New Zealand DMCA Moves Forward 153
nzgeek writes "The DMCA-like amendments to the New Zealand Copyright Act passed their first hurdle in parliament today, with an overwhelming 113 to 6 vote to pass the Bill to the Commerce Select Committee for further discussion. The detail-oriented can read the full debate (or rather lack of debate), and one enterprising New Zealand legal blogger has an excellent series of posts on the Bill, its background, and its implications. New Zealanders interested in fighting this legislation have until the 16th of February 2007 to make submissions to the Select Committee, before the committee makes its recommendations and sends the Bill back for a second reading."
Only the first reading (Score:5, Informative)
Although the bill passed with an overwhelming margin, that doesn't mean a lot of the MPs will support it next time it comes up for vote. In New Zealand MPs often support a bill in its first reading because they feel it requires more thought and debate.
For example recently a bill to raise the New Zealand drinking age to 20 was passed in its first reading by a large margin before being voted down in the second - MPs back off from drinking age hike [nzherald.co.nz]
Re:Only the first reading (Score:4, Informative)
In case you're interested in writing as well, here is the list of email addresses [parliament.nz]. I strongly suggest that anyone who can write an intelligent thoughtful email to help get MPs seriously thinking about these issues should do so.
There is some good as well as bad (Score:4, Informative)
My notes I posted to mailing list reproduced on this:
Here is the major announcement from the government:
http://www.beehive.govt.nz/ViewDocument.aspx?Docu
and the actual proposed legislation is here:
http://www.parliament.nz/NR/rdonlyres/5A88D15B-C4
Some quick highlights as I read the act: (Note I am not a lawyer)
- Reverse engineering IS allowed under some circumstances - basically for interoperability
- format shifting is allowed but only initially for 2 years, this can be extended though (or not)
- time shifting is allowed provided you don't keep it and it's not available on demand
- ISPs are basically not liable (provided they follow take down notices)
- allowed to alter commercial software if the vendor doesn't fix problems in reasonable time
- anti-TPM (DRM via another name) is prohibited for sale or for producing (seems to cover open source). Fines of $150K or 5 years jail. Doesn't seem to prohibit if you have a copy but you can't write it yourself, sell it or tell others about it. Does make it an offence if you use it to copy copyrighted material. But you are allowed to use anti-TPM for "interoperability of software" so conceivably you could use software to play Itunes or DVDs on Linux. But this only applies if
you have asked vendor for a copy you can use and they don't supply in a reasonable time.
Overall this seems to be much better than DMCA of the USA but not perfect. It is probably better than people could have hoped for.
Ian
Re:new zealnd (Score:1, Informative)
http://www.murdoch.edu.au/elaw/issues/v11n3/beyer
and how about http://www.smh.com.au/news/web/copyright-ruling-p
Don't get me wrong, Australia is doing very well, but it is backward compared to new New Zealand when it come to the internet.
Re:Why does anyone need a DMCA? (Score:4, Informative)
No they don't.
Fair use being the most obvious.
Buahahahahaha!
And the work being "protected" has to actually be under copyright.
There is absolutely nothing stopping anyone from putting DRM on public domain content. It's technically not criminal for you to strip the DRM off of public domain content, but it is still criminal for anyone to actually supply you with the means to do so.
There are no meaningful execptions to any of the DMCA laws, there is certainly no Fair Use exception, and it even effectively enforces DRM on non-copyright content.
if you're going to attack them
If you're going to defend them... Chuckle. Here's a link to the text of the USA DMCA anti-circumvention law [cornell.edu].
Note that 1201(c)... the supposedly "Fair Use" provision... note that it merely states that Fair Use defenses to copyright infringement are not affected. Fair Use is a defense to charges of copyright infringment, and only to charges of copyright infringment. Circumvention and trafficking circumvention tools are not copyright infringment, they are simply criminal. Therefore there *is no* Fair Use defense for DMCA violations. So in effect what 1201(c) really says is that a non-existant defense is not affected. That's the sort of stupid legal games you get when we allow industry lawyers to literally write the text of our laws. The Fair Use provision literally does nothing, but it sure looks pretty doesn't it? It sure creates the appearance that the law is reasonable, the appearance that it reasonably addresses and defends the public's interests. And that is far from the only example of legal tricks slipped into copyright law. The notice-and-takedown section of the has another great public interest sounding clause that doesn't actually do anything... the clause that gives the appearance that takedown orders are filed under penalty of purjury... it is effectively meaningless. Another lovely stunt they pulled was in the NET act, they slipped an apparently insignifigant single little sentence that redefined the legal term "financial gain". This redefinition of terms radically altered the very landscape of copyright law. It redefined "financial gain" to encompas almost any case of copyright infringment (especially P2P), and it took almost all fairly insignifigant cases of non-commercial copyright infringment and though the back door slammed them all under the extremely sever FELONY LAWS that were intened and designed only to apply to serious cases of COMMERCIAL copyright infringment. Individial noncommercial infringment was suddenly thrown under the laws intended to target major criminal commercial enterprice priracy. Individual non-commecial infringment which *was* considered a minor and purely civil matter was suddenly subject to 3 and 5 year felony prison terms. This is the sort of legal trickery you get when we literally allow industry lawyers to write our laws for us, and our legislators simply and ignorantly vote through that prepared text. Oops.... I'm ranting.
Anyway, the point is that there is absolutely nothing reasonable or Fair about DMCA-style anti-circumvention law. And for purposes relevant here, the various international versions of the law are effectively the same as US law. The US "free trade" negotiators forcibly cram crazy terms into every single trade deal, and those terms pretty well prohibit any meaningful softening or exemptions to the DMCA. The law would become 100% worthless if they allowed any meaningful exception at all. DRM security is 100% dependent on circumvention means being COMPLETELY unavailable. If there is any meaningful excemption at all for anything, you would need some means of circumventing the DRM available. You would need someone to be able to supply you with
Re:New Zealand is a country of 4 million people. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Why does anyone need a DMCA? (Score:3, Informative)
No. As I said, the act of circumvention and the act of trafficking in circumvention are both criminal acts. Not some civil law suit.... it is criminal as in the FBI can come and arrest you and toss you in federal prison for up to a decade. (Five years on a first offence, a decade on a second offense.)
and nothing if simply opening or copying a DRMed file is not related to copyright issues, as you imply.
No. It is indeed criminal even if you do not commit copyright infringment. If a 12 year old girl copies a few seconds of a video for a junior high school multimedia project and brings it into school and all the students distribute copies of their projects to each other, that is non-infringing Fair Use. If she circumvents the encryption on a DVD in the process, she did not commit copyright infringment but she DID commit a criminal act and she can be arrested for it.
I gave a link to the text of the law itself in my last post. I will repeat the link: US Code Title 17 Chapter 12 Section 1201. [cornell.edu]
The problem is that you assumed that the DMCA was a reasonable sane law. It's not. If the DMCA were a reasonable sane law it would opperate exactly in the way you expected and wrote in your post.
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Re:Boooooooo! (Score:3, Informative)
1. copyright DOES exist
It was 14 years long for books originally. You should probably look at the motivation for the original laws and compare it against publishing monopoly abuse that existed prior to that.
Are books now so advanced that a 95+ year monopoly is needed to encourage people to write them?
There is no real justification for a monopoly that last a century and/or beyond a persons life-span.
2. it exists for good reason (we couldn't have the GPL without it)
The GPL, Open Source and Creative Commons are reactions to the effective termination of the Public Domain. Specifically, GPL is a reaction to copyright law that does not fit software. Software is obsolete in 10 years, and in 95 years, when public domain, the software is only available in binary form.
3. creators have the right to control the distribution of their works
It's not the "creators" that are worrisome, it is publishing collector companies that expect to buy and "own" information, even of the dead, and profit from it forever.
Creators should expect a system that compensates people for new invention.
There is no eternal publishing right. It was intended to be a temporary monopoly that encouraged people to innovate.