. Thankfully Parliament had the good sense to bin it.
A quick story sort of relevant to this which some of you might find amusing:
My mother owns an imaging buisness and one of the images she has sold in her time with the buisness was this image http://theinspirationroom.com/daily/print/2008/11/green-rangitoto-girl.jpg
It was a pretty well seen advertisement used by the Green party during the last election. A few nights before the election Act made an advertisement using this exact same image on the News WITHOUT asking my mother’s or the Greens permission (the Greens had purchased the rights to use it for advertisement). It was the image with a girls voice saying ‘If you Really wanted to vote for me you would be trying to keep me in the country da da da stuff slamming the Green’s’. My mum rang her lawyer straight away and he said it was straight up Copyright infringement.
Act was really incooperative and rude about it. When she initially tried to ring them they hung up on her. My mother contacted the News station and they sent her an email confirming that the Advertisement had been used. Act put up on a webpage somewhere that they had used a different girls face and they slapped some random girls face from google images quickly onto the image and said they had used that. After months of trying to communicate to Act they just kept ignoring her (The lawyer sent them an email saying give us $10 000 and we’ll leave it alone, they came back to him with $100 or something like that). My mother didn’t really have the money to take them to court and it was taking up too much of her time I think she eventually just gave up.
Dylan…some left leaning lawyer somewhere will take cause up for free. Just for a chance to prickle Hide.
That’s terrible, especially coming from a rich people’s party! Your Mum must be really talented
Copyright is the death rattle of a dying regime – people with no creativity protecting their middleman income, too lazy to think about ways of charging for what people value (other than content), fighting to preserve an obsolete status quo.
Dylan Horrocks : http://bit.ly/a4tf1E
Me: http://bit.ly/dukjvI
Copyright vs Human rights
http://blog.ofset.org/ckhung/index.php?post/106a
I think that the internet is a bit of a fringe issue at the moment.
The reprecussions of pepole’s actions aren’t really known to the wider audience. When you talk about copyright issues, people’s eyes glaze over. It’s not an election winner.
I had two guys come to my door last night from Telstra Clear. The lines in the neighbourhood have been updated. The telephone contact wasn’t enough (they had rung a couple of weeks before trying to sell me their services) – they also sent people to the door. When I asked about datacaps, they instantly starting talking about speed. When I very insistantly said that the speed is no use to me if I can only get a very limited amount of data with it, they then…. talked about speed. I eventually just told them to got lost.
The point is, copyright isn’t sexy. Instead of talking about it more, the current government is quite happy to work towards more … campaigning type material.
So, the questions need to be asked, the issue reframed, the people made aware of what’s happening and how it will affect them.
Regards,
Nevyn.
Agreed,
!
Copyright only makes sense for a limited time for commercial copying, if a work isn’t profitable in 5 years, it will never be. It makes no sense to argue that authors need to be paid fifty years after death, or that viewing of films be restricted from homes until the movie has played for 3 months in cinemas. It is also repellent that music industry parasites soak up 95% of profits from music, considering that the artist no longer needs physical distribution of discs.
ACTA will fail because nobody wants the entire internet to be stopped, inspected and processed by hollywood’s idea of justice. See telecomix.org for more details.
@Dylan: And you sometimes wonder what the Govt’s real motives for cutting legal aid are.
“It makes no sense to argue that authors need to be paid fifty years after death” – it’s property A Pirate, unless you are being tongue in cheek? Are you also suggesting that when I die I cant pass my house onto someone but rather it’s first in first served of occupancy after I’m taken out in a box?
Well put Nevyn
Dylan
Fair Go is sliding in the ratings, write to them on your mother’s behalf…
Kiwis LOVE an underdog, and they hate people who they think are getting too big for their boots… Try it, just a letter and/or email to fair go…
subject
“R Hide stole from my mum” or something like that to get their attention
I dont know what city you are in Dylan, and if there is a law School there, but find an expert in there, see if they will help.
Yeah, go for it, Dylan!
@Tracey. Copyright is not property. It’s culture.
Speaking as a media company executive, we don’t give much thought to sales after 5 years. In fact, if we can’t find the master, we don’t bother with making a sale 5 years after recording the event.
Property is something you own, not a bunch of holes on a disc.
Hollywood would argue that you only have a license to use their media as they intend, so it doesn’t fit the definition of property.
eg. if John Key was to write his autobiography, I wouldn’t get a license at the bookstore. I’d pirate it, print it and use it as toilet paper.