New Zealand Decides To Spy On An Awful Lot Of Your Online Activity

from the surveillance-society dept

The EFF alerts us to what appear to be rather draconian surveillance powers given to law enforcement in New Zealand to monitor all sorts of communications:

In preparation, technicians have been installing specialist spying devices and software inside all telephone exchanges, internet companies and even fibre-optic data networks between cities and towns, providing police and spy agencies with the capability to monitor almost all communications.

Police and SIS must still obtain an interception warrant naming a person or place they want to monitor but, compared to the phone taps of the past, a single warrant now covers phone, email and all internet activity.

It can even monitor a person's location by detecting their mobile phone; all of this occurring almost instantaneously.

Apparently, New Zealand is looking to help boost the market for encryption technology. In the meantime, defenders of this law throw out all the clichés:

Police association vice-president Stuart Mills said the new capabilities are required because criminals were using new technologies to communicate, and that people who weren't committing criminal offences had little to fear.

Of course, that statement makes no sense. Just because criminals are using a new technology to communicate it doesn't mean you should have a built in backdoor to monitor all of it. I believe some criminals have used paper to write each other notes. Should we force all pads to have carbon paper for making a copy of every note taken? As for the "if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to fear" statement, that's been debunked so many times, it's not even worth going there. Yet, if we must, would Police Association Vice President Stuart Mills object to a video camera being placed in every room in his house, recorded 24/7 and kept on file. We promise that no one will look at it without a warrant. He shouldn't object, right, because he's not doing anything wrong at home, so he has little to fear. Right?

Filed Under: new zealand, surveillance

New Zealand Brings Back Three Strikes... With Some Oversight

from the well,-it's-a-step dept

Last year, you may recall that New Zealand tried to sneak through a "three strikes" type law that relied solely on accusations and would kick people off the internet. After first resisting, the government realized that public outrage over the plan was too strong and scrapped the plan, but admitted it was planning to try again, though with a bit more oversight.

It looks like that's exactly what's happened. The New Zealand government has released its new three strikes plan that is a bit more sane. You can still get kicked off the internet, which is troubling, but it's a much more involved process. The system involves a notice-and-notice offering, whereby copyright holders notify an ISP, who notifies the user. After three notices, you don't face disconnection, but a government tribunal, who can fine the user monetarily, but only to recover "damages," not for punitive reasons. Finally, if there are still more signs of infringement, the rights holder can take the user to court, which can lead to much larger fines and the possibility of losing an internet connection for six months. Throughout the process, the user will be able to appeal.

This is certainly a lot more reasonable than the original plan, but I still find any plan that involves kicking people off the internet entirely for their actions to be draconian and impossible to enforce reasonably. These days, your mobile phone or even a desk phone may use the internet, and many people require internet access for their jobs. It seems ridiculous to kick people off entirely.

Filed Under: copyright, due process, new zealand, three strikes

New Zealand Newspaper Tries 3D Issue To Get People To Pay More Attention

from the experiments dept

As various newspapers continue to think about new business models, Adam points us to the news of a community newspaper in New Zealand that experimented with a special 3D issue, including various 3D images and (of course) special 3D glasses. The idea is to get people to spend more time looking at the newspaper. While it does seem like a neat gimmick, it doesn't seem like it is a sustainable idea on its own (they expect to do it again, but probably not for another year, due to the effort it takes). But, of course, no single gimmick needs to be sustainable by itself. It's neat to see publications recognizing that they at least should be trying out other things to add value that people will appreciate.

Filed Under: 3d, new zealand, newspapers

New Zealand Says You Can't Use Your Mobile Phone For Navigation While Driving

from the because-that-would-upset-the-GPS-device-makers dept

Brendan was the first of a few to submit the story that New Zealand is telling people that they can't use their mobile phones for navigation purposes, even if that phone is mounted on the dashboard like a regular GPS navigation device. Regular GPS devices are fine... but a mobile phone acting just like one of those devices? That's illegal. Why? No one seems to be saying, but you can bet the standalone GPS makers are happy about this... Update: Well, that was fast. Given public backlash, the gov't has already decided to back down and rewrite the laws to allow mobile phone navigation systems.

Filed Under: driving, gps, navigation, new zealand

New Zealand Author Claims Libraries Are Involved In Grand Theft By Loaning Books

from the this-has-to-be-parody,-right? dept

Via Family Holloway, I came across a short opinion piece by Brian Edwards bitching about how libraries are facilitating book theft. At first, I honestly thought it was a joke or a parody, to make fun of those who complain about online "piracy," but I actually think he's serious. I'd never heard of Edwards, but apparently he's a big media personality and author in New Zealand. And, boy, does he hate the fact that libraries don't pay him every time someone checks out a book:

What pisses me off as an author is that for every person who buys your book, dozens of other bludgers get to read it for nothing. Let me give you an example. A few years back I wrote a biography of Helen Clark. It took about six months to write and during that time I had effectively no other income. The book retailed at $45. On the standard author's royalty of 10%, I got $4.50 for every copy sold. Helen, Portrait of a Prime Minister sold 9,000 copies, a reasonable if not spectacular figure in the New Zealand market. So I got $40,500 before tax for my six month's work.

I'm not complaining about that either. But...

Every public library in New Zealand bought at least one copy of Helen. And they lent each of those copies to other people to read for... nothing. Last year there were still 227.4 copies of the book in New Zealand public libraries. If each of those copies was taken out by one person a month, that's 2,729 people who read but didn't pay for my book -- my six month's work. At $4.50 per unsold copy, that's a theoretical loss of income to me in one year of $12,280.

While he later admits that not all of those people (and he made up the numbers anyway...) would have bought the book, but them immediately follows that statement up with this doozy:

But there's a principle here: when one person buys a book and lends it to another person to read, they effectively become an accessory to theft. Their generous act amounts to little more than stealing the author's work. When a public library buys a book and lends it to thousands of other people to read, it's grand theft copyright and really no different from illegally downloading music or movies or copying CDs or DVDs on your computer.

For someone who positions himself as an expert, he seems to have almost no understanding of the purpose of copyright law or of the public library systems. In the end, he says that libraries should pay him 1/4 of the usual book sale royalty per loan of his book. So, in his case, $1.13 every time the book is loaned out. Apparently, he doesn't quite realize that he's basically asking the public libraries, funded by public tax dollars, to subsidize him. The original Holloway link above does a nice job schooling Edwards, and then discusses things in more detail with Edwards in the comments -- though Edwards seems unwilling to budge on his claims of libraries being theives, or to understand basic common sense. Someone points out to him that if he bought a chainsaw, it would be ridiculous to stop him from lending it to someone, and his response is: "There is no intellectual property in a chainsaw."

Edwards also seems fully enamored with the myth that copyright law is based on some sort of "labor theory" -- that the more time you put in, somehow the more money you deserve to get out. While I'm unfamiliar with New Zealand copyright law, in the US, such theories have been widely discredited in the courts repeatedly. And, of course, they make no sense when viewed alongside the actual purpose of copyright law. Edwards seems to believe that copyright is welfare for creators, rather than an incentive to create.

In the meantime, perhaps the public libraries of New Zealand can do Mr. Edwards a favor next time he publishes a book: don't buy it. Ditto for anyone who might think of lending it... er... I mean, being an accessory to a crime in distributing copyrighted materials.

Filed Under: brian edwards, copyright, libraries, new zealand

Hollywood Says Due Process Is Too Damn Slow

from the yeah,-that'll-work dept

Apparently, a New Zealand anti-copyright group controlled by the Hollywood movie studios is upset that a new three strikes proposal includes the ability to have a tribunal review a case from a user who feels wrongly accused. The Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) is worried that everyone accused of infringing will file for such a review, and it will clog up the system. Yes, due process is apparently too messy for the Hollywood studios. It would prefer a system where arbiters are able to process review requests in bulk. Because nothing says a fair and full hearing of your rights like a guy rushing to get through a batch of such complaints in a single process... I'm amazed that the studios haven't picked up on the French plan of giving judges only five minutes to review any such appeal.

Filed Under: copyright, due process, new zealand, three strikes
Companies: fact, mpaa

This Is Wrong: 'Without The Content Industries, The Internet Would Be Empty'

from the let's-try-that-again dept

One of the annoying things about many in the entertainment industry who want to change the laws and the technology on the internet is that they've shown up late to the party. The internet was originally created as a communications medium, rather than a content one. And, for many years, it worked just fine -- and whatever "content" that was on the web was a part of the communications effort. It's only in the last decade or so (even less for some parts) that the old entertainment industry jumped online with its broadcast media mindset. But, rather than learning to understand and respect the fact that it's a communication medium, where things like sharing content aren't just possible, but the norm and an absolute "good thing," they simply insisted that something must be broken, and that it needed to be fixed.

They looked on the internet not for what it was (and is), but what they wanted it to be. To them, it was just a slightly more interactive version of what they had always done -- and they assumed that everyone would bow down to their wishes, because, obviously, everyone just wants that mass market content.

No statement encapsulates that more than the following, spoken by one Anthony Healy, director of the Australasian Performing Right Association, discussing the various proposals for new copyright laws in New Zealand, where he somehow states with a straight face:

"Without the content industries, the internet would be empty."

Oh really? Why not try it, and let's see. The quote, by the way, was brought to us by Andrew Dubber, who properly calls Healey the "Wrongest Man on the Internet, July 2009." However, this really is how some of these guys think. They don't think that the internet really existed before they discovered it, and they think that everyone logs onto YouTube just to catch the latest TV clips. They don't realize that people use it to communicate and share and collaborate -- and that's a lot more useful than using it to get fed some mass market entertainment junk.

Filed Under: anthony healy, content, copyright, internet, new zealand

New Zealand: New Copyright Law Still Involves Kicking People Off The Internet... But With A Bit More Oversight

from the for-the-industry,-not-the-people dept

Earlier this year, there was a lot of attention paid to proposed changes to copyright law in New Zealand. After originally being struck from a proposal, some politicians simply put back in a "three strikes" proposal and then literally yelled at those who were upset by this. This kicked off a lot of controversy, with the government standing by the proposal for a long time -- even in the face of musicians who stood up to against this bill that was supposedly there to help them! Eventually, with so much attention, the government agreed to dump the plan temporarily. There was a report that it would actually revisit all copyright law from scratch, but that was denied quickly.

Either way, it should probably come as little to no surprise that the proposals now being put forth really aren't all that different than what was there before. After all, the industry needs to have its laws. The people... not so much. The major difference is that it won't be ISPs just kicking people off. Instead, it will use a gov't Copyright Tribunal to act as a mediator to review accusations of file sharing and deciding on what (if any) punishment should be handed out, including the potential to cut people off. This is certainly an improvement, but it's still about the industry fighting the wrong battle. Rather than providing more value and a better business model, they're so obsessed with stamping out file sharing that they're totally missing the big picture. What a shame that politicians are simply going along with them.

Filed Under: copyright, new zealand, three strikes

New Zealand Newspaper Threatens Blogging Critic With Trademark Infringement Claim

from the is-that-really-the-best-way-to-handle-things? dept

Pete wrote in to alert us to yet another case of a lawyer taking an overly aggressive approach to a cease-and-desist... and, in doing so, drawing a lot more attention to the issue. This time it takes place in New Zealand, where a blogger who runs an entire blog called Editing The Herald, which criticizes stories in The New Zealand Herald, received a legal nastygram from The Herald claiming trademark infringement and giving the guy a day to remove his logo -- which was an edited version of The Herald's logo (basically putting the "Editing The" above the logo -- or it would take him to court. As is standard in these things (though, usually with no legal basis), the lawyer demanded that the blogger not publish the letter, which the blogger ignored.

Now, I don't know enough about New Zealand trademark law to comment on the merits, but the whole approach just seems backwards. Having been on the receiving end of a few too many legal nastygrams, it's never a pleasant experience, and there's really no reason to send them if you haven't first tried a more friendly approach. The blogger in this case did agree to remove the logo and is apparently working on a new one, but The Herald and its lawyers could have approached the site in a much more friendly manner, rather than appearing like massive bullies, and giving the blogger more ammo to draw even more attention to the site. Once again, it appears that there are a lot of lawyers out there who still think that sending such cease and desist letters is a good idea.

Filed Under: editing the herald, lawyers, new zealand, newspapers, trademark
Companies: new zealand herald

New Zealand Denies It's Scrapping Copyright Laws

from the too-bad... dept

Despite widespread reports last week that New Zealand was going to scrap its copyright laws, and start from scratch, Tom Rix writes in to point out that New Zealand officials are now denying this report and saying they're still working on a new version of the copyright amendment that was a source of tremendous controversy recently. Too bad. While it's likely that any new law (from scratch or just as an amendment) would be driven by corporate interests, it would have been an interesting experiment if the country could have been convinced to really revisit copyright laws.

Filed Under: copyright, new zealand