by Gareth Hughes
Today I’m back again at the Nethui conference, which is bringing together a wide variety of people involved with internet issues.
It’s the only conference I’ve been at where I feel comfortable tapping away at my laptop and Blackberry, because everyone else seems to be. I just feel left out not having an iPad.
Interestingly, those who use the internet the most: urban, younger and wealthier Kiwis, are also a pretty accurate description of many Green Party voters.
There are a huge number on online issues: the digital divide, terminating internet access be it in Tunisia or Taupo, net neutrality, New Zealand’s broadband rollout, etc., but in this blog I’d like to touch on a few discussed yesterday: digital citizenship, the recent copyright changes, and ‘fair use.’
A question I’d like to ask is; are we giving our students appropriate training as digital citizens? More and more of the world is conducted online and students face many challenges from navigating the massive amounts of information online as well as the biggest threat for many, cyber-bullying. It seems there is a huge gulf in what’s offered between different schools, not just between higher and lower decile schools, but even between similar decile schools.
A big topic of discussion at Nethui is the new controversial file-sharing law passed under urgency, which the Green Party opposed. Like politics, there is a broad spectrum of views on copyright, some advocating it be ditched entirely, to those who want to see stiffer penalties and an extension of copyright. Likewise there’s a vigorous debate around whether internet access is a human right or not.
I’m somewhere in the middle. I want to see Kiwi artists be able to make a living off their creativity but I also think copyright is an economic monopoly on reproduction, not a property right, where sharing is likened to stealing, something this video humorously demonstrates. The fact is, the internet is the world’s greatest copying machine, and copyright laws need to be updated to reflect this. I think our priority shouldn’t be on ‘sticks’ like internet termination as a remedy for illegal file-sharing, but ‘carrots’ like increasing availability of digital content that recent research from Germany shows is more effective.
One problem faced in New Zealand is that our copyright legislation, written effectively in a pre-internet environment, is very specific on, for example, how much of a book you can copy, but not for online content. I think we put the cart before the horse making online copyright enforcement cheaper and faster, benefitting traditional media business models, before updating copyright legislation for the digital age.
Unlike the U.S. or Australia we have very little protection for ‘fair use’ of a work for purposes of parody or satire. Remember the Telecon ad parodying Telecoms practises, or the Should-A website parodying the poorly worded Section 59 referendum question? These were both removed under copyright arguments because we don’t have fair use protections.
I received a great deal of support at Nethui and online when I announced I am currently working on drafting a Members’ Bill to amend the Copyright Act to include parody and satire as fair use protections. Look forward to seeing this soon.
Published in Justice & Democracy | Society & Culture by Gareth Hughes on Thu, June 30th, 2011
Tags: broadband, copyright, internet, parody
More posts by Gareth Hughes | more about Gareth Hughes
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Agree reform of our fair dealing (not ‘fair use’) is long overdue. Totally support this idea.
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Sounds like a good time being had by all up there, Gareth!
Could be an interesting first reading of that Bill, SOH not being a parameter the House is reknown for – definitions of satire and parody may be needed, along with examples of modern usage.
I suspect some MP’s may not have engaged in popular humour modalities since Monty Python stopped screening on prime-time TV.
If you were having the debate about the ‘human right’ to internet access in the USA, there’d be no problems – they’ve had internet since the mid-80′s when Arpanet spread out from the universities into the business world (and started making money as well as IT research…) – we were very late in the game here, almost a generation of programmers behind early adopters. Most of the VUW senior prof’s in IT (a BSc major in those days) in the 80′s were imported from USA or UK, as we didn’t have enough academic development in IT going on for locally experienced lecturers to climb the academic career ladder. It’s very much a given in the USA that internet access is publicly provided in Libraries and other public institutions so that owning a computer is not a barrier to participation – ie: socio-economic barriers are mitigated.
I’m sure the hui is getting it’s ears bent by the very same Software and Hardware Engineering academics who have been doing hard-sell presentations to the secondary schools career expo here in Welli earlier this week. I’d still put my money on Waikato Uni, they’ve always been streets ahead of the rest of the country when it comes to Net research. Shame I never got to study there, but then ‘life is a long and flowing river’, who knows what lies in the future!
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The problem is that there are two distinctly different issues in play.
The first is the copyright act as it stands today (including the new infrininging filesharing provisions), and the second is the role and place of copyright in the digital age.
You (an many others) are using your views on the latter to try and undermine the former, and in effect, to justify law breaking.
I’m very in facour of a review of copyright in the digital age, and very in favour of generally obeying the law, including the copyright laws as we have today.
Complaining about the existing copyright law will not make for progress; the root cause needs to be attacked. And retarded internet blackouts and other such tomfoolery are not the way to achieve that basic reform.
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controversial file-sharing law. Recently, in Malaysia, the government has banned 10 top downloading sites including file storage sites like mega uploads. Public outcry is imminent as legitimate users are suffering. But there’s no complete solution in site as a total ban or “compromise” ban
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@dbuckley: If backing up DVDs that I own onto my NAS so I can more conveniently watch them (I use XBMC) is breaking the law, then I am a law breaker and I feel no twinge of guilt at all as this is clearly an activity that should not be against the law.
Similarly, if I send a few mp3′s to a friend as I think she’ll like them, I have no twinge of guilt as this is clearly an activity that should not be against the law – after all, if anything I’m doing the artist a favour by helping her work be disemminated more widely.
It’s perfectly ethical to break the law if the law is unjust.
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Your first example is a case of the law being an ass; it is legal to format shift music, but not to format shift movies, there is a distinct and unnecessary lack of orthoganality there.
In the second case you are (probably) depriving an artist of income, and thats the whole point of copyright. Despite the fact that this behaviour is common, it is not lawful, and as it stands there is no question of the law being unjust; it is absolutely just, and you are just ripping someone off. You’re trying to justify it with some bullshit about artist exposure, but that’s just you making excuses; you are ripping the creator off. At least be honest about what you are doing rather than try and justify it.
If you think the law is wrong, then work to change it. Every time you break the law you just prove that the law needs to be there to stop people breaking it. A circular argument, I grant you, but conventional thinking never-the-less.
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