ACTA, commentary, copyright, TPP

Trans-Pacific Partnership: An FTA with fangs

In the last few years, New Zealand law governing intellectual property has been in a state of flux driven by the content industry demanding changes to protect their business. No sooner has one set of law changes been debated then another set of the same laws and demands pops up into view. From S92 of the Copyright Act to the ACTA treaty and now to the Trans Pacific Partnership.

The TPP is an existing free trade agreement (FTA) between NZ, Singapore, Brunei and Chile signed in 2005. The TPP allows for more countries to join and the USA, Australia, Vietnam and Peru have all indicated that they are interested. Substantive negotiations began in March.

Of course, the USA has proceeded to reframe the agreement around its usual default template for any FTA – draconian IP protection on behalf of its content industries and limited concessions in all other areas, creating a one-sided arrangement. As Australia experienced in its FTA negotiations with the US, it’s not about a meeting of mutual interests but a game of how much wiggle room can be found on the edge of the US demands.

New Zealand has long sought a free trade deal with the US (our second largest export market). In theory it means that our agricultural exports will have an easier time in a large market, but the powerful US agricultural lobby will limit this while changes to IP law will mean an increase in transfers from NZ users to US owners. However, even if the result is actually a net loss to New Zealanders, an FTA with the US is a “win” politically.

S92. ACTA. TPP. Once again the battle is on to defend our rights as both consumers and producers of IP before our laws are rewritten to suit the US.

More information:

article, surveillance

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.

Continue reading Surveillance: current law →

ACTA, article

A Week of ACTA

It’s going to be a week of ACTA in Wellington, New Zealand.

  • On Saturday (April 10th) we have PublicACTA organised by InternetNZ. It’s a chance for people who oppose ACTA to get together and discuss how to stop it. Guest speakers include Canadian law professor Michael Geist and Australian academic Kim Weatherall.
  • Then, the following week (April 12-16th) there’s the latest round of the official ACTA negotiations.

Why we oppose ACTA

  • We oppose the attempt to take away people’s rights (due process, freedom of speech, right to own and use property) in an attempt to protect the business models of the big media and pharmaceutical industries.
  • We oppose the secrecy around the ACTA negotiations. Democratic societies should debate their laws in public.
  • We oppose the way that the ACTA treaty is an attempt to legislate by treaty, avoiding the normal democratic process in each of the participating countries.

Tech Liberty articles about ACTA

ACTA, article

Submission about Digital Enforcement Provisions in ACTA

The Ministry of Economic Development asked for submissions about the Digital Enforcement Provisions in the ACTA treaty.

While we object to New Zealand’s participation in the treaty, we still thought it was worthwhile to respond. The full text follows (headings correspond to those in the request for submissions), but the 8 recommendations we made are:

  1. The ACTA treaty should note that ISPs are not liable for the actions of their users.
  2. That ACTA includes a “notice and counter-notice” regime where complainants can pay ISPs to deliver a notice to the account holder for an IP address at a particular time, and the ISP can pass responses back to the complainant.
  3. That ACTA specifies that complainants should be able to obtain the identity of a user from the ISP only after a court order has been obtained.
  4. That ACTA makes no attempt to encourage mutually supportive relationships between ISPs and rights holders.
  5. That ACTA should recognise that anti-TPM measures have a useful and lawful purpose.
  6. That ACTA should insist that participating countries allow consumer rights-holders the right to create, buy and use anti-TPM software and devices if these are used for lawful purposes.
  7. That ACTA should forbid the use of TPMs that limit the reasonable and customary rights of people to enjoy the use of the rights that they have purchased or otherwise legally obtained, unless the supplier also undertakes to provide unprotected versions when required.
  8. That ACTA should not include enforcement measures concerning the removal or modification of copyright management information.

Continue reading Submission about Digital Enforcement Provisions in ACTA →

ACTA, article

ACTA – The NZ Official Information Requests

2 Comments

We’ve written about the unhealthy secrecy around the ACTA treaty negotiations. As New Zealanders we believe we have a right to know what our government is doing on our behalf.

We wrote to the Ministry of Economic Development and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade to ask them some questions about ACTA under the Official Information Act. We just got our answers back (scanned PDFs of the MED letter – 3MB, MFAT letter – 3MB, and cabinet paper – 6MB) and we have to admit that we weren’t very surprised to see more excuses not to release official information than we saw information.
Continue reading ACTA – The NZ Official Information Requests →

article, filtering

Department of Internal Affairs failing on open government

7 Comments

Last week we announced that the New Zealand internet filter had “gone live” and was now being used to filter the connections for users of two ISPs (Watchdog and Maxnet), with more expected to follow.

The obvious question has to be, why was Tech Liberty announcing something that the Department of Internal Affairs had done? Where was their announcement that the filter had gone live on the 1st of February? Don’t civil servants have a duty to communicate to the people that they serve?
Continue reading Department of Internal Affairs failing on open government →