Okay cake has a serious case of butt-hurt and nowhere to rant.

Cake does not like this new copyright bill because it was put through and nobody knew jack about it. And the govt showed unimaginable quantities of derp, fail and pwned when talking about it before signing it into law. The copyright situation is out of hand on a global scale and anyone with half a brain can see that its just out dated prats suing would-be customers because there’s no non-bullshit and cheap method for getting telly shows.

So the whole cake marched into parliament. Okay I didn’t. But my cakey data did. The whole cake emailed all the MPs who voted for the silly bill. Here is cake’s email and the two responses received so far from Labour and ACT:

I am writing to register my objection to the to The Copyright (infringing file sharing) Amendment Bill. :flamer:

The use of the Christchurch Earthquake tragedy to forward a political agenda is disgraceful. 👿 Its horrifying to think that our government would act this way, and shows to not only Kiwis but the international community an image of our government being corrupt and unjust. Videos of New Zealand MPs talking about the internet have become viral jokes.

The use of urgency to bypass the standard political process for this bill is a blatant abuse of the urgency process. What is urgent about this move? 🙁

The requirement for the bill to have gone through standard process was well evident. The complete lack of any understanding of the technological implications of this bill was described in The National Business Review article: “Internet file sharing law passes after loopy debate”, as “surreal levels of technical ignorance”. I point to Jonathan Young’s attempted comparisons of the Internet to the fictional SkyNet, and Katrina Shanks complete admission of “I don’t know” as obvious examples that this bill and the issues around it were not clear. It was certainly not ready to be passed into law.

In regards to the law itself, it violates Presumption of Innocence: requiring no burden of proof on behalf of the accuser before they can file a notice. Nobody in our country has to prove innocence. We prove guilt. Innocent until proven guilty, remember?

In the real world, it is technically infeasible to refute an accusation under this law for TWO reasons:

* It is almost impossible to prove that you have not downloaded something on a computer. As anything can be deleted with the click of a button, the lack of the copyright material on your computer would not provide evidence that you had not downloaded it. I would challenge you to find any argument for proof of innocence in this, which cannot be countered with the claim that it has been subsequently deleted.

* It is entirely possible for you to appear to have downloaded files, without having done so at all. I direct your attention to http://dmca.cs.washington.edu/ for technical details. You could be identified as having downloaded copyright material without having downloaded it at all, but for which you will still be held responsible. Good luck proving you didn’t download nude pictures of Santa Clause last week. :banana:

Finally, the select committee response to the 92A clause stated that there was overwhelming public opposition to such a bill. How can such a bill be passed in the name of New Zealand public when it appears there is “overwhelming opposition”? Especially since it was skipped past the subsequent select committee process so that public opinion could not be registered on the potential changes (!!) :rnade:

I propose in the face of such a travesty of action regarding this bill, the only non-disgraceful action you can take would be to call for its immediate repeal. Or tender your resignation. You are supposed to be representing myself and other New Zealanders. I appreciate this is uncharted territory for the world’s legal system. But there are plenty of experts in the field who can give you the executive summary for technical things you don’t understand. This is important for our future and we care for our freedoms and the freedoms of others. This is why we pay attention to what you do.

Yours sincerely

the whole cake

The responses are interesting, showing that you can object to the copyright holder’s fart, putting the burden of proof onto the copyright holder person. And all they can do is send notices. I think? Hrm lets read:

Thank you for your letter. I am responding to you as Labour’s spokesperson for communications and IT on behalf of the Labour caucus.

You raise a number of important points in your letter which reflect your genuine concerns about the process of legislation passing through parliament and concerns about the Copyright Law itself.

Firstly I should make it clear that Labour supported the Copyright Law because it had been significantly amended, and it did go through an extensive community consultation phase at the select committee.

While the remaining stages of the Copyright Bill were passed under urgency, it was referred to the Commerce Committee; we heard extensive submissions (237 submissions including 31 supplementary submissions); we talked to the Minister; we compromised; and we referred back a better bill than the one that was introduced.

Although it would have been better to pass the Bill through its remaining stages over several days instead of via an urgency motion we do not believe this was a constitutional outrage.

Submitters on the Copyright Bill were largely divided on a number of key issues in the Bill. Labour worked very hard to send a bill back to the House that addressed many of them.

We did not get everything we wanted. And the Bill still retains flaws.

But being in Opposition isn’t always about opposing. Sometimes you can make an impact on laws. There are times when negotiating an outcome that improves a law is better than taking a high moral stand and ending up with something that you, and many in the community, fundamentally can’t live with. On this occasion that’s what Labour’s done.

There’s been an intense reaction to having a termination provision in the law. The government’s bottom line was to have termination in the Bill. Ours was to not support it.

(CAKEY EDIT: So its National’s idea (the current in power party) but not Labour’s. Glad we have that cleared up.)
The compromise position was to leave it in but require the Minister to put what’s called an Order In Council into effect to switch it on. Account suspension remains in the bill and could theoretically be used in the future, but any Minister who implements termination will have to wear the consequences. It won’t be a Labour Minister.

The onus is now on the creative industries to prove there is a case to terminate access and that the notice system is not working. Rather than oppose it outright, we preferred to compromise to ensure New Zealanders are not denied access to the internet.

Labour acknowledges your concerns about Section 122MA of the Copyright Act: when an account holder receives an infringement notice, the burden is placed on them to prove that they did not in fact infringe a copyright. Some submitters raised concerns about this at select committee and we sought further talks with the government.

The government agreed to amend the clause and ensure that once a notice was received and where the Copyright Tribunal process was triggered that all the account holder had to do was to respond and challenge the notice. This would trigger a reversal of the onus onto the rights holder to prove that an infringement had occurred.

What we’ve ended up with is better. It’s not perfect. But it’s better than many other jurisdictions.

In conclusion, your concerns are important and Labour retains concerns about this legislation. Labour believes that all New Zealanders should be able to access the internet.

Disconnection is a disproportionate remedy for illegal file sharing. We needed a law. But we didn’t need a bad law.

Thank you for contacting us

Clare Curran

So its better than a terrible law? Thats like saying ‘well its better than legalizing slavery of food products’. Thats no justification for any law.

Here is a response from the ACT party, which largely reads the same:

On behalf of Hilary Calvert MP:
Thank you for your email regarding the Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Bill.

First of all, this Bill went through a full Select Committee hearing after its introduction and first reading, so although the latter stages were included in the Urgency motion, it made very little difference to the process used to progress this Bill towards becoming law.
(CAKEY EDIT: What is so hard about doing laws normally? Why does it have to be urgent? Is there less work or something?)

It has been a long-standing ACT principle to vote for any Bill that we consider to be a step towards individual freedom and responsibility and less government. Necessarily this means that we often vote for legislation – such as this Bill – that is far from perfect.

The Act is an improvement on the old law because it makes the punishment for illegal file sharing less severe. This is desirable because of the high risk that persons other than those actually engaged in illegal file sharing will be punished.

However, despite the above improvement, my colleagues and I still have major concerns about the law. In particular, the risk that innocent internet users will be punished remains far too great. We are also concerned that those who do in fact engage in illegal file-sharing will be able to avoid the punishments set out in the Act by simply switching internet service providers. We hope that in time we will have an opportunity to support legislation which addresses these issues.

Thank you again for taking the time to write.

Yours sincerely

Hilary Calvert MP

So there u go. People who actually commit the crimes can avoid punishment, and the risk to innocent people is ‘too great’. Why can’t they just say ‘no’ to this law? The public certainly does – and so does this food product.

:-_-