Draconian Anti-Piracy Law Looms Over Australia 436
ccozan writes to tell us of a law being rushed through the Australian legislature that would criminalize great swaths of the citizenry. The Internet Industry Association of Australia is posting warning scenarios spelling out how far-reaching this law would be. From the release: "A family who holds a birthday picnic in a place of public entertainment (for example, the grounds of a zoo) and sings 'Happy Birthday' in a manner that can be heard by others, risks an infringement notice carrying a fine of up to $1,320. If they make a video recording of the event, they risk a further fine for the possession of a device for the purpose of making an infringing copy of a song... The US Free Trade Agreement does not require Australia to go down this path, and neither US nor European law contain such far-reaching measures. We are at a total loss to understand how this policy has developed, who is behind it and why there is such haste in enacting it into law — with little if any public debate."
A Bridge Too Far (Score:3, Interesting)
this truely is rushed.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Stop the presses (Score:1, Interesting)
Wait. Wait. Wait. How would they even know about this if they didn't know any of the most important details about it? I smell BULLSHIT. This is just pure scaremongering on the part of iia.net.au.
Nice troll ccozan, but you don't get troll points for slipping one past newbies like kdawson. Can we please get this taken down off the front page until someone comes up with some real facts?
Truly, (Score:5, Interesting)
It's time to route the music supply AROUND the RIAA, just the same way a person would route AROUND a circuit that poses a fire hazard.
In the long run, greed will greed itself out of existance as publically created free music replaces "go-to-jail" / "pay-the-fines" music.
Hmm. Of course...who's working on that free music again?
www.anvilstudio.com
Howard's a cunt (Score:5, Interesting)
They almost made Linux illegal too (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Howard's a cunt (Score:5, Interesting)
Howard needs to be taken down a notch. He has been in power a long time and will probably be in power for a few more years. John Howard pulls this shit all the time, he just brings in lame laws that protect American interests and we Australians will just have to deal with it.
Australian politics is in a bad way at the moment. Howard's liberal party holds a majority in both houses of parliament and is using this majority to make all manor of broad sweeping changes. The worst part is that the leader of the opposition is incredibly unpopular, so it seems likely that the Liberals would win in the next election anyway.
As it stands the only way these laws, or any others, will be stopped is if a member or two crosses the floor.
Regardless the fact is that everyone will ignore these stupid laws like they have been for the past decade.
In summary, John Howard is indeed a cunt.
Re:Simple Solution... (Score:3, Interesting)
If you believe that you can make any kind of difference to the masses with a move like getting people to give up licenced popular culture due to unfair IP laws, then go for it; it's a good goal, but I think you might be understating the difficulty of converting even one person just a bit.
Do you have plans? An idea without a plan generally doesn't amount to much. How do you intend to achieve your goals? Warning friends and family that you won't accept the gifts you mentioned and then not accepting them is a good move, though you might piss people off if you don't accept a gift, which they will inevitably buy, despite your warning. If you want people to write to their politicians, perhaps you could come up with a template and host a site that contains in an easy to use form who the relevant politicians are for each area. Rather than suggesting that maybe people should meet up in Sydney at some time, specify a time that you will definitely be there and then seek commitments from others.
Like I said, it sounds like you could achieve some part of your goals, but are you actually going to try, or is it just steam?
Re:Australian law is like that (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Overbreadth (Score:3, Interesting)
Not sure about the Patriot Act. The courts have gotten wonky in later years. Really, by all standards of precedent, it should have been shredded.
My statement was based on the reasoning in Reno vs. ACLU (http://www2.epic.org/cda/cda_decision.html), where the issue of overbreadth is discussed at length.
IAE, I'm just curious as to how Australia deals with these issues. What are the grounds for challenging a law in Australia, which obviously has a very different Constitution than the United States?
Re:Well, that's simple! (Score:4, Interesting)
It's about a lust for power. As a libertarian, I tend to be fair to capitalism, as long as it stays within the boundaries of good ethics.
During the industrial revolution and earlier part of the last century, it was more simple. Your mind designed something- a lightbulb, the first radio, you produced a prototype, you hired people to produce more, and you got paid based on the value of your ideas, and the value of your products - the catch being that competetors are too. You build a mousetrap, and if they build a better one... well, the power's in the hands of the customers.
Then we evolved mass media advertising, technology, and non-tangible goods, and things became more complicated. Market visibility becomes an issue as the marketplace becomes wider. So little people who are hardworking and make good products and want to compete start hiring the big people to help them with this... some to help them become visible, and others as a shield help to protect them legally. This becomes more and more of a corporate thing, and the little people tend to become just visible enough to get bought out, and the larger companies show off what the little companies did and say "see, we can take credit for this now." In the meantime the little company sadly, in some cases, mutates to the form of "productivity" the new parent company had: producing mostly crap, but lots of it.
Then you get people like the RIAA, doing this for musicians or the movie industry. But with digital media becoming prevalent, they don't have as much to hold on to.
At the billion dollar level, it's not about the few hundred thousand. It's about control. File sharing deals a blow because the most popular files are the easiest ones to find... the catch being if you want to find music by an obscure enough artist, you *have* to buy it. This eventually leads to musicians who are outside the "current realm of control" getting enough money to do things like produce videos, which gets them seen... which is a threat if they don't have a sellout pricetag. The RIAA doesn't want enough competetors joining together to produce a bigger competetor that could take them down off their high mountain.
Good capitalism wants its competitor to have enough of a chance to make life interesting, but will work hard to beat it. This "working hard" should not involve dirty tricks or absolute control of the media outlets used to advertise, but the problem here is that the industry in question IS the media. It turns business into little more than politics, which is part of why the american system is in need of reform.
This is all IMHO, though, since I'm neither a lawyer nor in the media.
Re:I'm not worried (Score:2, Interesting)
I'd put him under citizens arrest for crimes against humanity and treason, but I really could be bothered.
here is a use that could be.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Americans (Score:2, Interesting)
We don't call people from the Peoples Reupblic of China prians.
Francians, Netherlandians, Chinaians and Japanians sound just as idiotic as usians.
LK
And all this changes what exactly? (Score:2, Interesting)
after the law is passed I suspect people will not change their habits and just as many people will record, watch and re-watch TV programs.
Until this law is passed it is illegal to have MP3 recordings of commercial material (i.e. songs ripped from CD's), yet MP3 plyers ahev been selling,like hotcakes and CD ripping sodtware is freely available and work computers a loaded with songs and shared. again...nothing will change
The thing to remember here is that there is no way to determine if a recording is being played fo the 1st time or the 100th time. This is especially true if you record a movie from pay tv (legal under the new law) onto a DVD-R. Unless an officer of the law catches someone in the act of watching the recording more than once how are they going to prove it?
"yess officer, I've recorded all these movies but as yet I haven't watched a single one"
Unless they have methods to prove otherwise these laws mean nothing for the home user other than making it perfectly legal to record TV shows (something that has been going on for ages anyway).As for singing "happy birthday" in public, while technically illegal under the new laws in the example given I would be extreemly supprised if any action was taken.
Re:Simple Solution... (Score:3, Interesting)
Burning some Disney DVDs is surely within the rights of the owner of those DVDs. Their choice. And from then on their choice to not indoctrinate their children with that stuff, to not buy that stuff, and to tell others why they think they should stop buying it too. No problem there, just consumers exercising their rights of choice in the marketplace and free speech. And it would be easy to argue it's a healthy and positive step, given the kind of stuff that companies like Disney have been doing recently.
There are people who believe there is something inherenly 'evil' about burning books - not at all. As another submitter has mentioned, people using violence to *force* others to burn books is a completely different matter - but even then there are still far worse things to worry about.