Category: Copyright

Copyright law and reform, both commercial and non-commercial

Pirate Party Calls for an End to TPPA Mess

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Pirate Party Australia is disturbed by the decision of the Canadian and Mexican Governments to join in the opaque and fundamentally flawed Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) negotiations. The Party yet again calls for complete transparency and inclusion of civil society in the negotiation process. If these cannot be delivered, Australia must end its participation in TPPA negotiations.

“Based on the revelations contained within the recently leaked investment chapter and the draconian measures called for in the intellectual property chapter, the entire Agreement is a power grab by large corporations. They are taking advantage of the secrecy surrounding the negotiations to undermine democratic and legal principles that have taken centuries to establish,” said Simon Frew, Deputy President of Pirate Party Australia.

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Email to Attorney-General regarding Piracy Talks

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Pirate Party Australia has sent an email to the Attorney-General’s Department requesting greater access for the public to this Thursday’s piracy talks in Sydney.

To Whom It May Concern,

I am writing to you on behalf of Pirate Party Australia to raise concerns about the Piracy Talks to be held in Sydney this Thursday.

Due to the secrecy surrounding the negotiations so far, we are concerned that the agreement will be unbalanced in favor of rights holders and old media at the expense of consumers. Our attempts at finding out details through a Freedom of Information request was met with many pages completely blacked out, exacerbating our fears that consumers’ rights will be trampled on.

Whilst including ACCAN as the consumer representative is a step in the right direction in addressing concerns that consumers will be represented, we can’t help but feel that they are a poor choice. Their Chairperson is Michael Fraser who has also just been named Chairperson of the Australian Copyright Council. He is not a representative of consumer interests and it is hard to see an organisation that he leads will be an impartial and fair advocate for consumers.

To rectify this imbalance we request that these discussions be opened up to transparent public participation. Whilst organising public participation would be difficult for the meeting planned Thursday, we would be able to send a representative to carry out this function as some representation on behalf of the public would provide a better outcome for Australian consumers than the currently proposed limited representation.

Regards,

Simon Frew
Deputy President
Pirate Party Australia

Update (5 Jun, 7.36pm): we received a nameless response from the Attorney-General’s Department:

UNCLASSIFIED

Dear Mr Frew,

Thank you for your email. Unfortunately it will not be possible to accommodate additional requests to attend the roundtable personally.

Please be assured that arrangements for the roundtable discussion to be held on 7 June 2012 specifically include a number of participants from several consumer representative bodies.

Attorney-General’s Department

Somehow, it is difficult to believe their ‘assurances’ from such a generic response.

Update (6 Jun, 1.25pm): Simon followed up their email with the following:

Thankyou for your reply.

We were wondering if it would be possible to find out which other consumer organisations are attending as we would like to liase with them regarding any proposals affecting consumers?

Regards,

Simon Frew
Deputy President
Pirate Party Australia

This was the AGD’s response:

UNCLASSIFIED

Dear Mr Frew,

Thank you for your email. The consumer organisations attending are: The Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN); and The Internet Society of Australia (ISOC-AU).

Attorney-General’s Department

“Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement has no economic benefit,” says Pirate Party

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Transparency is a new idea to Australian Government, according to notes taken by Pirate Party Australia Secretary Brendan Molloy at the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) intellectual property meeting in Canberra last Thursday.

According the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), “the Australian Government will pursue a TPP outcome that eliminates or at least substantially reduces barriers to trade and investment” that will “also deal with behind-the-border impediments to trade and investment.”[1]

So far there has been no confirmation on exactly how the TPP will achieve these aims, as there have been no official drafts of the Agreement released, and the negotiators actively refuse to discuss the contents in anything other than vague and evasive statements.

At the meeting in Canberra, stakeholders were invited to participate in a question and answer session with the inter-departmental negotiators. Disappointingly, the negotiating team dodged almost all questions regarding the Agreement, including the impact it might have on the Australian Law Reform Commission’s copyright review. The negotiators also failed to give any definites about what intellectual property (IP) provisions would be included, and did not sufficiently address the concerns of those present.

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Pirate Party Australia Webcast – Episode 3

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In this episode Sam covers some recent news and reads the third installment of The History of Copyright. Subscribe to the feed, or view past episodes.

News:
yeslab.org: TPPA Gate crashers
smh.com.au: Super Warrants
delimiter.com.au: Piracy FOI Request Rejected
dw.de: Pro-copyright Group “We Are The Creators”
aph.gov.au: Joint Standing Committee on Treaties – May 7 Transcript

History Of Copyright:
No Safe Harbour book
Rick Falkvinge’s Blog (links to the 7 original blog entries)

Quote:
“It is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday facilitate a police state.” — Bruce Schneier, http://www.schneier.com/

Podcast (webcast): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:24 — 10.6MB)

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Pirate Party Australia Webcast – Episode 2

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In this episode Sam does his first pirate profile on himself, we have a short segment from a pirate pub and the second installment of Rick Falkvinge’s History Of Copyright. Subscribe to the feed, or view past episodes.

A transcript of the webcast will be available shortly.

History Of Copyright:
No Safe Harbour book
Rick Falkvinge’s Blog (links to the 7 original blog entries)

Quote: “In the 21st century, the Internet IS speech, IS assembly, IS association and IS the press… if a corporation can’t sustain a business without having these rights limited, then that corporation deserves to go out of business. The sooner the better.” – Rick Falkvinge

Podcast (webcast): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:08 — 17.4MB)

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