Copyright Law needs to change

The opportunities the Internet offers New Zealanders are massive.  The ability to share our views with the world, to engage in economic activity that defeats the barriers of distance, and to build new communities and connections between us all are unparalleled in the history of our species.

To someone like me, who has had Internet access since high school, that is kind of obvious.  Yet many of my colleagues in the Labour party have a different experience, and don't understand the Internet's importance.

And even more of them, don't yet fully grasp the relationships between the opportunities afforded by an open and accessible Internet, and other pieces of law - law like copyright.

Which is why I was a bit nervous speaking this afternoon at the demonstration in Wellington protesting the #skynet legislation - the imposition from 1 September of a new part of the Copyright Act which is aimed at penalising repeat infringers through filesharing.

Here's a nice photo of the small but perfectly formed group:

As someone who works in the Internet world, I've never supported this legislation. In a post on this blog in 2009, I criticised it (yes, the original version was passed by the fifth Labour government) and ended that post by saying this:

[N]o, I didn't as a Labour Party candidate criticise this in public on this blog last year. I made my views well known inside, and through my job did what we could to help on this, working hard with David Farrar and others in InternetNZ to try and push a re-think.

It is just two of the facts of life in party politics that a) things happen you disagree with, and b) you can't publicly criticise them. There is a degree of collective discipline in politics which is important: the alternative is an ill-disciplined rabble which would never have any political success. You stay involved if the fundamentals are right and if you are making more progress than not. You never find you agree with everything. You bite your tongue for the common cause.

When you are in opposition, though, there is more space to say what you think. So I make no apologies for highlighting this silly law now, and I make no apologies for keeping my mouth shut about it on the blog last year. That's life, and it's juvenile to think otherwise in my opinion.

Since that post, the Labour Party has executed an astonishing and very welcome u-turn on copyright policy.

From being the originators of 92A, which would have on accusation seen people disconnected from the Internet, the Party now has a good understanding of the vital importance of access to the Internet, as a way for people to exercise their fundamental human rights to impart and receive information & opinion, and to exercise free speech.

Labour has also accepted that the review we attempted in the 2000s, to make the Copyright Act fit for the digital age, didn't end up achieving that goal.

My task at today's protest was to explain, given those changes of view, why the Labour caucus voted in favour of the current version of the legislation at the third reading in April.

My understanding is this: the Labour team was offered a deal on account suspension/termination (which Labour now opposes).

If we voted against the legislation, termination would be brought in from 1 September.

If we agreed to vote with the Government, the termination provisions would not come into effect, and would require an order in council to do so.  People would not see their Internet access cut off from 1 September.

Labour decided to do that deal and so voted in favour at third reading.  That doesn't change the party's opposition to termination or suspension -- but my God, it makes it a lot harder to explain than it would have been had we simply voted no.

We will be announcing our copyright policy soon.  It will acknowledge that we have done a reversal from the 2008 legislation.  I expect it will, as my colleague Clare Curran has already announced, confirm Labour's intention to repeal the provisions of the Copyright Act that allow for account suspension.

I think that we finally accept the argument that the Copyright Act is not fit for the Internet era.  A far wider and more in depth consideration of how copyright can work today is needed.  Our policy will have something to say about this.

It's not just policy that counts though: the industry has to play ball too.  It's the fact that people can't get lawful, affordable access to online content here that drives part of the offending.  Rights holders in the movie and music industries don't really deserve to have attention paid to their demands for tougher laws for online infringing, when they don't make the content available in the first place.

In the end, I wished today the policy was already out so I could have explained it. It's better to talk about your plans and hopes than putting right mistakes.

There's an old rule in politics that explaining is losing.  Maybe that's right.  But when your party has made a mistake in the eyes of an important community, you have to say why -- and what you're going to do differently. Timing issues meant I couldn't do all of the second part of that, but I was not unhappy to have a go at doing the first.

Comments

[Anonymous]

Thanks for removing my comment, truth hurts doesn't it? I'll post it again.

If you vote for a bill, you vote for it in its entirety. Its flaws, democratic failures, etc. Seems to me that Labour was just as interested as National in pushing this law through as fast as possible.

gg Labour. I'm voting Green.

[Jordan Carter]

I didn't delete anything, you must have failed to put it in properly. I don't think that there was a democratic failure: all the stages other than third reading were done via normal parliamentary process. The fact the third reading debate happened in urgency doesn't make any difference to the outcome or the time spent considering the bill.

I also don't agree with your point that you vote for it in its entirety. That's the same as saying someone who votes for or joins a political party agrees with every single thing it says or does. Such an attitude is simplistic and simply wrong.

[Jonathan]

The legislation is still deeply flawed and I'm disgusted Labour voted it in. If National had passed it under urgency with termination intact then they alone would have had to face the inevitable public backlash. As things stand, termination is still a possibility, and is quite likely to be brought in because the fundamental issue is one of market failure (i.e. I wager a significant amount of the material that is infringing is unavailable in NZ).

The law is already having chilling effects. I've heard from a holiday home owner dropping their broadband to avoid liability. The last thing this county needs is anything that inhibits widespread, fast internet. This law does that and the potential effects on free WIFI are of great concern to me. Labour can talk about u-turns as much as it wants - what matters is action, not talk, and Labour's track record is (a) introducing s92A, (b) re-inserting it after a select committee recommended against it, and (c) voting for termination "lite" with National.

[Martin]

As a host of international students, I will have to go to great lengths to ensure that they don't use our Internet connection for downloading copyrighted material. Other hosting families may not be as tech savvy as me and will fall foul of this law. Be a man, do the right thing and push a bill to kick this out, instead of telling everyone it was someone else who voted this in. Guilty only when proven guilty, not by accusation only.

[Cameron]

In my opinion, Labour would've made a more principled stand by voting against it. It would've allowed more leverage, both politically and demonstrably, to say "Hey, we don't like this either!"

Until the termination clause is activated, there is little in the changes that the public will care about. I believe it would be better for someone to actually have their internet terminated to show how unjust this legislation is.

Why not let National show how modern they are by allowing them to shoot themselves in the foot properly, rather than helping them by replacing the shotgun for a 22?