Tag Archive for: copyright law

There’s currently a web-protest going on about a law in New Zealand – the Guilt Upon Accusation law ‘Section 92A’ that calls for internet disconnection based on accusations of copyright infringement without a trial and without any evidence held up to court scrutiny. This law is due to go into effect on February 28th of this year.

Here’s an excerpt of the actual text of the law:

“An internet service provider must adopt and reasonably implement a policy that provides for termination, in appropriate circumstances, of the account with that Internet service provider of a repeat infringer.

… repeat infringer means a person who repeatedly infringes the copyright in a work by using one or more of the Internet services of the Internet service provider to do a restricted act without the consent of the copyright owner.”

I’d post the whole thing here, but not one of the protesting organizations I’ve found has actually seen fit to do that.

I understand the idea behind this protest, and think the law is silly on its face, as no ISP is going to be able to properly enforce it.

The protest itself consists of blacking out one’s twitter or facebook icon, and / or sending a letter of protest.

Typical of these kind of protests – none of these artist or listener communities is acting – approaching the lawmakers and saying “yes, we value art, but we value our freedom too.  Let’s figure out a way to jointly do both.”

But they’re sure complaining a lot.  And uploading black icons.

Problem is… as easy and as popular as it is to make the argument that this is just the greedy entertainment industry wanting to wring every possible dollar our of the poor working stiff, and using the government to do it, it’s happening for a reason. Read more