Copyright

Copyright

On Monday, Mark gave out ITC class a presentation on copyright, which he questioned our opinions on what we thought about the current copyright laws in New Zealand as well as the use of the fair dealings.

He also covered some of the sinister trade agreements and legislation that are coming out of the America that could have a major effect on things such as the Internet and copyright laws in New Zealand.

At the end of the class he tasked us with answering the questions that he had posted on the Moodle forums, which I will answer throughout the rest of this blog.

Question: What do you see are the biggest issues/problems with digital copyright today?

Answer:

Personally, I think that people who create the original digital content should have the right to have protection from other people stealing their work for personal gain but with that being said, I will have to say the current copyright laws are flawed, more so in other countries such as the USA then in New Zealand.

Though I don’t have a large knowledge into copyright laws in New Zealand, I find the guilty till proven innocent approach within the “Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Act” very troubling.

Essentially with the clause in this law, anyone that is accused of downloading a copyrighted file is guilty in till proven innocent.

Yes, that’s right guilty until proven innocent.

Okay, so for an example to understand how I see this being majorly flawed is let’s say in hypothetical situation your grandparents get the internet and being older folk with limited technical knowledge they don’t update their Wi-Fi password.

Now it would only take some opportunistic person to see that there’s a new Wi-Fi network, look up the default password for their modem and gain access to their Wi-Fi with everything illegal they download making your grandparents instantly guilty of, with the worst case scenario of receiving a $15,000 fine at the copyright tribunal; this to me crazy.

To make things worse, I could see trying to prove yourself innocent being hard. Imagine going up against a mega corporation with near unlimited resources, whiles you’re a student or a pensioner (though I’m not sure that it works like this in NZ, but I’ve read nightmare stories of this happening in the USA).

Simplified information about New Zealand’s “3strike” copyright law can be found here.

Question: What is/are your solution(s) to these?

Answer:

With the guilty until proven innocent clause, I would have to say it needs to mirror our current justice system where you are innocent until proven guilty; I don’t see why copyright laws get special treatment and are excluded from this.

It seems to me this is only to make it more convenient for the people making the infringement claims.

Question: What is your opinion of the current NZ and overseas legislation attempting to protect the owner of the work?

Answer:

With this question I’m assuming you’re talking about copyright legislation such as SOPA, PIPA and ACTA.

In regards to my opinion on these agreements, I’m deeply troubled with some of the context in them.

For example, within 2011’s controversial SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) it gave copyright owners the ability to take down any website from any country (not just the USA) that contained copyrighted material, without the website being able to defend itself first; even if it wasn’t the websites owners posting the copyrighted material.

And to go even further SOPA made streaming copyrighted material on websites such as YouTube, illegal with breaches of the law in America facing a potential jail term.

Within NZ, from what I’ve heard about the leaked documents from the TPPA (Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement) it will have similar effects on copyright laws here in NZ which are equally as troubling.

Personally I think most of these proposed legislation/acts do more harm than good and only seem to benefit the large corporations that propose them.

More information on the copyright legislation such as SOPA can be found here.

Information on the Copyright side of the TPPA found here.

Include two examples of Fair Dealing that you have come across. Comment on why you see this as Fair Use and not just copyright infringement.

1. Criticism/review

Seeing that I consider myself a bit of a gamer and before I purchase a game, I normally go to YouTube and look up reviews for the game to see if it’s worth purchasing.

Why I see this as fair use and not copyright infringement?

Because strongly believe anything that is on sale should be able to be put up reviewed and criticism, it’s good for consumers and helps push for a better product.

2. Research/study

Why I see this as fair use and not copyright infringement?

I don’t see this is copyright infringement because not being able to use someone else’s material to gain knowledge seems completely backwards to me, just like Mark said in class “Who really has a truly original idea anyway?”