It’s been over 3 years since the Department of Internal Affairs started their internet censorship trials in New Zealand. Since then (data from June 29th 2010):
Continue reading Internet filtering – time to let it go?
Sky’s Takedown Notices – Justice or Intimidation?
It’s a pretty scary thing to receive a legal letter from the law firm of a large corporate, especially when they claim that you’re in breach of their rights and then make a series of demands. Going to court is very expensive and even if you’re in the right, do you have enough money to be a test case? If you lose you might end up not only having to pay your own costs but those of the company who sued you. The threat of legal action is pretty intimidating for most people.
Sky TV is currently sending such letters to a number of people (see an example here). These are their own paying customers, who just want to watch Sky TV on their home-made entertainment systems. So why is Sky doing it? Before we can answer that question we’ll have to explain a little bit about electronic program guides.
Continue reading Sky’s Takedown Notices – Justice or Intimidation?
ACTA: Say hello to statutory damages
Update: After further analysis and discussion with NZ officials we believe that the current draft of the ACTA agreement would allow New Zealand to maintain its current damages scheme as represented by the (c) option in the agreement (additional punitive damages are decided by the judge). This means that New Zealand would not have to adopt a statutory damages regime to comply with ACTA.
Original article follows:
There’s a new ACTA draft leak out, thanks to La Quardature. And does it contain a shocker when comparing the new and last leaked texts.
Flowcharts for the new Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Bill
Chris Esther has created some useful flowcharts that help explain some of the processes included in the new Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Bill. He has very kindly allowed us to repost them here.
Continue reading Flowcharts for the new Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Bill
Privacy and Technology
A Tech Liberty representative spent two half days at a group discussion about privacy and technology.
Here are some of the things that were discussed:
Continue reading Privacy and Technology
Submission – Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Bill
Text of our submission to the Select Committee about the Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Bill. Or download the PDF version.
Continue reading Submission – Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Bill
Technology unveils past secrets
You’re probably aware that Google has been mapping the location of everyone’s wireless network access points. You may not be aware that other companies, such as Skyhook, have been doing the same thing for quite a while. They both use the information to help work out where you are so that their mapping applications work faster and more accurately.
Continue reading Technology unveils past secrets
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.
Continue reading ACTA: Bad for Civil Liberties
FAQ : Trans Pacific Partnership
New Zealand is one of the four original members of the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement. Other countries (Australia, the USA, Peru and Vietnam) are now interested in joining the agreement. It is referred to as both TPP and TPPA.
This FAQ answers some of the frequently asked questions about the TPP. It was last updated on 16th May 2011.
Contents:
Surveillance: current law
The Search and Surveillance Bill is an attempt to rewrite New Zealand’s laws around search and surveillance.
One thing that has become clear in the debate around the bill is that many people are not fully aware of the existing powers that government agencies have to pry into our personal affairs. It’s not uncommon for someone to decry a ‘new’ power in the Search and Surveillance Bill, only to be told that it is already in existing law.
This article lists, to the best of our knowledge, the current ways that the government can use to watch us. We will expand/correct it as additional knowledge comes to light.
This article has not yet been updated to reflect the changes made when the Search & Surveillance Act became law.