"Right now, a group of 600 industry lobbyist "advisors" and un-elected government trade representatives are scheming behind closed doors to craft an international agreement called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Why the secrecy? We know from leaked documents that the TPP includes what amounts to an Internet trap that would:
Criminalize some of your everyday use of the Internet,
Force service providers to collect and hand over your private data without privacy safeguards, and
Give media conglomerates more power to fine you for Internet use, remove online content—including entire websites—and even terminate your access to the Internet.
Create a parallel legal system of international
tribunals that will undermine national sovereignty and allow
conglomerates to sue countries for laws that infringe on their profits.
The TPP's Internet trap is secretive, extreme, and it could criminalize your daily use of the Internet. We deserve to know what will be blocked, what we and our families will be fined for."
A new EFA campaign "Citizens, Not Suspects" -
its just getting started and is in response to the proposed new powers
for ASIO that may include the ability to ADD, MODIFY AND DELETE files on ANY
computer: http://www.citizensnotsuspects.org.au/
The documentary The Pirate Bay - Away From Keyboard has recently been released and I had a chance to watch it this week. I have followed much of the developments with respect to the case over a number of years so the issues werent new to me - overall I think it was very accurate and well put together.
The lawsuit against Gottfried Svartholm Warg, Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde (operators) and Carl Lundstrom (investor) was launched in 2008. At one stage TPB had 22-25 million users. They were charged with assisting copyright infringement for the distribution of 5 movies over a 6 month period with the movie industry seeking $13million in damages. The film concerns the events around this court case in Sweden and draws from a number of sources in explaining the side of TPB operators and the complainants.
Professor Roger Wallis is one person that features briefly in the film suggesting that he only supports copyright where it actually creates an incentive for creativity but that in its present form, it seeks to protect large corporations.
It was also interesting to note some of the tactics used by those bringing the case - they suggested that TPB earned an estimated $1.7million per year from 64 ads on the site, however TPB operators countered this estimate with the suggestion that the annual income was more like $110,000 a year with only 4 advertisements on the site.
In the first instance, TPB operators were each sentenced to 1 year in jail and an award for $4.5 million in damages was made. Just one week after the verdict, the Judge in the case was accussed of bias. It became publicly known that he had direct links to copyright lobby groups and had worked with the industry on copyright issues. The Judge had withheld this information during the trial. However in the end it was held (conveniently) that there had been no conflict of interest.
The District Court verdict was appealed to the Court of Appeal. It was held that their then ISP, Black Internet, must cease providing internet connectivity to the site or risk being fined $75,000 per day. TPB operators then sought assistance from the Pirate Party, a political party in Sweden, who subsequently provided the site with bandwidth (they also did this for wikileaks). The Pirate Party have a political platform of internet freedom and access to culture and as such were inline with the philosophy of TPB and had protection from the law.
Footage in the film also showed Peter Sundae speak about TPB and alternative business models at what appears to be a university based conference. He spoke of FLATTER, a system that would allow users to sign up to an account and place the amount of money they want to spend for the month on film and music in it. With buttons on various pages around the web similar to the facebook LIKE button, each time a user elected to give money to a creator they could click on the button. At the end of the month, the money that the user had chosen to spend in that period on entertainment would then be evenly distributed to those that they had clicked the button for.
Further to this, reference was made to other commentators and members of the public where it was suggested that Governments were not running society properly but rather acting in the interests of large corporations and that the youth of today want to consume movies and entertainment the way that they chose and that it was up to industries to adapt to the consumers, not 'adapt the consumers'.
It was at this point in the film that a failure in communication at TPB was brought to light. It was stated that Gottfried had failed to encrypt his email messages and that this had led to the accumulation of evidence against the operators.
In 2010 the Court of Appeal verdict was handed down Nostrom was sentenced to 4months, Fredrik to 10 months and Sundae to 8 months. Gottfried doesnt not appear to have been part of the appeal. However the amount of damages awarded went up from $4.4 million to $6.6 million. They stated that the verdict heralded the criminalisation of the internet, and that the entertainment industry would continue to try to shut down the internet to preserve their business model.
In February 2012 the Supreme Court rejected a further appeal.
The film closes with (perhaps older) footage of Sundae speaking at the EU Commission about the future of the internet.
This was a great film, certainly accurate according to what I have read about the events and very entertaining. I highly recommend seeing it - it is available for streaming off YouTube and other sites and the creators ask that people freely share it around:
Where: Fremantle Esplanade, Fremantle WA When: Sunday February 24th 1.30pm – 6.30pm How much: FREE (donations welcome for the Protect the Kimberley campaign)
MC’d by Peter Rowsthorn (ABC TV/Radio) the Concert for
the Kimberley will feature Australian music icons the John Butler Trio,
Missy Higgins (acoustic) and Ball Park Music, and special guest Sea
Shepherd Director Bob Brown standing together to protect the Kimberley.
“Like Tasmania’s Robin Gray and the Franklin River,
Colin Barnett can neither see the heritage value of the Kimberley Coast
nor hear the public anger rising. He has a win win option for the gas
factory and he should take it”, said Bob Brown.
“It’s time for West Australians to say that some places are too precious to plunder. Protect the Kimberley for all to enjoy,”said John Butler.
The free open-air Concert for the
Kimberley will be held at 1.30pm at the Fremantle Esplanade on February
24 and will feature a protest march through the town.
Program: 1.20pm - Press conference 1.50pm - 2.05pm - Welcome to Country / Opening speech 2.05pm - 2.45pm - Ball Park Music 2.45pm- 3.45pm - Speeches and March through Fremantle 3.45pm - 4.30pm - Missy Higgins 4.30pm – 5:00pm - Speeches 5:00pm - 6.15pm - John Butler Trio Press Conference Speakers (1.20-1.50pm) : John Butler
Missy Higgins
Dr. Bob Brown, Director Sea Shepherd
Peter Robertson, WA Co-ordinator Wilderness Society Martin Pritchard, Director Environs Kimberley
J oe Roe, Goolarabooloo Traditional Owner
It's a free concert but we would love you to donate to this great cause if you can.
You can donate from anywhere around the world!
Spread the news via your social networks. www.concertforthekimberley.com.au
The
Worldwide
Independent
Music Industry Network (WIN) is a global forum
for the professional independent music industry. They recently launched The Independent Music Manifesto for independent artists, take a look here:
The Independent Manifesto:
1. We, the independents, will work to grow the value of music and the
music business. We want equal market access and parity of terms with
Universal, Warner and Sony, and will work with them in areas where we
have a common goal. We will work to ensure that all companies in our
sector are best equipped to maximize the value of their rights.
2. We support creators' freedom to decide how their music may be used
commercially, and we will encourage individual artists and labels to
speak out directly against unauthorized uses of music as well as
commercial uses of music that stifle that freedom. We support creators'
right to earn a living from their work, which should be respected as a
basic human right.
3. We support independent music labels that treat their artists as
partners and who work with them on reasonable commercial terms, noting
that labels are investors who deserve a fair return alongside their
artists.
4. We promote transparency in the digital music market; artists and companies are entitled to clarity on commercial terms.
5. We oppose further consolidation in the recorded music, publishing
and radio sectors since this is bad for independent music companies,
their artists and fans, as it reduces market access and consumer
choice.
6. We support initiatives which confront market abuse, and which aim
to adapt competition laws to promote independent market access and
foster collective responses by independents to potentially
anti-competitive conduct by large operators.
7. We recognize that all independent music businesses contribute to
local culture, diversity, jobs and export opportunities, and multiply
the economic success of related industries. We will ask governments to
promote and support the independent music sector in securing access to
finance and tax credits, and to local and international markets.
8. We hold that collecting society revenues must be allocated and
distributed accurately and transparently. This includes distribution of
unclaimed money that logically belongs to the independents. We will push
for the independent sector to be formally represented in the governance
of collecting societies, with trade associations being eligible for
board seats.
9. We support the creation of a worldwide track-level sound recording
rights database, subject to neutral governance and ownership, to ensure
accurate distribution of rights revenues to their rightful owners.
10. The independents will, as always, actively encourage and support
new commercial opportunities for music, and will continue to support and
develop new, legitimate business structures and partnerships.
Hey just to let you know I have started a facebook page for this blog - there you can see more things cyber/politicalmusic/law. I started it in January 2013 whilst mucking around... so far I am the only person who likes it. Lol. https://www.facebook.com/OpenContentAustraliaResearchReview
I attended the lecture given by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, developer of the
World Wide Web held at Melbourne University on 4th February 2013.
The lecture was titled ‘Web Weavers of the Future’ and was sponsored
by, amongst others, iiNet and the Australian Computer Society.
To begin with Sir Berners-Lee spoke about the impact of existing
systems on social structures and industries. In particular he spoke about
journalism and how it is designed to provide filtered and yet accurate
information about events and issues and that it is like a valve between society
and events as it both effects and affects how we live. He sought to consider
its core functions (sifting data and communicating information) and noted that
in conceptualising core functions in any area one is well placed to then
consider how structures and systems shape or direct the achievement of those
functions. He noted that a present, with respect to journalism, the internet has
undermined the ability of newspapers to sustain themselves and yet he stated
that he is repeatedly told by people that the cacophony of information on the
internet is too difficult to manage. So essentially there appears some work yet
to be done to change the way newspapers are offered to consumers on the web.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee then went on to consider the decentralised nature
of the internet and the impact of centralised systems such as Facebook. He
suggested that the popularity of Facebook, and indeed other social networking
software in other countries, was in effect a bottling up of the internet that
taken to its extreme could impact on the availability or appreciation of the
wider internet. He commented on the false positives that are emphasised by having
a ‘like’ button but not a ‘dislike’ button and how the architecture itself did
not facilitate true or all communication equally. Sir Tim Berners-Lee further
noted the high quality content that users give to social networking sites in
terms of their personal details, their day to day activities, their personal
connections, photographs etc. and sought to acknowledge how these networks were
placed in terms of their control over our lives and with respect to the level
of detailed information they retain about us. What to us is a simple social
connection, to them is a wealth of information that can be exploited in ways
that we may not yet understand.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee then went on to speak about open education and in
particular open access to academic journals. He suggested that the university
systems was wrong in the way it ranked or rewarded publications, expressing a
need and desire for universities to reward academics for publishing in journals
that had open access. He characterised academic articles as in effect being
Government data and as such should be as widely available as possible. Sir Tim
Berners-Lee expects that the majority of journals will be open access soon and
the bulk of new articles will be made available for free with back catalogues
being released in due course.
As an aside to the discussion about open access to journals Sir Tim
Berners-Lee spoke in detail about Aaron Shwartz, a young ICT student in America
that sought to access JSTOR and download as many of their journals as he could.
He noted that as a student Aaron was legally able to access the articles, that
he had only liberated or republished the articles that were already in the
public domain and how the nature of the research that he was seeking to do, on
metatags, genuinely required access to a large database of articles. Aaron was
charged with a felony offence based on the law in the United States that
specifies that any breach of the terms of service with an internet provider, in
this case his university, was to be classified as cybercrime. Sir Tim
Berners-Lee noted that there is a clear distinction between cybercrime and
activism and that in this case the law was clearly wrong for not setting a
clear enough distinction between the two. Aaron committed suicide rather than
face the some 20-30 year jail term that would have resulted from a trial. He
stated that this was a tragic loss and a sad reflection on the law and the
politicians that passed it and the impetus for a new momentum for open access
to journals.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee then went on to speak more generally about how it
was unacceptable for Governments of today not to understand or to act as though
they do not understand the internet. He noted that there are many well
qualified people that can be consulted in the drafting of laws, that the social
interest is paramount and that politicians themselves need to be using this
technology as part of their own function in society.
Indeed society as a whole is yet to experience the true potential of
the internet in many ways. One in particular that Sir Tim Berners-Lee referred
to is the real time sharing of scientific data and the running of complex and
large experiments.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee spoke empathically about the broader political
effect that can and will take place using the internet. He said we can change
the world with software.
Here I will be posting comments on the research I have been doing for my PhD thesis as well as any interesting articles or websites I have accessed. My main area of research at the moment relates to the Internet and the regulation of digital music, however I read widely on many issues relating to cyberspace and hope to refer to these as they arise. My thesis is on the state of the internet and the potential for political music to act as an agent for social change.
I also ran the OpenContentAustralia weblog where I listed much of the online material I read each month on cyberlaw but it has been put on hiatus due to work commitments.
I am a PhD student with Southern Cross University, NSW Australia, researching and writing on the regulation of political music in the digital environment.
If you use any of my research or blog posts it would be great if you could let me know by leaving a message on one of my posts. Sorry, I had to delete my email address from this page as I was getting spam with virus infected attachments.
