Category Archives: commentary

Commentary on events and the writing of others

IP: Singing from the same songbook

New Zealand has sought a Free Trade Agreement with the United States for some time. As part of most trade agreements between much larger markets and smaller countries like New Zealand, the inevitable concessions are made by a smaller country for the longer-term gain in access to the market.

In the past, this was mostly around the timing of subsidies and the speed with which access to the market happened for each party. However, more recently the realm of Intellectual Property Rights have become a core part of the concessions a smaller country must make in order to do business with the United States. Continue reading IP: Singing from the same songbook

Law Commission Demands ISPs Filter the Internet

Updated: see our update to this post.

Sometimes it seems that every day there is another threat to people’s abilities to use the Internet. Each special interest group has their own barrow to push, often with honourable intent, that causes them to make impossible or unreasonable demands.

Today’s effort is from the Law Commission. They’ve published their Suppressing Names and Evidence report and it includes the following (recommendation 26 from the report, page 66, PDF):

Where an internet service provider or content host becomes aware that they are carrying or hosting information that they know is in breach of a suppression order, it should be an offence for them to fail to remove the information or to fail to block access to it as soon as reasonably practicable.

Continue reading Law Commission Demands ISPs Filter the Internet