Kiwicon – The government is your friend
The government is your friend and wants you to be happy.
This is the transcript of a speech given by Thomas Beagle at Kiwicon in Wellington on November 6th, 2011.
Website takedowns: a followup
We recently wrote about how an offensive website was taken offline by complaints.
In particular, we talked about the tactics that were used to take them down and whether they were a good thing for the internet or not. The two tactics described were:
- Complaining to the ISP that the site breached their terms of service. We said this risks reducing opinion on the internet to the level of whatever a company's PR department finds acceptable.
- Using copyright complaints over the site's use of a photo without permission. Taking down an entire site over what is arguably a reasonable use of an image is an affront to freedom of speech and shows how dangerous these US-style shoot-first-ask-questions-later copyright laws are.
The article attracted a fair bit of comment both for and against the use of these tactics. We also received some new information and thought it was worth posting a followup.
Taking down websites you don’t agree with
This is a post about the tactics used to take down a New Zealand website hosted in the the USA and what they mean for the Internet. (Update post.)
The website
Soon after the Christchurch quake, a website (christchurchquake.net) was published that said the quake was God's punishment for Christchurch's tolerance of homosexuality, with God being especially annoyed by Gay Ski Week. The website also made a number of other very odd claims concerning a conspiracy of "Phoenician-descended swamp lesbians" headed by Helen Clark that had taken over New Zealand.
The takedown
The site is no longer available (Google cache here). This is because a number of people found the site highly offensive, and some of them decided that they would do what they could to get the site taken off the Internet.
The author of the site could not be identified so most action was aimed at getting Bluehost, a company based in the US state of Utah, to take it down. Two main tactics were employed:
Letter to Simon Power About Copyright Infringement
Tech Liberty was a co-signer on this letter to Simon Power about the Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Bill.
The three main areas covered by the letter and briefing are:
- Avoiding the possible reversal of burden of proof when people are accused of infringement (section 122MA).
- Account holder liability for shared internet connections when the account holder would have no way of controlling the users of the connection.
- Mechanism for activating the suspended "account suspension" provisions.
See our other articles about copyright issues in general and this law in particular.
ACTA: Bad for Civil Liberties
We've been writing about the ACTA (Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) treaty for a while. We believe that copyright law and enforcement will need to change but also believe that everyone should participate in creating new laws, not just big business and their proxies. As such, we strongly objected to the secrecy around the negotiations and called for New Zealand to withdraw. We also made a submission to the Ministry of Economic Development about the digital enforcement provisions section.
The secrecy around ACTA caused problems for critics because, while much of the contents had been leaked, it was difficult to analyse the draft treaty without solid information. This all changed after the last meeting in Wellington, where global public pressure forced them to release the current draft (pdf) of the treaty.
Now we have the text to look at, were our fears justified? In this article we concentrate on some of the ways that the draft ACTA treaty encroaches on our civil liberties.
Media Release: Tech Liberty welcomes planned Section 92A revision
New section 92A of Copyright Act does a far better job of balancing civil liberties and copyright enforcement.
Commerce Minister Simon Power released a statement revealing an intended framework and policy to replace Section 92A of the Copyright Act. This section, meant to come into force this year, was suspended after a broad coalition of rights holders, ISPs, and stakeholders opposed the original vague and ill-defined wording.
Internet Name Suppression Workshop
InternetNZ hosted a workshop about name suppression in the digital age.
The following notes were made at the session. They give a general idea of what was discussed but should not be taken as definitive or complete.