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Blackout Protest over New Zealand Copyright Law
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by Jordan Yerman | February 15, 2009 at 09:56 pm
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New Zealand's netizens are asking for a blackout on web usage from February 16-23 over the highly-controversial Section 92A of New Zealand's Copyright Act. The blackout involves changing blog logos and user avatars to black.
The provision would allow for disconnection of Internet services for anyone accused of copyright violation three times. This must have looked great on paper to those heavily lobbied by entertainment distribution companies, but is quite clearly not workable in the real world. In light of this, New Zealand's neterati are calling for the blackout, which has been echoed by folks like actor, writer and Twitter-machine Stephen Fry.
A more effective protest would be to simply accuse your local legislator of copyright violation, and to do so three times.
In fact, I bet quite a few Kiwi legislators have a few Split Enz tracks on their machines that they didn't pay for. That counts as one accusation, right?
Have fun with that pen and paper.
The controversial Section 92A of the Copyright Act comes into force on February 28th. Copyright holders and the telco industry are continuing talks on a code of practice for ISPs to deal with the legislation. A draft code has been released for public discussions, with submissions due to close on March 6th.
Reason didn't work and the Parliamentary process failed, which is why we in New Zealand now have arguably the world's harshest copyright enforcement law. Sections 92A and C of the amended Copyright Act establish a guilt upon accusation principle that can see anyone accused of "copyright infringement" getting his or her Internet connection severed.
An organisation called the Creative Freedom Foundation has been campaigning against the law, and now a content creator, Juha Saarinen, has urged Web site owners, bloggers and users of social networks (Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, etc.) to black out a page or some content this week in protest at the legislation. Saarinen says the law is “there for the large entertainment organisations to terrorise Internet users”
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Jordan Yerman
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (2)
at 23:20 on February 15th, 2009
Just a small correction. The Copyright Amendment Act does not have any provision for "three strikes and you are out". It actually allows ISP's to disconnect anyone accused of copyright infringement. It is the telco's who have the proposed requirement for three accusations, but this is in their draft code which is purely voluntary and which only applies to public ISP's (should they decide to adopt it). It does not apply to all those deemed to be an ISP under the Act - such as schools, libraries, internet cafes and the like.
Under the law it is entirely possible for someone to make a malicious accusation and an ISP to simply disconnect. There is no requirement for the ISP to notify the user in advance, nor any process for reinstatement. Unlike the DCMA the ISP can also remove all supposedly-offending content with no requirement to archive or reinstate.
This new law is frightening in its lack of protection for anyone except the mega mogul music and film industry.
at 07:15 on February 16th, 2009
I am rather certain that some of those legislators have a few split Enz tracks on they computers has you say here.