Category: Party News

General news relating to Pirate Party Australia

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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ALRC Copyright Review Draft Terms of Reference Critique

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Below is Pirate Party Australia’s response to the Attorney-General’s Draft Terms of Reference for the ALRC Copyright Review.

Introduction

Pirate Party Australia is part of an international political movement that promotes the reform of copyright, right to privacy, freedom of expression, and the need for increased governmental transparency, as well as civil and digital liberties in general. Currently there are Pirate Parties registered in twenty countries, including Canada, Germany, Sweden and Spain (as well as four US States), with estimates of up to twenty-four additional unregistered parties that have formed.

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New Website is Ready

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Hey guys,

As you can see, the Pirate Party website has had a significant facelift! Things of note:

  • The site runs a lot faster now
  • The join page has been improved to be clearer
  • The posts are now categorised properly
  • URLs are prefixed with their published date
  • You can go to the next page now! (Our old site had a bug where only the first page worked)

We’ve come a long way but we still have quite a ways to go, doing things such such as:

  • Adding more static content to the front page
  • Changing the icons for some buttons
  • Migrating the old wiki to a new wiki
  • Adding a web form for signing up to PPAU since AEC policy changes
  • Ensuring that there are no dead links on the site

The last one is something you can help us with. If you find a dead link or something amiss, please comment on this post with the issue and we’ll fix it as soon as possible.

Thanks for your support guys!

Regards,
Brendan Molloy
Secretary
Pirate Party Australia

An Open Letter To Authors & Publishers: Don’t Use Apple iBook Author

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An open letter to authors and publishers worldwide.

To Whom it may concern,

Last week Apple announced the launch of its iBooks 2 app which includes iBook Author, software designed to help writers lay out their Ebooks. [1][2]

There are many features in iBook Author which are quite useful for authors, particularly writers of textbooks. However, any perceived benefit from easy to use lay-out software is offset by one of the most far-reaching EULAs (End-User Licence Agreement) ever devised.

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