NZ Judge In Dotcom Extradition Case Speaks Out Against TPP & US Copyright Extremism
from the good-for-him dept
A bunch of news reports are highlighting a story in which New Zealand District Court Judge David Harvey supposedly called the US "the enemy," and are pointing out that he's the judge overseeing the extradition case for Kim Dotcom. Upon seeing the headline, I was pretty amazed as well, figuring that might cause problems with the case, but the details show that his comments were not about the US in general, or about the Dotcom case. Rather, they were in response to the TPP negotiations that we've been following closely -- and how the TPP will take away certain rights from New Zealanders, like the ability to get around region-specific DVD players:It is legal in New Zealand to use methods to get around these regional codes and make the DVDs watchable but Judge Harvey said the TPP would change this.His point is that the US is trying to expand copyright protectionism and curtail current rights of New Zealanders, blocking them from doing something that is currently legal and seems perfectly reasonable (getting around regional restrictions to watch legally purchased DVDs from other regions). It's a good thing that more people are seeing the problems of American extremism on copyright law, but I wonder if this will be used (as it appears to be in the press) to hit back on him for his role in the Dotcom case.
"Under TPP and the American Digital Millennium copyright provisions you will not be able to do that, that will be prohibited... if you do you will be a criminal - that's what will happen. Even before the 2008 amendments it wasn't criminalised. There are all sorts of ways this whole thing is being ramped up and if I could use Russell [Brown's] tweet from earlier on: we have met the enemy and he is [the] U.S."
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Filed Under: anti-circumvention, copyright, david harvey, dvds, new zealand, policy, region free, tpp, us
Companies: megaupload
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So, it is hardly surprising that a comment relating to excessive expansion of IP rights will be used by copyright maximalists to claim bias under current legislation.
Not making sense is a major part of IP maximalism.
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A mechanic can't play the radio in his garage because public performance.
A collection society threatens lawsuit unless you pay extortion fee -- even though you don't play any music represented by that collection society.
Music and movies that are wildly successful yet strangely never profitable.
Music licensing for radio is at one rate. Music licensing for internet radio is designed to destroy internet radio. Then there is satellite radio.
You can't buy a DVD across the border and bring it home and watch YOUR disk in YOUR player. Or on YOUR computer if it runs a Free operating system.
Can't have DVD jukeboxes because that would bring the convenience of on-demand right into your home. Copyright law requires some special kind of free for the convenience of on-demand. In fact it requires a special fee for anything new, useful or just plain desirable.
The maximalists still, in the 21st century, believe that copying your own music CD's to your own mp3 player is or should be a crime punishable by ruining your life and future. It's that convenience thing again. A solid state player that is tiny is something that copyright law requires you pay an extra fee for -- if you can get it at all. After all, copyright requires carving up music into a hundred different "rights" like a special "solid state device mechanical performance" right or something.
The music and movie industry need absolute control of the internet. They must be able to shut down anything at will. No due process. No recourse. All expenses to be paid by ISPs. And they assure us this would never be abused. (Didn't we hear that when the DMCA was being negotiated?)
These people are against any concept of fair use. No such thing as fair use. The only use is paid use -- and that is per pair of ears listening.
The maximalists cannot determine whether something online is infringing or not, yet expect Google to be able to do so. (Example: copyright owner taking down their own promotional videos or their own artists' music.)
The internet enables mass communication about whatever anyone wants to talk about, what interests people. This is in a way that one-to-many broadcast media owned by concentrated wealth could never enable. That is why the world is waking up to the excesses of IP.
The sooner IP is dead the better.
Then I could get started on the patent system. Or twisted concepts of what trademark is thought to mean instead of simply protecting consumers from fraud.
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Sarcasm about the IP industry worries me. I am always afraid that I am giving someone ideas.
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having other sensory issues, i somewhat dread the day they decide to make everything 3D by default with no off toggle. *sigh*
and i can grantee that if this nonsense keeps up at that point they Will charge an extra licence for the 3D stuff despite there being no way to get it without. (and then they'll encrypt it so you can't even strip it out... natch.)
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"The internet enables mass communication about whatever anyone wants to talk about, what interests people. This is in a way that one-to-many broadcast media owned by concentrated wealth could never enable. That is why the world is waking up to the excesses of IP."
I would like you to be right, but where are you seeing the world waking up to the excesses of IP.
The comments on techdirt are exactly the wrong place to draw that conclusion from.
Ask the majority of people about whether or not a business has to pay licence fees to play music or radio and not only will the majority not know, they also won't care.
Only those who understand that this kind of stuff will affect them directly will care at all and they have to know about it first.
There is a lot of news about the megaupload thing, but for example in Britain, rnbxclusive.com was taken down in February this year by the UK's Serious Organized Crime Agency in a very public manner with all kinds of bizarre claims ( http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120214/11083717758/uk-now-seizing-music-blogs-with-american-domai ns-over-copyright-claims.shtml )
and not one word has been heard about it since.
No reports that I am aware of, of any charges actually being filed, no court case, nothing and of course the website is still gone.
Now if that happened with a tv channel, people would notice, if it happened with a newspaper chances are people would notice, but even in this rarified environment here, where people are aware of copyright issues and IP overreach and regulatory capture, no one has followed up on this, no one is talking about it at all.
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> business has to pay licence fees to play music or radio
> and not only will the majority not know, they also
> won't care.
Asking that question, and then telling them the correct answer suddenly seems to get many of them to care. Especially when they hear of the excesses of collection societies.
Especially when they hear of collection societies that collect for music that they don't even represent.
Especially when they hear that a business owner got sued because they didn't proactively seek out all possible collection societies, and didn't pay one of them. (What - there's not a single place to go to pay the extortion license?)
I'm not saying the majority of people understand the issues. I'm simply saying the climate is changing. The people who do understand the issues are beginning to be significant enough in number and have the ear of the right people that it is not impossible to see the broken system getting fixed.
Especially in countries where it is not yet broken, but the IP maximalists are trying to make it broken.
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The pushing from the maximalist side is constant and when one line of attack gets derailed they still have multiple other fronts open.
Look, for example, even on techdirt where the new Canadian copyright legislation is hailed as having some good parts, while introducing digital lock anti circumvention; digital locks being, technology that can and will used to bypass and render null and void much of what is being praised in C-11.
Where are even the failed bills that attempted to narrow the reach of IP.
Where in government is there a call for a full review of IP laws based on what their purpose is supposed to be and whether the current or proposed legislation will help or hinder the purpose.
In many ways, the hope of those who oppose the overreach, is that the overreach will go so far as to actively, obviously and egregiously impinge on the lives of the majority of people so that they will start paying attention and start asking their representatives why legislation is being passed and trade agreements negotiated to resolve problems that haven't actually been determined to be problems of any kind.
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They only have to win once to get some expansion. Then they can focus on another area and eventually get a win for expansion in that dimension.
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I think.
I has a sad :~(
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the only way to reverse it is to make the issue not protecting our rights to free speech and property and due process, not about preventing the expansion of their rents, but about attacking them.
probably not going to happen, not even sure quite how you'd got about it, but the only way you're going to get out of the 'we have to win every time, they only have to win once' trap is to pin down the 'they' and destroy them.
i wonder what it would take to start criminalising these industry associations? ripping apart the IP system? dismantling the multi-nationals and mega-corps.... all that good stuff.
again, i don't see it happening, but the only way to get off the defensive is to attack, and until that happens it's a losing battle, even if the war ends up won.
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Given that ACTA has failed with the global population, I think more will be embolden to speak out against TPP knowing that it's becoming more popular (just not with the U.S.).
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It failed in the EU but the key elements are likely to be signed up to in a Canade-EU agreement.
People don't have the attention span to keep on this, we need people to tell their representatives what they want and to mean it, if their representatives don't deliver, then they don't get elected again.
If they do get elected again, then they know, we didn't mean it.
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And so it's not all that surprising that the very worst of this IP BS is coming from the US.
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Again there is so little actual difference between the policies of the parties (compared to the hyperbole and promises) that exercising your vote is a depressingly pointless formality.
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of course it helps that, all though our center left and center right parties Can be fairly similar sometimes (there are some major differences, but there's also a lot of overlap.), the Other parties are all quite different in pretty much everything but the fact that only the extream-right party wants anything to do with the center right party... (honestly, if the center right party hadn't, through a combination of redrawn electorates and lack of voter participation, managed to essentially win a majority by themselves, we could actually have seen a coalition of 'everyone else' just to keep them out, given how things were going last election, which is quite unusual.)
biggest problem here is that if you don't want to vote for a party perceived as being on the 'left' (not really an accurate way of describing things at all here) you didn't really have much choice beyond' current problematic center-right' and 'more extream and obviously stupid right'. in the last election we had an actually sane center-right option... but it's really hard for new parties to get in. to the point where the outcome of the last election left a lot of people dissatisfied with the system. (when the party that gets the fourth most votes doesn't get in, but the 5th, 6th, and 7th do, there's something wrong with the system. in this case a stupid idea called a 'threshold'. if you don't get more than... 5% of the vote i think? which is about six seats... you don't get Anything. unless one of your members gets an electorate in their own right. in which case that threshold is outright ignored and you get assigned the number of seats your votes entitle you to, even if it's only one or two. )
blah blah blah.
tldr:
two party systems suck. bias media sucks. 'strategic voting' should be renamed 'suicidal voting'.
that is all.
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And then Suddenly
New Zealand uses, "This is a Bad Idea!"!
America uses, "In the Pockets of the []"!
It's not very effective...
American People uses "Facepalm"!
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Clearly you are not well versed in American history. Excuses are for pansies. We'll skip right to the something really stupid part thank you very much!
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they got out of the only mutual defense treaty they ever signed by throwing a hissy fit when we refused to allow nuclear armed ships to dock in our ports. (never mind that the people were kind of leery about nuclear powered ones too, and that we were willing to let them anchor a ways out in our waters and still supply them and meet all our commitments and what not. (and the story about how NZ ended up with such a solid nuclear free stance is amusing as well. let's just say that it was partially by accident :D) ) which somehow lead to them refusing to allow our warships to dock in their ports at ALL. (this year, even, there was some joint exercise or celebration thing or i don't even know what up in hawaii. NZ ships were invited then promptly told to go dock in the civilian ports because they weren't allowed in the naval base, unlike everyone else.)
then there was the couple of thousand NZ dollar cruise missile built out of off the shelf consumer parts. some iranian guys get wind of this and try to contract to the guy did it to buy some. he contacts the NZ government to find out what he should do about this, is surprised to find he can legally do so. all parties agree that he should not do it (including him) he says he will not. he does not. all parties agree the law should be adjusted to make it illegal. this guy is, incidentally, in the process of setting up a business to supply the US and NZ military with some cheap, high tech stuff. (unmanned recon drones or something?). he's had some tax issues previously but has a payment plan all set up and is paying it all off. his plan for the missiles is to, again, sell them to the NZ and US militaries.
some brightspark in the US intelligence agencies hears about this and freaks out.
this leads, Directly, to the NZ government calling in all his overdue taxes at once (despite the payment plan in place as per SOP), resulting in bankruptsy for him, his business being shut down, hundreds of jobs lost, and the US and NZ governments missing out on their crazy cheap short range missiles and unmanned recon stuff.
NO ONE GAINED ANYTHING OUT OF THIS. the US actually shot itself in the foot.
so, the one built prototype missile is shipped out by a third party so he doesn't know what happened to it (so no one else can hold him responsible for anything to do with it) theoretically scrapped, the guy sets up a new payment plan for his taxes (apparently a much friendlier one, if memory serves) and life goes on. but still.
(it should be noted that he posted online somewhere that he had built this thing, and some proof that he had done so, as proof that it was possible. nowhere were the plans, parts used, or anything else of that nature available.)
also due to US influence: it is illegal to export cryptographic devises from New Zealand. this includes ANY sort of microchip or computational device. this sort of vaguely made sense during the early days of the computer and the cold war, but is nonsense these days.
(the official NZ government position on the subject? 'we have to cease it if you declare it. but if you don't mention it we make absolutely no effort to check for these things or enforce the law and the punishment is non-existent.'... seriously.)
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Nothing suss.
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which means the cheap-arse budget ones always do.
spend your thousands of dollars on a top of the line model, though, and it's probably been made for Europe, the US, or Japan and just tweaked to the right region or whatever... Those will lock you out. (yes, it is silly.)
not sure what that means for blu-ray mind you.
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well, you know, aside from it costing half as much or less and Blu-ray having no noticeable advantage for anything i can take advantage of (i have issues which render 3D worse than useless and surround sound, or even stereo, pointless.)
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The irony is I had to buy a Blu-ray player and burner so I could write technical guides for the technology. Which is okay since I find that side of things more interesting anyway.
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They are a private industry's feeble attempt to control a world market, and should have no legal standing at all, period, anywhere in the world.
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This.
I can't think of a better way to get people everywhere to pirate things than to try to force them to wait/pay more/not receive them whatsoever.
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> They are piracy inducers.
Inducing someone to commit copyright infringement is a crime with the same statutory damages of $150,000 per occurrence.
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O RLY?
Show me where it says that in the Copyright Act (Title 17).
You can't. Instead, as the Supreme Court pointed out in MGM v Grokster (2005) (citing Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios (1984)) :
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I believe you are both right and wrong here. There is an *inducement* standard for inducing someone to commit a crime, but that's not what Lemley is arguing in his brief. He's arguing that what's not in the law is contributory infringement for linking. And he's right. The difference is that 18 U.S.C. 2 is about inducing (or aiding, abetting, etc...) someone else into committing a *crime*.
But when talking about linking or merely pointing others to infringing works, the users themselves are not being "induced" into a criminal violation, but potentially a civil one. If those users are not, in fact, committing a crime -- and I've yet to see anyone suggest they are -- then there is no inducement issue.
Separately, it's worth pointing out that Lemley's brief refers to contributory infringement, but you're talking about inducement. While the two are related, inducement and contributory infringement are different. His issue in the roja case was not about inducement, but the reliance on the key elements found in civil case law for contributory infringement being used to suggest criminal violations, despite there being no such thing in the statute.
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But Lemley's argument was that "there is no statutory basis for the theory of criminal contributory infringement." That's wrong. It's 18 U.S.C. 2. As support, he then cites to the quote from the Sony case: "The Copyright Act does not expressly render anyone liable for infringement committed by another." As I explained just below, quoting Patry, that's wrong too. "To authorize" in Section 106 expressly renders people liable for the infringement caused by another. The legislative history explicitly explains how "to authorize" incorporates the judge-made doctrines of secondary liability. If a person contributes to a crime by linking, then that person is liable under 18 U.S.C. 2, and if they own a domain name that was used to distribute the links, that domain name can be forfeited. The idea that linking can't be a crime is rather silly. If you help someone else to commit a crime, you're a criminal too.
But when talking about linking or merely pointing others to infringing works, the users themselves are not being "induced" into a criminal violation, but potentially a civil one. If those users are not, in fact, committing a crime -- and I've yet to see anyone suggest they are -- then there is no inducement issue.
But the forfeiture statute, 18 U.S.C. 2323, says that property INTENDED TO BE USED for a crime can be forfeited. It is not necessary that there actually have been a crime. The government need only show by a preponderance of the evidence that it was used for a crime or that it was intended to be used for such.
Separately, it's worth pointing out that Lemley's brief refers to contributory infringement, but you're talking about inducement. While the two are related, inducement and contributory infringement are different. His issue in the roja case was not about inducement, but the reliance on the key elements found in civil case law for contributory infringement being used to suggest criminal violations, despite there being no such thing in the statute.
Both are types of secondary liability, which is all that matters. The Rojadirecta case concerns the issue of whether the domain names are property used OR INTENDED TO BE USED to commit criminal infringement. All the double-talk misses that point. Some case law from civil cases of infringement is applicable to that analysis, since criminal infringement law does borrow concepts from civil infringement. There's not some imaginary line bifurcating the two.
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Kazza?
Glad to hear it.
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Grokster was NOT a criminal case.
Your asserted, �Inducing someone to commit copyright infringement is a crime with the same statutory damages of $150,000 per occurrence.�
That just ain't so.
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Region Locks induce copyright infringement and therefore should have the same civil penalties as direct infringement.
There. How's that?
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How is that as an expression of wishful thinking? How is that as a statement of utter disgust with region locks? How do you mean it to be taken?
I can agree that region locks suck.
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The commentary, and other statements of the Court, show that's not true. The phrase "to authorize" as found in Section 106 refers to secondary liability for copyright infringement. The statutory history makes it clear. Patry and Nimmer point this out too in their treatises.
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So yeah, don't give that one quote about the Copyright Act being silent about secondary liability much weight since it's demonstrably false.
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OH, COME ON!
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Anyone notice that Viacom is spending an awful lot of money on advertisements to smear DirecTV for not taking a more expensive deal?
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I wouldn't know.
I have DirecTV.
And I don't think it's on the Net...
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http://www.hulu.com/watch/381148
You can skip to 10min in for the DirecTV part.
Just watch out for the 'DIRECTV IS THE DEVIL' commercials.
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TPP is written on toilet paper.Great example of the USA forcefeeding BS IP Laws on the World.
Copyright Maximalists need to go down and so do the Patent Trolls.
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It just gets spun into the argument that as Hollywood traditionally outsells independents the fact that they are no longer doing so is proof of the effects of piracy on their sales.
Almost every big studio movie is available in many different ways infringing ways online, not necessarily every independent films is. Ditto with music.
They of course also, accidentally, fail to notice that the levels of infringement have a direct relationship to the sales, not an inverse one as you would suspect from their crying about piracy.
Once again for old times sake, Avatar most pirated movie of 2009, also had the highest box office receipts for decades and broke records in both dvd and bluray sales.
Chances are, if your movie is not being pirated, it's not selling either.
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Isn't that ironic
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It's ridiculous but kind of geeky too, in the math sense.
You know the kind of thing,
steps to make tea (shortened)
Take empty kettle.
Fill kettle with water from sink.
Return kettle full of cold water to it's place near a power socket.
Plug kettle in and switch on to boil water.
etc. etc. Make tea.
But what happens when the problem changes,
when the kettle already has water in it to start with.
A mathematician (of a certain type) may well start by emptying the kettle, reducing the problem to one that has already been solved.
Global distribution is no longer the problem of expensive film to be transported around the globe, but that problem was already solved by creating regions. The industry want's to keep the solution even though it makes no sense in the one global market where distribution is close to being a non issue that the internet has created.
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Embrace the legacy region codes and apply them to digital.
Instead, they could abandon the region codes and solve their film distribution problem using the internet. Upgrade their entire projection infrastructure to digital. Yeah, it's a big expensive project. If they get started in, say, 2004, they would get done by . . . um, they would already be done by now!
You can't fool me twice.
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Taking the me there to indicate the consumers.
They can and they will and a lot more than twice.
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most of them will cheerfully ignore* region locks on DVDs. (or at least, they did a few years back.)
*not sure How they do this, but they do.
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I understood what he meant from the beginning and took all the fuss around it with a grain of salt. But the fact that it can and probably will be used against the judge can't be denied.
With all the abuses and "mistakes" we've seen from the US Govt in this case it should come as no surprise. Hell, they are still treating a civil issue as a criminal one just because they want..
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/07/feds-say-us-ties-make-megaupload-subject-to-cri minal-law/
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Judge Winkelmann (in the High Court) has told them to prepare the evidence so if the ruling goes against the appeal, it will be ready to hand over promptly.
Winkelmann has additionally ruled the warrant was indeed illegal, and also has ruled that sending the information to the US was illegal.
She also ruled that the extradition process is not merely some kind of public ritual (my paraphrasing) but actually is a judicial process over with the courts have authority to enact judicial oversight. The only problem I have with that ruling is that anyone attempted to argue otherwise making such a ruling necessary in the first place.
The US people have a lot to fear from their government if the information obtained illegally is later allowed to be used in their courts, but that's up to the US courts.
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No, they will try to replace the judge with one that hasn't ALREADY been bought by the other side.
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only to be replaced by another judge prone to actually following the law and procedure and generally not being in the pockets of the cartels.
... i am beginning to love the NZ judiciary...
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I'll get the Oompa-Loompas working on it right away.
-Chris Dodd
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"We'll give him a fair trial... and then we'll hang him."
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Such morally reprehensible behavior only underscores the debt owed by citizens of every free country around the world for the efforts of those great Americans. I shudder to think what would become of our allies should we find ourselves unable to sustain our output of freedom to the rest of the world. And yet these people who owe us so much, who relied on us to keep the world safe as recently as the late 1980s, have the arrogance to declare that the world has changed and we must change with it.
I reject that notion. The decline in US geopolitical and economic influence which has been building since the end of the Cold War threatens nothing less than the collapse of the free world as we know it. It is well and good to praise the rise of democracy in Eastern Europe, but who among these fledgling democracies has the power to stand up to the likes of China? And can we rely on the people of India or Brazil to spend tens of billions of dollars on consumer goods in support of capitalism? If we learned nothing else in the latter half of the 20th century, we should have learned this. As the US goes, so goes the world.
We've always been at war with Eastasia.
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MEGA
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Sadly, the whole delay process may be as a result of his personal views, which would be a sad day for the judicial process worldwide.
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they seem stuck on the idea that bulk milk exports = economic growth and screw everything else, basically.
and the current 'government' has the strongest and least assailable position yet seen since the introduction of MMP... what it wants, happens (i cannot recall. it may or may not need to get One additional person to vote with it to pass stuff. unfortunately, there's always at least one sucker on any given issue). which wouldn't be too bad if it weren't the biggest collection of pro-corporation, anti-citizen, short-term thinking, pocket-lining, cronyistic MORONS available.
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Does anyone know what he actually said?
He was making a pun; it makes a difference.
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Region codes
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