Today I was interviewed by a High school student (from my local community) who is doing an assignment on copyright. He’s 17 and studying IT and writing a chapter in a book to be produced by his school on what the future will be like. He asked me a whole lot of really insightful and probing questions on what Labour thinks is the way forward on copyright, the government’s rewrite of Section 92A and whether I agreed with terminating people’s internet accounts if they infringe copyright too many times.
When I said no I didn’t, he asked whether that was Labour policy. And no it’s not. Yet. But I have to acknowledge that that’s what I think.
I thought I’d write a separate post to my previous post Riding the wave (not sinking) on copyright. Some ideas because of all the amazing responses I’ve had and the sheer number of people reading it and talking to me separately. And today’s experience with the student (he’ll no doubt read this post himself) tells me this is such an important issue. Because how we handle it will tell us how we will handle the future. And we’d better get it right.
Unfortunately, I’m lacking confidence that the National Government grasps this, indicated by its haste to simply rewrite Section 92A.
Many people are concerned that there is not a wider public discussion being driven by this government (instead I hear they’d like to get “get copyright off their plate ASAP”) and that the rewrite is going to result in a drawn out longwinded process that won’t address the real issues.
And then there’s that pesky issue of whether to terminate or not to terminate!
I’m coming to the conclusion (my own at this stage) that termination isn’t going to achieve much. Financial penalties are likely to have more impact.
I’m also concerned we haven’t heard anything about further resourcing the Copyright Tribunal. Once Section 92A is enacted its likely there’ll be hundreds, if not thousands of infringement notices launched on NZ via the US.
There were a lot of responses about education. While I acknowledge there are education measures being put in place (some already in place) around copyright, a brochure and a website doesn’t constitute education nor does it necessarily lead to attitude change. It’s much bigger than that. Think about wearing seatbelts, applying sunscreen. Things we pretty much do automatically now. But those behaviour changes didn’t happen overnight. It takes a big effort, and a mixture of information, carrot and stick. Yes, government has an important role in driving this and showing leadership.
It’s pretty clear that current education measures aren’t working.
There are various figures bandied around about what percentage of people engage in peer to peer sharing on the internet, but it’s pretty damn high whatever figure you settle on. So getting people’s attention and then to change their behaviours will take more than a message at the beginning of a DVD.
I’m getting some interesting, and mostly positive responses to the concept of a levy on internet connection. The issue is how much, and what does it apply to? And how would it be divvied up? All valid questions and need more work.
The importance of the principle of enabling access to information and material, rather than just a policy that contains, prevents and punishes. Alongside that goes an enforcement regime for the repeat and insistent offenders.
There’s a real tension in the online community driven by the people who believe pretty much wholesale in open source and creative commons, i.e. everything belongs to everyone. Hmmm, I think not. But I think we have to do some more thinking and talking about this. Because the internet has opened up everything. And that’s a great and wondrous thing.
The urgent need for new and innovative business models by the creative communities (and their representatives).
The commitment to NZ content first. Mostly positive responses.
And then (on a separate post) that issue of whether the internet is an essential service. I’m sensing a strong public discussion beginning to build around this and you’ll be hearing more.
I could go on. And I’ll continue to write about it. And you’ll have more to say. I’m hoping we’ll be seeing a proper open access conference on copyright happening in the not too distant future. It’s about time all the parties got together and really started thrashing out some of these issues.
In the meantime, we (Labour) are committed to a new policy development process that has your input. Because to me, that’s the future.
Thanks Clare, this is fascinating stuff. I am interested as to what your ‘new policy development process’ and ‘(public) input’ is will be like.
As I said on teh interweb on Friday, I think Red Alert is brilliant and I am encouraging National’s backbenchers to follow suit with a Team Blue blog.
Because engagement has to be positive.
dang, another site without an ‘Edit’ button.
I want to know what ‘new policy development process’ and ‘(public) input’ **will** be like.
Well Phil, it’s just what we’re doing, talking about it with each other. And I’m referring to copyright policy, not all policy. But the forums we’ve organised, the feedback we’re seeking and the ability to discuss the issues openly. That’s what I’m talking about. Let’s see how it develops.
Clare Curran wrote: There’s a real tension in the online community driven by the people who believe pretty much wholesale in open source and creative commons, i.e. everything belongs to everyone. Hmmm, I think not.
Can you believe it? Clare Curran Open Source with copyright violation.
Clare – I’m going to circulate this quote from you very widely. Would you care to reconsider it?
You might like to start with the concept of CopyLeft, read some of the material at the Free Software Foundation and the GNU Project and perhaps familiarise yourself with the GPL.
Then you might like to issue an apology to the Open Source community and perhaps; refrain from opening your uninformed gob to make baseless accusations.
First line should read;
Can you believe it? Clare Curran equates Open Source with copyright violation.
It’s not that everything belongs to everyone, Clare. Your dismissiveness is akin to Bill Gates’ in calling anti-copyright people “communists”. The argument is about freedom (there’s a word you won’t here from a conservative) of information and property rights and whether ideas constitute or ought to be property. You assume it to be so, yet you provide no argumentation. That’s what I want from you Clare an argument, not rhetoric. Here are some more anti-copyright resources for you to acutally read. I’ll take the quote from the top of the page:
The problem of trying to pass laws around internet copyright is that you’ll never satisfy any of the parties. Whatever law is passed will immensely unpopular with one – or even all – sides of the argument. After listening to the various arguments, all of which have a point, I have come to believe the only solution is to impose some kind of an internet connection levy.
Every person with a broadband connection to the internet in New Zealand should be levied an internet copyright fee of (just for example, someone will have to crunch the numbers) $5 a month. This money could then be pooled and allocated to copyright holders based on traffic statistics. The advantages of such a scheme are obvious to me.
1/ It would be easy to administer.
2/ The fee could even be made responsive within a price band – that is, if there was an explosion of downloads in winter it might go up to $7, if no one downloaded anything in a balmy summer it might drop to $3.
3/ Such a fee would make the disconnection of those who persist in illegal downloading easy, as they would have no excuse since…
4/ It would provide an incentive for copyright owners to put their content online for free as the easy and better their products are the more they’ll be downloaded, and that will mean they will get paid a bigger chick the pool fund cash.
5/It would kill off a lot of the illegal downloading (after all, why would you download a dodgy copy from a slowe torrent site if you could get the same thing in High Definition and at high speend from a legitimate site for free?).
I guarantee you the media content companies out there would worship the ground you walked on if you suggested this scheme, since this is the idea a lot of them like in private.
Politically, then, the only people who would really hate such a levy would be the Telco companies, since they would see it as cramping their style with their deliberatelly difficult pricing plans which are designed to obscure the true cost of your line. They would probably also object to acting as the state’s collection agent of the fee. People who insist they only use the web for mail will complain they are cross-subsidising, but that occurs already only they don’t realise it.
All in all, I think that trying to control content and monitor users on the internet is as patently absurd as trying to herd angry cats, and it creates huge consumer resentment. The only way to collect cash and properly reward copyright holders is at the point of access.
Chunk, not chick…
@Simon. I do not equate open source with copyright violation and it’s disengenous and mischievous of you to make that accusation. Read what I am saying in its context and don’t quote me out of context
@Quoth the Raven. Thank you. I will do more reading on this issue. And I am up for a discussion on it. The issues for me are about where government involvement and intervention is most productive
Clare Curran wrote: @Simon. I do not equate open source with copyright violation and it’s disengenous and mischievous of you to make that accusation. Read what I am saying in its context and don’t quote me out of context
Okay – for subsequent visitors to this page, the quote in context that Clare Curran stands by is this;
There’s a real tension in the online community driven by the people who believe pretty much wholesale in open source and creative commons, i.e. everything belongs to everyone. Hmmm, I think not. But I think we have to do some more thinking and talking about this. Because the internet has opened up everything. And that’s a great and wondrous thing.
Ms Curran is the Spokesperson*, Communications and Information Technology for the Labour Party of New Zealand. As such, the above quote reflects actual Labour Party policy towards Open Source, Creative Commons licensing and Copyright Infringement.
(*) New Zealand equivalent of Shadow Minister.
Simon, you should go off and join that other insufferably pompous fool Trevor Loudon in his alternative universe, your opinion might count there. Or might not.
Tom Semen wrote: Simon, you should go off and join that other insufferably pompous fool Trevor Loudon in his alternative universe, your opinion might count there. Or might not.
In my universe Tom, Open Source is not Copyright Infringement, it’s a collaborative approach to software development that has respect for copyright as a core tenet.
Beyond refuting the baseless accusations Clare Curran regurgitates against the Open Source movement, Open Source and Free Software have many benefits to small countries looking to develop a knowledge-based economy. It’s the way forward which, given Labour’s objective of destroying New Zealand’s ICT industry, I suspect is the actual reason for Clare Curran’s besmirchment of it.
Simon – Interesting approach. Clare has been taking a leading role educating some of older “more experienced” caucus members in the very +ve role for NZ in Open Source. She has certainly cross-examined me on my role as Minister of Education in promoting Microsoft bulk purchases for schools.
As for wanting destroy the NZ ICT industry – that sort of comment is better on the penguin/blowhole blogs where there might be someone who takes it seriously.
I think you are being a tad harsh Simon. It could be interpreted in several ways, not all of which are so uncharitable.
Clare, there’s a tendency from particular groups to paint this as an ideological war rather than about choosing the appropriate tool for the job and I think that’s triggered Steve’s ’spidey-sense’ here
The CFF use Creative Commons because we’re a group that intends to distribute our ideas to others. Labour News use Creative Commons license too, I would assume, for the same reason.
Art, especially commercial art, has always involved giving away tasters of songs or movies and it makes sense to facilitate that distribution through liberal licensing such as CC. Some musicians apply this to all of their work in order to gain a larger audience and make money from live performance (where most of the money is made already). Others have business models based on scarcity and selling copies and that’s their approach. Certainly there isn’t much of a live performance aspect to movies and so scarcity may make sense there.
It’s about individuals understanding how copyright will affect their works, what they want to achieve, and then picking the licenses that are appropriate. A hybrid model is often appropriate and most artists do infact already take this approach – you’d be hard pressed to find art that doesn’t advertise with small samples of the work.
Rather than about being a “belief” however I find that most people treat it as a pragmatic choice that’s decided on a case-by-case basis. There are some groups that choose to frame it in terms of property or lack of property driven by a belief but that’s not
However a separate issue is that copyright law is always a balance between private and public rights. Practically all around the world taking quotes is legal, backing up is legal, distributing copies to others is infringement, and so on.
Everyone in society has a legitimate interest in that balance and I’ve found that it tends to be extremists that push for only the public aspect (Eg. “everything should be free”) or only the private (Eg. “intellectual property”).
Defining the goal of copyright law is a start, as the US have done in saying that it is tasked “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”
This kind of basis then allows a more nuanced discussion, and it’s good to see your numerous posts on this Clare which are certainly showing a lot of consideration.
Actually Clare, you did and Simon was right to call you on it.
Trevor Mallrd wrote: Simon – Interesting approach. Clare has been taking a leading role educating some of older “more experienced” caucus members in the very +ve role for NZ in Open Source.
The Open Source and Free Software movements do not require advocates who equate the output of our labours with copyright infringement.
She has certainly cross-examined me on my role as Minister of Education in promoting Microsoft bulk purchases for schools.
Oh yes Trevor, who can forget that particular example of Labour “listening to the electorate.”
As for wanting destroy the NZ ICT industry – that sort of comment is better on the penguin/blowhole blogs where there might be someone who takes it seriously.
Six Words: Paul Swain, Theresa Gattung. Monopoly maintenance.
Ok everyone, take some deep breaths
Happy to acknowledge I may not have chosen the best of words but am confident that the community who has been involved in these discussions to date understand my commitment to finding constructive solutions
Simon, I try not do adversarial point-scoring. You are welcome to comment however you like (within reason), but this isn’t a productive approach
You can (and have) quote me, though I dispute the spin you’ve given it – as stated already. Part of the purpose of this blog is to be open to criticism and encourage debate, if you has constructive ideas, I’m very much open to hearing them.
I’ve been holding forums on these issues, have you come along to share your points of view in the interests of finding a way forward?
Matthew Holloway wrote: I think you are being a tad harsh Simon. It could be interpreted in several ways, not all of which are so uncharitable.
Really Matthew? I imagine a certain Microsoft employee making a similar assessment of a certain e-mail.
Ms Curran is the Spokesperson*, Communications and Information Technology for the Labour Party of New Zealand. As such, the above quote reflects actual Labour Party policy towards Open Source, Creative Commons licensing and Copyright Infringement.
Perhaps you could get over yourself a little, Simon. It may have been a poor choice of words, but you could simply have pointed that out.
… given Labour’s objective of destroying New Zealand’s ICT industry, I suspect is the actual reason for Clare Curran’s besmirchment of it.
And now I have cause to doubt your good faith in joining the argument at all. This is hardly the way to have Copyleft concepts more widely appreciated and understood. Quite the opposite, in fact.
I also initially thought Clare had been misinformed and was saying creators of Creative Commons licenced art believe everything should be free.
Clare: could you perhaps edit the post and clarify what you mean? I don’t think everyone will read all the comments.
I’m assuming you’re referring to a couple extremists somewhere (where??) rather than labelling the entire open source movement as copy right infringers. The movement after all wouldn’t exist without copyright protecting it.
You’ve been *ace* so far at starting dialogues. Thanks for your time considering the issues and consulting with so many people. I hope you keep talking to more non-extremists from the creative commons and/or open source movements.
Hi Clare
Many thanks for this and other very thoughtful posts on this topic. I must admit, that like others here, I misinterpreted these words:
There’s a real tension in the online community driven by the people who believe pretty much wholesale in open source and creative commons, i.e. everything belongs to everyone. Hmmm, I think not.
I would be happy to clarify the details to the Labour party, but the point is *not* that the Copyright belongs to everyone. In fact, the freedoms guaranteed by licences like the GPL and CC rely on copyright belonging to someone who has made certain guarantees (through the licence) that the user freedoms can never be removed.
As I said, I would be more than happy to clarify this and other issues regarding open source software if that would be of help.
Don Christie
President, NZ Open Source Society
Here’s a cartoon on copyright.
Ok everyone, take some deep breaths
Happy to acknowledge I may not have chosen the best of words but am confident that the community who has been involved in these discussions to date understand my commitment to finding constructive solutions
Ms Curran was invited to reconsider her comment 10 hours ago, apparently it is not forthcoming.
Simon, I try not do adversarial point-scoring. You are welcome to comment however you like (within reason), but this isn’t a productive approach
The ICT industry had a decade of attempting to engage productively with the Labour regime. What we got was exclusionary software deals with a foreign monopoly for the entire Public Sector at exorbitant cost to the Kiwi taxpayer that forced Kiwis to pay that foreign corporation in order to interact with their own government. Further, we got a Monopoly maintenance deal with Telecom that consigned our network infrastructure to the digital dark ages over the protestations of tens of thousands of signatories to the LLU petition and the interests of four million Kiwis.
Labour simply doesn’t do constructive engagement.
You can (and have) quote me, though I dispute the spin you’ve given it – as stated already.
“Spin.” God forbid we ever have a Labour MP prepared to own their mistakes.
Part of the purpose of this blog is to be open to criticism and encourage debate, if you has constructive ideas, I’m very much open to hearing them.
I’ve been holding forums on these issues, have you come along to share your points of view in the interests of finding a way forward?
Perhaps I would, if Labour’s new-found interest in “listening and engaging” with the electorate wasn’t entirely insincere.
The alacrity with which Labour suddenly adopted an interest in the electorate’s opinions coincided perfectly with New Zealand kicking them from the Treasury benches. It will be matched only by the alacrity with which Labour reverts to the same authoritarian approach that we’ve experienced over the last decade if we ever make the mistake of electing them back into office.
From banning lightbulbs and hot showers to listening to the electorate in a little over seven days. What a difference a week made. What a difference an upcoming week will make. Not too many forums in that week eh?
The history of the last decade teaches that Labour are a disaster for ICT and the current spokesperson can’t bring herself to retract two sentences in a blog post, let alone offer a mea culpa for the past. Appreciation and understanding be damned Russell! This lot are incorrigible.
Quoth – That’s a very good cartoon. We should look at this in an historical context and the cartoon gives good examples of these. We must remember what the aims of the creation of the internet were – effectively, freedom to distribute whatever information you want. Now, the global landscape has changed and people want to assert their rights.
There is no golden solution for the debate at the present time. The Standard published a video of a documentary on copyright, worth a look (I think it was called copywrong or something).
Opensource/GNU etc., fails in the commercial marketplace. Lets not even try and defend this – there isn’t an effective way of making money from opensource.
I think NZ should take the lead in keeping our web free from a sort of quasi-privatisation (which is what the record labels want to do by prosecuting anyone who steals content).
There are plenty of mechanisms in place for legal downloading (iTunes Store anyone?), but I think we should keep to the real aims of the internet (within the bounds of decency, i.e. no child porn).
I think we should not deregulate or regulate and just keep the status quo.
Readhat would like to dispute your uninformed assertion.
Would love to use it but it doesn’t have a Linux compatible client. That’s one of the problems created by the present patent and copyright laws – compatibility is illegal.
> I’m getting some interesting, and mostly positive responses to the concept of a levy on internet connection. The issue is how much, and what does it apply to? And how would it be divvied up?
If you charge a levy, doesn’t that legitimise illegal downloading of copyrighted material? You are in essence paying for it at this point?
And if you’re not legitimising it then why should I, as a law abiding citizen, be charged because somebody else is breaking the law?
It seems to me that the feedback cycle for this is all wrong and it will in fact make the problem worse by incentivising bad behaviour.
On the pesky issue of termination: the French Constitutional Council last month overturned an attempt at introducing a three-strikes law (labelled HADOPI) which would have resulted in termination of a repeat-offender’s internet account. The council ruled that internet access is a basic human right (see http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article6478542.ece).
According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
I guess that freedom of opinion and expression extends to blogs like this one.
The New Zealand Bill of Rights Act (1990) section 14 has something similar: “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression, including the freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and opinions of any kind in any form.”
However even though article 2 of the Declaration of Human Rights states “Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration”, legally in New Zealand, these rights are subject to “reasonable limits” (Bill of Rights, 1990, section 5): “Subject to section 4 of this Bill of Rights, the rights and freedoms contained in this Bill of Rights may be subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”
[...] Curran criticised the National Government’s redraft of Section 92a. In a blog post titlled ‘What the future will be like’ on Labour’s ‘Red Alert’ blog, Curran criticised the Government for being hastey [...]
[...] has taken a strong position on copyright this year, understanding the importance of public discussion and the needs for all stakeholders to be taken [...]