This article brings up a lot of stuff that I think is fundamentally wrong with the copyright system as it is.
Most crucial among these is that governments are negotiating in secret to intensify copyright laws and punishments. They are doing this without any mandate from their citizens, without any regard for the wishes or interests of their citizens.
For Australia, the grossly excessive nature of these negotiations won’t have much effect on our laws… because we already implemented a ton of the worse measures when Howard was so desperate to include a free-trade agreement with the US. But there is one measure that hasn’t yet been implemented here, but which could be, and that is worrying.
Without being a legal expert, I’ll say my understanding of the nature of suing is that someone has to have actually harmed you before you can sue for damages. So you know, if you haven’t lost any money through someone else’s actions, you’re not allowed to demand that they pay you tons of money. You would have no reason to demand lots of money, that that would basically be stealing. However. Among the secret provisions of this treaty, that could all change.
The current situation in the US has lead to ordinary American citizens being ordered to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in punishment for illegally downloading music — sometimes amounting to $22,000 per file.
How much is a music track? In Australia, single tracks can be bought through iTunes for $1.69. I’m sure they can be bought elsewhere for less.
Does it harm giant, sprawling corporations for people to not spend LESS THAN TWO DOLLARS on a certain track? Even if an individual downloads a hundred different tracks, what the hell does $170 matter to a corporation worth billions?
Answer: it doesn’t matter. These companies will get on by without your $170 quite nicely, thank you. An individual downloading a track for free is basically equivalent to an individual who has never heard that track in the first place. The notion of “stealing” doesn’t work when individuals are supposedly “stealing” digital files that can be copied and copied and copied again and again. The people who do pay more than compensate for those who don’t.
Since corporations would look ridiculous suing ordinary American people for, say, twenty bucks, lawmakers have decided they’re allowed to sue for THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS instead. I believe that people who “pirate” tracks are not harming corporations, and even if they ARE harming corporations, they are harming corporations to the value of two dollars. Not $22,000. Under no circumstances, ever, should a corporation be allowed to extort $22,000 per song downloaded from individuals who have not even harmed them.
What this demonstrates is that our lawmakers think corporations and lobbyists are more important than people. And why should that be? What a backwards system.
Fri, 29.01.2010, 1am • 1 Comment • Tags: news, politics, rights, Internet, technology, USA, Australia
On the radio yesterday, apparently (I wasn’t concentrating on it), the presenter was trying to market some event the radio station was organising, so he said, “So, come along, any lady who might be looking for a husband — or guys too, for that matter!”
Anyway, the way he said it implied that guys might also be searching for a husband, and my grandmother became indignant (which is how I know anything was said at all). “Do you know any guys looking to acquire a husband?”
“Not in Australia, anyway,” I said, because not one state in the whole of Australia has legalised gay marriage.
“Exactly! And the way they said it made it sound like guys could marry each other!”
“Well, you never know… the law could change.”
Then she became sullen. “The big problem with that issue is that people insist on using the same terms we use for normal marriage. If they gave up on that unreasonable demand, there’s a good chance that they would get what they want.”
So, I wasn’t going to say anything to her because it is always utterly pointless to argue with her. That said, “they could get what they want if only they gave up on one of the things they want” doesn’t make a lot of sense. They’re not getting what they want then, are they?
I think the real problem is that there are two conceptions of what “marriage” means, and people keep trying to conflate them. The first is the idea of marriage as a religious institution, between one man and one woman, like my grandmother holds. And that’s fine. The other idea is the secular view of marriage as a legal institution, in which individuals agree to be loyal to and assist one another and receive a whole host of benefits in return.
Australia is a secular country. It’s not a theocracy, and nor is there even a state religion. Consequently, I feel religion should play no role in determining our laws. This secular kind of marriage, the one with all the rights and legal privileges attached, should be open to everyone who wants one.
And if the majority of the population feels that “marriage” is an inappropriate word for this kind of union, and must be reserved for religious marriages between one man and one woman… all right. But then let’s make it such that marriages carry no legal status. We could retrospectively declare all married couples to be joined in a union as well, but from the day the law came into effect, newlyweds would be required to obtain a legal union separately from their marriage.
I think this is an issue about legal rights. Either marriages are secular, in which case there is no reason for gay couples to be forbidden to have them, or else they are religious, in which case they deserve no legal weight. Admittedly, my attitude is likely a bit extremist… I can’t think of many people who’d argue that marriages don’t deserve legal status at all. However, I did steal the idea from someone, and I think it makes a lot of sense. If marriage is such a religious thing that it can’t be extended to gay couples, what right has it to carry legal status in a secular society?
Mark Newton posted this on Twitter today:
ACMA ref 780248254 concerned this content: [snip]. Can’t host it or a link to it in Australia. Twitter is offshore. #nocleanfeed
To be on the safe side, I won’t link to the content blacklisted. I did, however, link to the Twitter status that linked to it (which I do not believe is illegal).
Because YouTube is an irritating organisation committed to shielding “vulnerable children” from the horrors of political realities, I am actually forbidden to view this video, in a way that probably makes the Australian Government feel very happy inside. However, I can see that the title of this video is Neda Sultan R.I.P - Iran Elections.
Since Australia has not yet implemented its filter, the blacklisting means that people who’ve opted in to the existing filter cannot view it, and it’s illegal to link to or rehost. Essentially, ACMA believes that the fate of Neda Soltan is unacceptable for Australians to view.
In the interests of fairness, Mark Newton was the one who filed the complaint against the video in the first place — the blacklist will be run partially on complaints, so (theoretically) if no other country has blocked certain material and no one’s complained about it, ACMA will not block it.
In practice that can’t reassure us, because anyone can file a complaint. It could be anti-filter campaigners proving a point about how bad this censorship scheme will be, as it is this time… or it could have been an Iranian representative in Australia trying to get this hushed up. Perhaps once the filter’s in place, we’ll see Chinese officials filing lots of complaints about graphic depictions of crackdowns in Tibet, or Xinjiang, or wherever they may occur. Or perhaps Sri Lanka would complain about the footage that exists of Sri Lankan soldiers shooting Tamils. Having set this precedent, how could ACMA not block this stuff?
But none of it should be blocked at all. The whole point of this video’s publication is that everyone knows, and remembers, the capabilities of a totalitarian regime, so our opposition to such regimes is strengthened. Maybe it’s horrifying, but that doesn’t mean the government should be working to conceal it from people. We can’t be sheltered from everything that’s horrifying, particularly when that gives such things the freedom to occur.
Yesterday, VTAC finally published all the tertiary course offers from 2010. I was offered my first preference — Arts (Global) at Monash University — and so, once I’ve enrolled, I’ll be a student of the Bachelor of Arts (Global).
Arts (Global) is essentially a Bachelor of Arts, just more restrictive (but I mean that in the nicest possible way). Because it’s a requirement of the BA (Global), my major will be international studies. This is fine, because it was going to be international studies or history or politics, anyway. However, it has to be international studies. There is no squirming out of it. There is no doing INT1010 and INT1020 (a first-year sequence for all three) and then deciding afterwards which area of study I want to major in. It’s international studies or… uh, working out how to change my course. Which is probably possible.
Aside from international studies, I want to study linguistics, because that’s sounded like one of the most interesting areas of study ever since I was about thirteen. Alas, the high school curriculum is tailored towards literature crap instead of linguistic awesomeness, so I was never able to1. But now I am! And in case you couldn’t tell, I am not planning to study English (literature). All throughout high school, my favourite parts of English were all the parts that didn’t involve reading books (or worse: poetry), so a subject all about reading books is probably not one I should take.
I also want to take a second language. I’m undecided between Spanish and French, but I have to decide soon (by the end of next week, I think). I think Spanish would be more useful, since it’s spoken by twice or three times the number of people who speak French, and is the primary language of more countries. However, since I already know some French, it’s tempting to study that because it’d be easier. Right now, I’m probably leaning towards Spanish, but it’s like a 55-45 split.
The last thing that should be mentioned about this course is that it requires me to spend one semester overseas, on exchange, at another university. Of course, this further influences my deliberations over French v. Spanish because I’d probably choose to go to whichever country matched up with my chosen language, which would be France for French, or Mexico for Spanish. Of course, if neither works out, I can also study in another English-speaking country for a semester.
Anyway, I have to spend the next week and a bit scrambling to get enrolment and unit selection over with, but then I’ll be an Arts student at last! Exciting.
This is probably everywhere by now, but regardless, I’ll post it anyway: Google has announced that it will no longer be censoring internet search results in China.
According to Google, the reason for their decision is that a group of hackers within China breached Google’s security in an attempt to access the personal emails of Chinese human rights activists. Furthermore, the emails of human rights activists throughout China, the US and Europe have been accessed thanks to malware installed on their computers, seemingly from much the same source.
Google’s policy was always that it was better to offer a limited (censored) service to Chinese people than no service at all (which would be the case if Google was blocked). I can sympathise with this. But the Chinese regime’s fondness for “cyberwarfare”, using malware and hacking against its political opponents, seems to have caused Google to draw the line. What point is there in cooperating with an oppressive regime that isn’t even cooperating with you?
In Al Jazeera’s article on this subject, they quoted Danny O’Brien, an “internet rights” activist, saying:
“This changes the game because the question won’t be ‘How can we work in China?’ but ‘How can we create services that Chinese people can use, from outside of China?’”
Offering limited services may be better than offering none at all, but better still is offering a full and uncensored service to people (even if they have to jump through a few hoops to get there). If trying to cooperate with the Chinese government is too difficult and unsatisfactory to boot, it’s time to think of a better solution.
I would start with doing everything I could to promote anonymisers and proxies, like Tor and the Usejump browser. Spread them by USB if need be. The Chinese government can refine its Great Firewall all it likes, but it’d have difficulty blocking programs on USBs.
Wed, 13.01.2010, 6pm • 3 Comments • Tags: news, politics, rights, Internet, censorship, China