This is important: The New Zealand Copyright Amendments due to come into law very shortly. These should be scaring any and all Internet users in NZ.. hands down.

At the recent Software Freedom Day Barcamp and then the New Zealand Open Source Awards the issue of NZ's participation in ACTA, as well as the revisions to Copyright law, were mentioned. It also came up during the ICT Ministers debate. Enough attention was drawn, that Hon David Cunliffe, Minister for ICT, volunteered to set up a meeting with interested parties and the relevant minister, to discuss.

Colin Jackson blogged post his attendance at said meeting, as NZOSS's representative. There is also Colin's slot on National Radio (with Kim Hill) where he was able to make his views known. (Audio (.ogg) and Transcript available). Don Christie then documented the situation on the NZOSS Site.

In short:
- If you are accused 3 times of copyright infringement, your ISP will be obligated by LAW to cut you off.
- That's an accusation. No proof required.
- The scope of this really needs some thought for a minute. To illustrate, heres an extract from a post on the NZOSS Openchat mailing list discussing the possibilities:

The Internet these days is a critical piece of infrastructure.

Hon Judith Tizard has as much as said that the Internet is Critical Infrastructure these days - and in the same breath she's taking industries word for it that the above situation wouldnt be abused.
Good grief.
Talk about holes in the law.

There's more to this as well. One of the points made by Ms Tizard was that we've been too late to draw this to the attention of relevant parties - that this has been on the cards for up to 2 years now and we've never raised complaints on it before.

Oh REALLY?

I quote from Don's entry on the NZOSS Site:

I should note that Minister Tizard is completely wrong when she claims no-one has been engaging with her over these issues. From Colin's notes:

Peter Harrison expressed concern to her nearly two years ago at the first foo camp. More of us carried on the conversation at the same venue a year later. We have made submissions to the select committee, Mark Harris and I met her just a few weeks ago to discuss issues of ACTA and Copyright. The subject obviously came up in that meeting.

There appears to be a degree of obliviousness here. How successful is a government process which pretends to solicit feedback from the learned community and then simultaneously ignores it, or completely overlooks it - and then pleads innocence?

Oh, wait, there's more. While Colin was on the radio the station received a call from the MP. Here's what Colin posted to the Mailing List:

Judith called the radio station while I was on air and demanded to be let on as well. I wouldn't agree. Then she sent email to the station accusing me of wild allegations and talking hysterical nonsense.

Good grief.

If there's such hysterical nonsense being thrown around, shouldn't there be some clarification issued by the Government... and shall we then let our community of Lawyers, Artists, Internet Specialists and Consumers decide whether it is infact a good idea or not?

Because this issue hasn't had anywhere near enough mainstream exposure.

EDIT: Join our Facebook Group !

EDIT 2: Brenda has done a better job than me of tracking media coverage. Check it out: http://coffee.geek.nz/copyrightnz.