The population of countries negotiating ACTA is 1,178,504,491. The members of public with access to the text of ACTA: 42. Perhaps with this in mind PublicAddress.net features a well-timed editorial on ACTA today by Colin Jackson that’s well worth reading, “There is now no cost to distributing information. That’s not rhetoric – it’s an indisputable fact. It means that people who rely for their income on being a toll-gate on the flow of information don’t have a business model any more. Artists can still create and charge people for appreciating their work directly, but those who make their living from recycling imperfect copies of what others do are going to find it more and more difficult from now on. This is the context for the innocuously-named Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, an international treaty being negotiated by the governments of New Zealand, the EU, Canada, the US and a few other countries. Rumours have persisted for some time that [ACTA] is really about controlling copying on the Internet, as well as, or perhaps instead of, controlling the flood of fake Prada handbags and Rolex watches filling our shops. And rumours are what we have to rely on because no-one has seen the text of ACTA. The government officials negotiating it have told us that it’s far too commercially sensitive for the people it would affect to be able to actually see it before it’s all signed off by Obama, Gordon Brown or his successor and John Key.”

“We don’t have to think too hard to figure out which side of this debate will be employing lobbyists. The people who stand to lose from an attack on the Internet to prevent people copying things are ordinary folks, run of the mill Internet users, not just those who like to download copyrighted music and movies. The people want that attack on the Internet, because it is destroying their business models, are a handful of very well-resourced industry associations and big companies. The same people who claimed that the very existence of recorded music would cause human vocal chords to atrophy, or that the popularity of the VCR (remember those?) would be “as dangerous as the Boston Strangler was to a woman at home”.”

Read more on ACTA at PublicAddress.net .

A modern myth spread by those who want to discredit evolution itself is that Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection provided the scientific basis for the Nazi eugenics programme.

This is false on many grounds,

By definition Darwin’s theory of natural selection couldn’t be implemented by humans because that would be human selection, not nature’s selection in the sense that Darwin meant it. While humans are a part of nature the type of nature that Darwin was talking about was clearly not intentional human intervention and direction.

The knowledge that human children were a result of mixing their parents traits such as height, skin colour, and so on has been common knowledge since the birth of humanity and controlling this process was advocated as far back as Plato.

The Darwinian theory’s primary metaphor of a Tree of Life with branching species was unused by human breeding conducted by the Nazis, they just wanted to kill and breed within the human species which was an old idea. As I understand it the eugenics program wasn’t trying to cross the species boundary, though the same couldn’t be said of Stalin. That the Nazis labeled other humans as lesser species is a separate issue and more about semantics than the evolutionary tree described by Darwin.

A less mechanised form of racist human breeding was practiced before Darwin in most cultures that preferred relationships within races. These cultures tried to control who could have a long-term relationship, and with whom, which would affect offspring (Eg, interracial marriage was illegal for a long time). Some backwards people still believe this, but thanks to Darwin we now know that race doesn’t exist in any significant way, especially not in the way that Nazi’s talked about.

The idea of Darwin’s theory providing the scientific underpining for the Nazi breeding program is nonsense on scientific grounds when you consider that (1) it was done by humans not nature, (2) eugenics was an old idea advocated by Plato, (3) it wasn’t based on the Tree of Life or non-human breeding, (4) it was a mechanised version of cultural racism that was common at the time.

Darwin’s theories have as much to do with nazi eugenics as Copernican theories have to do with ballistic missiles.

Update November 18th 2009: a final word from Hitler himself who — not content with burning books on Darwin — spoke against Evolution and Atheism,

“Even a superficial glance is sufficient to show that all the innumerable forms in which the life-urge of Nature manifests itself are subject to a fundamental law–one may call it an iron law of Nature–which compels the various species to keep within the definite limits of their own life-forms when propagating and multiplying their kind.”

“I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator. By warding off the Jews I am fighting for the Lord’s work.
We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.”

“”Christ was the greatest early fighter in the battle against the world enemy, the Jews . . . The work that Christ started but could not finish, I–Adolf Hitler–will conclude.”

The New York Times reports that the European Union has rejected Guilt Upon Accusation laws (known as “Three Strikes”) and guaranteed a “fair and impartial” procedure before any punishment such as internet termination. “This is a very fundamental step,” said Catherine Trautmann, a member of parliament from Strasbourg, France, who sponsored the amendment “It is the first time that we affirm that access to Internet is an essential tool to exercise fundamental rights and freedoms. It is progress for the rights of citizens.” Ms. Reding said “This Internet freedom provision is unprecedented across the globe and a strong signal that the E.U. takes fundamental rights very seriously”. While talking about basic freedoms such as freedom of speech the amendment does still allow internet termination, effectively removing a mechanism for free speech. The text of the amendment is available on Christian Engström’s site . The wording of a “fair and impartial procedure” stops short of guaranteeing a trial, although the amendment also guarantees “The right to an effective and timely judicial review”. This is good news for Europe but there’s no word yet on how this will affect the French or UK plans.

BoingBoing reports on a leaked draft of the ACTA treaty (what is ACTA?). The draft says “That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger [...] That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet — and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living — if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel [...] That the whole world must adopt US-style “notice-and-takedown” rules that require ISPs to remove any material that is accused — again, without evidence or trial — of infringing copyright.” Read the BoingBoing article for more.

A UK Parliamentary enquiry titled “Can we keep our hands off the net?” (PDF ) has come out strongly against internet termination, blaming the music and film industry (not artists) for failing to adapt to the online environment. They say “We conclude that much of the problem with illegal sharing of copyrighted material has been caused by the rightsholders, and the music industry in particular, being far too slow in getting their act together and making popular legal alternatives available” and they also say that e-Government plans for democratic participation in society conflict with internet termination.

It reads,

56. Turning now to the question of “bad” file sharing traffic. We are only too well aware that since we received written responses in May, and heard oral evidence in July, much more has happened. The final version of the Digital Britain Report has been published; the
Department for Business Innovation and Skills has published a consultation paper on dealing with illegal file sharing based on the Report’s approach; and latterly the Secretary of State has announced a change in the preferred policy to include disconnecting end users – and then slightly extended the consultation period.

57. We are therefore reluctant to make a substantial number of further recommendations based on the evidence we received in the Spring and Summer, since it is self-evidently now incomplete. However, we have reached some conclusions.

58. We conclude that much of the problem with illegal sharing of copyrighted material has been caused by the rightsholders, and the music industry in particular, being far too slow in getting their act together and making popular legal alternatives available.

59. We do not believe that disconnecting end users is in the slightest bit consistent with policies that attempt to promote eGovernment, and we recommend that this approach to dealing with illegal file-sharing should not be further considered.

60. We think that it is inappropriate to make policy choices in the UK when policy options are still to be agreed by the EU Commission and EU Parliament in their negotiations over the “Telecoms Package”. We recommend that the Government terminate their current policy-making process, and restart it with a new consultation once the EU has made its decisions.

The NZ Herald reports that “Brits who illegally download music from the internet also spend more money on music than anyone else [...] those who admit illegally downloading music spent an average of 77 pounds ( NZ$176) a year on music –33 pounds more than those who claim that they never download music dishonestly [...] The findings suggest that plans by the Secretary of State for Business, Peter Mandelson, to crack down on illegal downloaders by threatening to cut their internet connections with a “three strikes and you’re out” rule could harm the music industry by punishing its core customers.” In other news UK opposition MP Tom Watson recently questioned the minister responsible in parliament .

(crossposted from CreativeFreedom.org.nz)

The NBR reports that Bandit.fm is launching within New Zealand in November, they say “In the US, some of the biggest tech buzz of the tyear has been generated by Spotify, an online music service that lets you stream an unlimited amount of songs via the internet each month, for a set fee, rather than buy tracks or albums individually on the iTunes model.”

Tomorrow, on Friday the 30th of October the NZ Centre of International Economic Law presents a symposium with Professor Jane Ginsburg, the Copyright Tribunal’s Susy Frankel, and CFF’s Bronwyn Holloway-Smith on The Copyright Future: Authors, owners orphans, users and repeat infringers: “The protections that authors and owners have or might like to have under copyright law face challenges from legitimate users and some not so legitimate. This symposium will discuss topical issues in copyright law arising from these challenges.”

09.15: KEYNOTE ADDRESS – Digital Copyright: An update from a US perspective by Professor Jane Ginsburg. Symposium Chair: Professor Susy Frankel, Faculty of Law,

10.15 Morning tea

10.45 Orphan Works – Presentation: Susan Corbett, Senior Lecturer, School of Accounting and Commercial Law, VUW. Commentators: Professor Jane Ginsburg, Professor Ian Eagles, Law School, AUT

11.30 Panel Discussion: Repeat infringers and related issues
Panellists: Bronwyn Holloway-Smith, Creative Freedom Foundation, Professor Louise Longdin, Law School, AUT. Geoff McLay, Reader, Faculty of Law, VUW. Jon Penney, Internet Senior Research Fellow in Cyberlaw, Faculty of Law, VUW.

12.45 Close and Lunch.

Register and read more on the NZCIEL website

(crossposted from CreativeFreedom.org.nz)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – 6 October 2009. The Creative Freedom Foundation say that Commerce Minister Simon Power may decide the future of the former Guilt Upon Accusation law, section 92A of the Copyright Amendment Act, within weeks. The law was described as “draconian” by Prime Minister John Key and it resulted in widespread public protest before being scrapped in March, pending a redraft.

CFF Director, Bronwyn Holloway-Smith, said today that “Minister Power’s redrafting process has made a lot of sense so far and we have been encouraged to see that the government seems intent on avoiding going back to s92A’s draconian predecessor.”

“Internet termination is a major issue that is yet to be resolved. We don’t terminate a family’s postal service if one person uses it to break the law. We don’t terminate a family’s electricity if one person plays music too loudly. The internet is part of modern participation in society, and termination will unfairly affect peoples’ ability to pay bills, to do business, to read news, email friends, and participate in democracy. Simply put, internet termination is an inventive and ridiculous punishment that will harm many people for the actions of one.” she further stated.

“Copyright infringement is wrong but we won’t win the hearts and minds of New Zealanders with a draconian punishment like termination. We need fair, targeted penalties like fines, supported by good education about copyright.”

“It has been said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, and with that in mind NZFACT are calling for New Zealanders to be presumed guilty until proven innocent yet again. NZFACT flew an Hollywood lobbyist over to argue that New Zealanders shouldn’t have the same rights that are afforded to United States citizens.”

“Here and abroad studies have shown that 30-37% of accusations of copyright infringement are false, with 57% of cases being businesses targeting competitors. These facts are backed by experts and independent studies, whereas industry claims of lost sales due to illegal downloads have been exposed as unscientific. The Australian government have labeled piracy statistics as “self-serving hyperbole” in a draft government report to their Attorney General.”

“NZFACT claim that millions of dollars are lost to online infringement despite not actually selling box office movies online, which raises the obvious question of whether millions are lost due to illegal downloads, or unsatisfied customers.”
“They seek have to extraordinary powers to terminate people’s internet accounts, but thankfully the redrafting process shows no signs of relying on hearsay and speculation.”

New Zealanders are encouraged to learn more at www.CreativeFreedom.org.nz and to send respectful emails to Minister Simon Power on s.power@ministers.govt.nz about the value of due process and their thoughts on internet termination.

ENDS
–
FACTS AND FIGURES
Former head of New Zealand’s Copyright Tribunal, Judge Harvey, has said that 30% of New Zealand copyright litigation fails due to a failure to prove ownership, or due to the copyright not being governed by New Zealand law.

According to a UCLA study (2008), 37% of US claims of online copyright infringement are invalid, and 57% of claims are businesses against competitors.
The Australian government have labeled piracy statistics as “self-serving hyperbole” in a draft government report. “A confidential briefing for the Attorney-General’s Department, prepared by the Australian Institute of Criminology, lashes the music and software sectors. The draft of the institute’s intellectual property crime report, sighted by The Australian shows that copyright owners “failed to explain” how they reached financial loss statistics used in lobbying activities and court cases.”
Source: http://j.mp/14KKta

The Creative Freedom Foundation is a not-for-profit trust representing 20,000 New Zealanders, including 10,000 artists (musicians, film makers, visual artists, designers, writers, & performers). The trust founded in 2008 in response to changes in copyright law and the effect these changes are having on creativity, the economy, and public rights. Through education and advocacy, the CFF seek to encourage, and promote New Zealand artist’s views on issues that have the potential to influence their collective creativity.