Category: Copyright

Copyright law and reform, both commercial and non-commercial

Pirate Party To Distribute Burned CDs On World Intellectual Property Day

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Today, Tuesday April 26, at 3pm, members of the Pirate Party Australia will be handing out free CDs outside the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) Broadway Campus main entrance.

Pirate Party Acting Secretary Simon Frew said “Today is World Intellectual Property day. Intellectual property is a term used to lump together a range of different concepts in an attempt to conflate them with physical property. Ideas and culture can now be shared at a trivial cost, yet companies rely on government imposed legal restrictions to maintain their advantage through creating a false scarcity.”

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A Black Day For New Zealand – Disconnection Laws Pass

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Pirate Party Australia expresses it concern and disappointment with the passing of ʻthree strikesʼ termination laws by the government of New Zealand.[1] Access to the Internet is a human right — socially, culturally and economically, we rely on the Internet for our day to day discourse. Now the New Zealand government threatens its citizens with disconnection for sharing information knowledge and culture. The circumstances under which the law has been passed raises concerns, and the presumption of guilt raises significant concerns regarding due process.

Internet access is a universal service, similar to postal services, the phone or even electricity or water. In fact several countries, including Finland, Spain, Estonia and Greece have passed laws that enshrine the right to internet access for all citizens. A vast majority of Australian also feel the same way — access is a human right.

“The post office does not stop delivering to your house just because you are suspected of sending photocopies to someone. Yet this is precisely what the New Zealand government are proposing with their Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Bill. Under the legislation internet users accused of file-sharing three times will be disconnected” said Simon Frew, Acting Secretary.

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ACTA Release Anything But Benign

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Early this morning, the final draft of the Informal Predecisional/Deliberative Draft of the dubiously named Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) was released by Knowledge Ecology International (KEI).[1]

“The text has shifted dramatically from the initial documents revealed by Wikileaks when this secretive treaty was first exposed. In some respects it is a slightly better document than previous leaked drafts, with some sections being watered down — however at first glance we don’t perceive this draft as being any more benign” Rodney Serkowski, President of the Pirate Party Australia said.

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Pirate Party Hoists Parody

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Pirate Party Australia today fired its latest salvo in the copyright war by endorsing the spoof video Deliberate Pirate made by party member and activist, Simon Frew, in response to the Intellectual Property Awareness Foundation’s latest campaign ‘Accidental Pirate’. The video squarely takes aim at those behind the campaign, emploring big media to get with the times and stop the confrontational approach with ISPs and music fans.

Pirate Party activist and artist behind the film, Simon Frew said “we were mocking the accidental pirate campaign for its amatuer production values and patronising tone. It was such a joke that the video quite literally wrote itself. The view that file sharing is harming the entertainment industry is not borne out by statistics, and big media conglomerates crying poor is quite frankly laughable.”

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Pirate Party Broadsides AFACT & Demands Lawmakers Respect Rights

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[PDF Version]

The Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) has unsurprisingly come out in support of a graduated response mechanism, better known as ‘Three Strikes’, in their war on sharing.[1]

“Pirate Party Australia completely rejects the implementation of any system that disconnects account holders from the Internet, increasingly the most important platform for communication and political discourse today, upon allegation of infringement, without full judicial oversight and due process. Mechanisms like this will see entire households disconnected, upon an allegation from an industry association.” said Party Secretary, Rodney Serkowski.

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