TPP and Secrecy

Take a look at this article on TPP negotiations and the secrecy around the drafting of the agreement. The article is titled: "The Most Important Trade Agreement That We Know Nothing About" and is written by  David S. Levine. It is available here.

David states:


"Here’s what we think we know. Based upon the leaks that have occurred, it seems that an enacted TPP would require significant changes in U.S. and/or other signatory countries’ laws.  It would curb public access to vast amounts of information in the name of combating intellectual property infringement (or piracy, depending on your choice of words). The owner of the copyright in a song or movie could use a “technological protection measure”—what are often called “digital locks”—to prevent your access to it, even for educational purposes, and regardless of whether the owner had the legal right to do so. Your very ability to read this article, with hyperlinks in it, could be affected by TPP. So, too, might your access to works currently in the public domain and available free of charge. And these concerns are only related to the intellectual property rights chapter of TPP. There are apparently more than 20 chapters under negotiation, including “customs, cross-border services, telecommunications, government procurement, competition policy, and cooperation and capacity building,” as well as investment and financial services. Technically, TPP would only take effect in the 10 negotiating countries: Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, United States, and Vietnam. Mexico joined recently, and Canada and Japan may soon follow. But in reality, it would also affect citizens of any nations that interact with at least one of those 10—which means even the shut-off North Korea might feel its influence."

TechDirt reported in March this year that the Intellectual Property chapter of the agreement is also likely to introduce ISP liability and in effect censorship and surveillance.


Further Reading
TechDirt, TPP Talks Deadlocked; Still No Transparency (15 March 2012) < http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120314/09065218105/tpp-talks-deadlocked-still-no-transparency.shtml > at 22 March 2012


David S. Levine, The Most Important Trade Agreement That We Know Nothing About (30 July 2012) < http://mobile.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2012/07/trans_pacific_partnership_agreement_tpp_could_radically_alter_intellectual_property_law.html  > at 1 August 2012

Creative Commons Social Media Posting Guide for Non Profits

Internet Censorship Map

   Pervasive censorship

   Substantial censorship

   Selective censorship

   Under surveillance

   No evidence of censorship

   Not classified / No dat
Take a look at the latest Internet Censorship map on wikipedia. Data has been collected from the OpenNet Initiative, Reporters Without Borders, Freedom House, and in the U.S. State Department Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor's Human Rights Reports. Originally published on 26 September 2011 and updated on 22 April 2012, the map shows that Australia is still under surveillance because there has been no formal move to abandon proposed mandatory ISP filtering. Under pressure from the Government, in June 2011 two Australian ISPs, Telstra and Optus, agreed to voluntarily filter sites identified by the AMCA as well as those identified by unknown international organisatons. Those wanting to know more and do something about internet censorship should check out Reporters Without Boarders here. It is interesting to note that copyright law does not appear to be included in the conceptualisation of censorship despite the fact that Graduated Response/Three Strikes schemes, whether introduced through legislation as is the case in France, New Zealand and South Korea or voluntarily as is soon to be the case in the United States of America (although there seems to be some delay at the moment) and perhaps in the near future in Australia, clearly restrict access to information.

Further Reading
Wikipedia, Internet censorship by country (20 July 2012) < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_by_country > at 22 July 2012

ZeroPaid, US 6 Strike Rule Delayed (14 July 2012) < http://www.zeropaid.com/news/101600/us-6-strike-rule-delayed/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zeropaid+%28Zeropaid.com%29  > at 17 July 2012

TechDirt, Is The Six Strikes Plan Being Delayed Because ISPs Are Pushing Back Against Hollywood Demands? (13 July 2012) < http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120713/14591019696/is-six-strikes-plan-being-delayed-because-isps-are-pushing-back-against-hollywood-demands.shtml > at 17 July 2012

TechDirt, Australian Gov't Chooses 'Consumer Advocate' For Secret Anti-Piracy Meetings: The Chairman Of The Copyright Council (8 June 2012) < http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120605/18331419214/australian-govt-chooses-consumer-advocate-secret-anti-piracy-meetings-chairman-copyright-council.shtml > at 18 June 2012

For those interested in internet research, I can highly recommend signing up to the email discussion list run by the Association of Internet Researchers. Recently they had a discussion with respect to books on technological determinism. This will be a great help for the research I am doing and out of curiosity borrowed one of the books in this area to take a look. Here is an extract from the chapter ‘Technological Determinism is Dead; Long Live Technological Determinism’ which is in The Handbook of Science & Technology Studies.

Technological determinism has two parts. “The first part is that technological developments take place outside society, independently of social, economic, and political forces. New or improved products or ways of making things arise from the activities of inventors, engineers, and designers following an internal, technical logic that has nothing to do with social relationships. The more crucial second part is that technological change causes or determines social change. Misa (1988) suggests that what I have presented here as two parts of a single whole are actually two different versions of technological determinism... Over the past 25 years, STS has focussed primarily on demonstrating how limited the first part of technological determinism is, usually by doing empirically rich historical or ethnographic studies demonstrating how deeply social the processes of technological development are. Technological determinism is imbued with the notion that technological progress equals social progress.... Historically, technological determinism means that each generation produces a few inventors whose inventions appear to be both the determinants and stepping stones of human development. Unsuccessful inventions are condemned by their failure to the dust heap of history. Successful ones soon prove their value and are more or less rapidly integrated into society, which they proceed to transform. In this way, a technological breakthrough can be claimed to have important social consequences... One of the problems with technological determinism is that it leaves no space for human choice or intervention and, moreover, absolves us from responsibility for developing new technologies, regardless of whether they are consumer products or power stations. If technology does indeed follow an inexorable path, then technological determinism does allow all of us to deny responsibility for the technological choices we individually and collectively make and to ridicule those people who do challenge the pace and direction of technological change.”

Further Reading 
Sally Wyatt “Technological Determinism is Dead; Long Live Technological Determinism” in The Handbook of Science & Technology Studies (2008) 165 – 180

Support the Restoration of Copyrights to their Original Duration of 28 Years

There is a petition available on the White House website that seeks to return the term of copyright in the United States to 28 years. The text of the petition reads as follows:

Our Founding Fathers established an initial copyright duration of 28-years, but that has been repeatedly extended to up to 120 years to favor corporations like Disney and Sony and authors’ descendants at the expense of the public. Such durations ignore the Constitution’s requirement that copyrights be for limited times and promote progress in science and the useful arts. They actually inhibit scientific progress by restricting the free flow of information, preventing global digital libraries, and withholding information that future generations need to freely exchange and build upon. The original copyright duration provides ample incentive for companies and authors to create, so we ask the President to urge Congress to pass a bill restoring copyrights to their original duration of 28 years.

The petition is available until the 8th August 2012 and aims to reach 25,000 signatures. It was created on the 9th July and so far has only 3,571 signatures. Unfortunately you need to create an account on the White House website to sign it but it is a small inconvenience for such an important issue. Take a moment out of your day if you can to go to the site here and after you have finished signing it spread the word through the Twitter and Facebook tabs.

Sign the Petition for Internet Freedom

Sign the EFF Petition for Internet Freedom! HERE

Australia and ACTA

WOW!!! It looks as though Australia is going to reject the ratification of the ACTA Treaty. The Australian Joint Standing Committee on Treaties recently released at statement in which it was suggested that there are a number of issues with the agreement: 

“The Committee is concerned about the lack of clarity in the text, the exclusion of provisions protecting the rights of individuals, and ACTA’s potential to shift the balance in the interpretation of copyright law, intellectual property law and patent law,”

The committee recommended that the agreement not be ratified until the committee has received an independent assessment of the economic and social cost, the ALRC has reported on its Inquiry into Copyright and the Digital Economy and there are further clarifications to the terms of the agreement. There is also significant concern that many other countries will not be signing the agreement rendering it ineffective.

This is great news - I was a little concerned when Australia signed the agreement last year but was waiting to see whether or not it would be ratified. It seems that at least in the immediate future this agreement is dead in the water in this country.

Further Information
TechDirt, Another One Bites The Dust: Australian Parliament Committee Recommends Rejecting ACTA (28 June 2012) < http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120628/01500619519/another-one-bites-dust-australian-parliament-committee-recommends-rejecting-acta.shtml > at 3 July 2012

ZeroPaid, Australian Committee Recommends Against Ratifying ACTA (30 June 2012) < http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zeropaid/~3/DA-_Xj4Tdd8/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email > at 3 July 2012

infojustice.org, Australia Parliament Committee Rejects ACTA (27 June 2012) < http://infojustice.org/archives/26450 > at 3 July 2012

TechDirt, What Is ACTA And Why Is It A Problem? (24 January 2012) < http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120124/11270917527/what-is-acta-why-is-it-problem.shtml > at 31 January 2012

TechDirt, As Countries Sign ACTA, Many Finally Admit Their Copyright Laws Will Need To Change (3 October 2011) < http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111002/22262616174/as-countries-sign-acta-many-finally-admit-their-copyright-laws-will-need-to-change.shtml > at 11 October 2011

ALRC Terms of Reference for Copyright Law

Yesterday the Australian Attorney General, the Hon. Nicola Roxon, released the final Terms of Reference for the Australian Law Reform Commission's review of copyright law in the digital age. The Terms of Reference are as follows:

Having regard to:

• the objective of copyright law in providing an incentive to create and disseminate original copyright materials;
• the general interest of Australians to access, use and interact with content in the advancement of education, research and culture;
• the importance of the digital economy and the opportunities for innovation leading to national economic and cultural development created by the emergence of new digital technologies; and
• Australia’s international obligations, international developments and previous copyright reviews.

I refer to the ALRC for inquiry and report pursuant to subsection 20(1) of the Australian Law Reform Commission Act 1996 the matter of whether the exceptions and statutory licences in the Copyright Act 1968, are adequate and appropriate in the digital environment.
Amongst other things, the ALRC is to consider whether existing exceptions are appropriate and whether further exceptions should:

• recognise fair use of copyright material;
• allow transformative, innovative and collaborative use of copyright materials to create and deliver new products and services of public benefit; and
• allow appropriate access, use, interaction and production of copyright material online for social, private or domestic purposes.

The ALRC plans to release an Issues Paper in August 2012, and at this time will call for submissions. The ALRC is due to provide a Final Report with recommendations for reform by November 2013.


The Attorney-General's Department has also announced a second inquiry into Technological Protection Measures (DRM). The inquiry will consider the exceptions for circumventing TPMs. Initial submissions are due 17 August 2012 - you can find out more information about it here.




Further Information
ALRC, Terms of Reference Received for the ALRC Copyright Inquiry (29 June 2012) < http://www.alrc.gov.au/news-media/media-release/terms-reference-received-alrc-copyright-inquiry > at 30 June 2012

ALRC, Terms of Reference, ALRC (29 June 2012) < http://www.alrc.gov.au/inquiries/copyright/terms-reference >  at 30 June 2012

Australian Copyright Council, Government releases final ALRC terms of reference and announces review of TPMs (29 June 2012) < http://www.copyright.org.au/news-and-policy/details/id/2129/ > at 30 June 2012


Attorney Generals Department, Review of Technological Protection Measure exceptions made under the Copyright Act 1968 (29 June 2012) < http://www.ag.gov.au/Consultationsreformsandreviews/Pages/ReviewofTechnologicalProtectionMeasureexceptionsmadeundertheCopyrightAct1968.aspx > at 30 June 2012

IASPM - ANZ 2012 Conference

I was pretty happy to find out yesterday that my abstract has been accepted for the 2012 International Association for the Study of Popular Music (Australia and New Zealand) conference, to be held in Tasmania in December this year (5th to 7th). The theme of the conference is Shifting Sounds: Musical Flow and my abstract is titled: “The Flow of Political Music on the Internet: The Get Up Mob’s ‘From Little Things Big Things Grow’ and the Legendary K.O.’s ‘George Bush Doesn’t Care About Black People’ as case examples of political music on the internet”. The paper I am going to present examines these two songs and the role the internet played in their dissemination and reception. I am particularly keen to discuss the regulatory factors that enabled/hampered their reception and how changes could be made in the future to better ensure the flow of political music on the internet. If you are interested in finding out more about the conference, check out the IASPM ANZ website here.

Further Information
IASPM ANZ, IASPM-ANZ 2012 Conference (11 May 2012) < http://iaspm.org.au/iaspm-anz-2012-conference/#more-396 > at 23 June 2012
 

A Bill of Rights for the Digital Environment

ArsTechnica reports that Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) have started a campaign for a Bill of Rights for the Digital Environment. Congressman Darrell Issa  has published the Bill of Rights on the website KeepTheWebOpen.com and is seeking input from all those that are interested and concerned to develop the Bill of Rights into a workable document. If you are interested in participating you can do so here. I personally think this list is already very good but would probably like to see something supporting fair use/fair dealing as well. 

Here are the proposed ten rights:

1. The right to a free and uncensored Internet.
2. The right to an open, unobstructed Internet.
3. The right to equality on the Internet.
4. The right to gather and participate in online activities.
5. The right to create and collaborate on the Internet.
6. The right to freely share their ideas.
7. The right to access the Internet equally, regardless of who they are or where they are.
8. The right to freely associate on the Internet.
9. The right to privacy on the Internet.
10. The right to benefit from what they create.

 Further ReadingArsTechncia, SOPA opponents unveil "Digital Bill of Rights" (13 June 2012) < http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/06/sopa-opponents-unveil-digital-bill-of-rights > at 18 June 2012 KeepTheWebOpen.com < http://keepthewebopen.com/digital-bill-of-rights > at 18 June 2012