This Saturday, February 28th, Section 92A of the Copyright Act is due to come into force. It is currently unworkable.
This website has voluntarily been taken down in protest against this clause. In its current form the clause will allow for arbitrary disconnection from the net on an accusation. That will result (at best) with sites looking like this. There would be a message stating that the site has been taken down for unproven accusations of copyright infringement from an unknown accuser without evidence. All it requires is a mere unproven statement of having control of a copyright. That will probably be the law as it stands after Feb 28. It will cause site operators like ourselves to just move their sites offshore and will probably be ineffective on its targets.
There is meant to be an agreement about a code of conduct which could maybe make this daft clause workable. To date there have been no signs that this will be in place on Feb 28. The parties are too narrow in focus and shamefully parochial.
Section 92A are appears to be unworkable and lack any equity or justice. It is an attempt to perform an important task on the cheap. There needs to be a body of people trained in copyright law and the net to make rapid decisions – especially about the critical issue of false accusations. The court system is obviously too slow and cumbersome for any serious level of net adjudication. This is all going to cost real money, something that all parties appear to not want to consider. The intent of this clause is laudable. Its implementation looks like crap
We don’t care who voted for the law in the first place. We just want s92A deferred, deleted or made workable with a wider agreement across the net. We call on the Minister responsible, National’s Simon Power to get off his acre and do some work to make sure one of these results happens. We call on all politicians and ‘stakeholders’ to think about the net before they act stupidly. You will reap firestorms.
Visit CreativeFreedom.org.nz to learn more.
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I think the link to CreativeFreedom is invalid
I concur, it is invalid. Very post-modern 😉
Opps fixed.