A Long Term View: ACTA
(crossposted from CreativeFreedom.org.nz)
Copyright affects New Zealanders in the art we make, the media we use, and in public rights. The last decade of Copyright law changes have seen positive moves like allowing people to copy CD music to their iPod, but also negative moves like government protectionism for arbitrary digital restrictions, Guilt Upon Accusation laws and soon ACTA*. There are a lot of business groups already speaking on copyright, and many are concentrating on IT, the economy, the legality, and so on. So why the CFF? Artists need a voice too.
In 2006 copyright infringement did a great deal of harm to the production of Sione’s Wedding. An employee of the team made illegal DVD copies of the movie and sold them. The employee wasn’t making an artistic remix of legally purchased media: it was just plain copyright infringement, as decided by a court.
The Sione’s Wedding example was favoured by former-minister Judith Tizard to justify the Guilt Upon Accusation law: Section 92. How internet cutoffs would have prevented an employee illegally copying a movie is unclear to most people, but soon S92A was championed as a solution to copyright infringement online.
The argument needs to be more complex than ‘artists vs. the internet’ simply because it is more complex. Thousands of artists reject the idea that this law is an appropriate response. Already ACTA is being primed as the next big answer to copyright infringement online, and ACTA involves allowing companies to snoop on alleged copyright infringer’s internet connections as part of tracking criminal networks. ACTA is still being negotiated, it’s terms may change, but it raises an important question for artists: how far should we let other artists go to enforce laws and at what expense to public rights?
Although there are some people who say it’s too late to do anything about Section 92A we disagree. Even if Section 92A does come into effect on February 28th it can still be repealed, or limited, and the CFF will do what it can. I think it’s important however to distinguish S92A from the copyright changes on the horizon such as ACTA.
Please remember that this is a long-term problem for everyone online, so start thinking in that kind of time scale. It’s only a month after we launched and we’ve had an amazing response from the public, and it’s great to see that thousands of artists in New Zealand are taking a stand to say: Not In My Name
[*] ACTA is a trade agreement, not copyright law, however after the negotiations there may be a push to align our copyright laws with ACTA.
