A good response

Have been playing around with my Soundsold blog which so far hasn't been cancelled. A good article in the Herald by Chris Barton answering the Record Industry Association of NZ defence of the new Act. A shortened version is :

The Chief executive of Rianz, is disingenuous when he says: "Internet service providers are in a unique position to help us protect creative content online."

What he really means is: "We want internet providers to be our vigilantes - cop, judge, jury and executioner - to hunt down illegal music downloaders and cut off their internet."

Isn't that job of the police and the courts? And what about due process - don't people accused of wrongdoing deserve a fair hearing? Not according to those who are pushing for one of the most stupid, unjust pieces of legislation this country has ever seen. Thankfully, even though it voted for Section 92a National has decided to put the section into abeyance until March 27.

It's possible it could just sit forever in a kind of legal purgatory - a reminder to politicians the world over of how not to make legislation. The politicians who voted for this law should hang their heads in shame. Rejected by the select committee process, Section 92a was re-inserted at the last minute by the real villain in this sorry affair, Judith Tizard.

You have to wonder whether our politicians have really thought at all about what they are trying to achieve in this copyright law.

Do they really want to pass a law that makes children criminals and stifles creativity? That's not what copyright is all about. It's supposed to give people the independent means to be a creator, to provide a structure of incentives for artists. But much of the act passed into law does just the opposite.

Section 92c is the sort of law that stops a mother putting a video on You Tube of her baby dancing to Prince's Let's Go Crazy because the copyright holder doesn't authorise it.

The kind of law that stifles debate by preventing spoofs of political campaigns.

It's also a law that stops a multi-media savvy teenager remixing original video, music and graphics to create something new to share with friends on Facebook, because it might breach copyright in the original work.

The lawmakers say they are trying to stop abuses of copyright but have got so narrowly focused that they have become copyright abusers themselves - distorting the fabric of copyright to such an extent that they limit creativity.

It's relatively easy to identify who is uploading or downloading what - it's also relatively easy to spoof IP addresses and disguise who's actually online.

If Rianz want to hunt down the downloaders let them do their own dirty work. And follow standard due process.

But what our politicians should really be looking at is whether passing laws like this is an appropriate means of promoting copyright. When there is such widespread thumbing of the nose at copyright via the internet, isn't it perhaps time to ask whether there may be another way to deal with the problem?

Isn't it time to say banging a square peg into a round hole doesn't work? What is really required is a radical rethink of internet copyright, the deregulation of amateur and non-commercial creativity and probably some form of collective licensing to enable sharing economies to function in way that allows artists to be rewarded.

What we also need are politicians to make just laws for the people, not legislation that shows they are captured by vested interests.