p2pnet - rss feed: New Zealand ‘DRM criminals’
p2pnet.net News:- The Big Four Organized Music cartel already has things pretty well sewn up tight in the US where the outgoing Bush administration openly acts as an industry copyright enforcer.
And elsewhere, no matter which way you turn - Canada, Australia, the UK - Warner Music (US), EMI (Britain), Vivendi Universal (France) and Sony BMG (Japan and Germany) are trying to achieve the same kind of hands-on control, using the mainstream media to paint entirely false pictures of the “devastation” (their word) they claim they’re suffering under the wave of copyright crime they dreamed up and are using as a tool to force changes in national copyright laws.
Now, in New Zealand, they want anyone who breaks DRM consumer control software on music downloads to be designated a “criminal”.
The Copyright (New Technologies and Performers’ Rights) Amendment Bill, awaiting its first reading in Parliament, “puts a maximum penalty of a $150,000 fine and five years in prison for anyone caught selling devices or publishing information which could be used to get around any technology used to protect digital copyright,” says Stuff.co.nz.
The current Copyright Act bans the cracking of DRM but has no criminal penalties, says the story, going on, “Colin Jackson, president of non-profit society InternetNZ, calls the anti-circumvention clauses a ‘toxic provision’ and warns they could be used to ’suppress all kinds of legitimate valuable work and speech’.”
He compares the bill to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and says it also stops people from, “removing information from files, such as terms and conditions of use or who owns the copyright, if they believe it’ll be used to violate copyright”.
However, says Stuff.co.nz, “the bill allows people to crack digital rights for personal use, and libraries, archives and educational institutions can do it provided it is to correct software errors, make software interoperable or to do encryption research. The bill would allow format shifting - converting CDs to MP3s, for example. People would be able to make one copy of a song they own for personal use for each device they own.”
But, “people could lose this right if they signed a contract, for example, if a music download service banned format-shifting in its terms. Format shifting video files - from DVD to Dvix, for example - would still be illegal, as would format-shifting audio tracks to sell or give to others.”
And, “It puts the fear of God up the ISP because they know if they don’t take it down they could be liable for that infringement,” the story IS lawyer Earl Gray saying, although it’s an improvement on the current situation, “where Mr Gray says the ISP can be sued for damages along with the copyright infringer, in theory at least, though plaintiffs don’t usually go after them.”
If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
Also See:
Stuff.co.nz - Fears over copyright law change, December 11, 2006
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December 14th, 2006 at 7:19 pm
Best stick to manslaughter. The sentences are lighter.
December 15th, 2006 at 4:51 am
MAFIAA (here: New Zealand Cell) acts like terrorists, so treat them like terrorists!