Sound the alarm: ACTA negotiations delayed
Section 92a was probably one outcome of the last round of ACTA negotiations. Times have changed since, the USA has moved away from right-wing extremism towards conservatism but I live in New Zealand, where we elected National, a party of poor repute and links to American Neo-Conservatism. This means New Zealand is now more likely than ever to introduce legislative changes proposed during ACTA negotiations, unless the business round-table decides otherwise.
The ACTA is shrouded in secrecy. Most of what is known about it has been gleaned from leaked secret documents uploaded to Wikileaks. What we can safely assume, and I'm no political analyst, is that S.92a's implementation was to be used to further negotiations related to the ACTA. Given what is known, National would surely be upset with the public detest in the S.92a fiasco.
Forgive my opinionation, I hope I'm wrong. Here are some of the legislative changes countries partaking in ACTA are encouraged to adopt, under the auspice of intellectual property rights enforcement.
Criminal Measures
- Criminal sanctions - including wilful infringments without motivation for financial gain.
- ex officio[1] authority to prosecute (rights holder does not actually prosecute, prosecution is filed on assumption of rights holder wishing to prosecute)
- establishment and imposition of deterrents such as fines, disconnection of service, et cetera (ie, S.92a)
- authority to seize and destroy infringing media and material
- authority to seize and forfeit proceeds of copyright infringment
- criminalise technologies that can be used to circumvent copyright protection mechanisms
- ex officio authority to suspend shipment of goods suspected of infringing IPR
- measures to ensure seizure and destruction of IPR violating goods
- "allocation of liability" for storage and destruction fees, away from rights holders
- authority to disclose information about shipments suspected of violating IPR
- measures to ensure goods are not released once seized without permission of the rights holder
- searches of media suspected to infringe IPR, eg iPods, laptops, USB disks, CDs
- authority to order ex parte searches and other "preliminary measures"
- award damages to compensate rights holders, even when damage not quantifiable
- procedures enabling rights holders to obtiain private, customer information from ISPs
[1] ex officio - By virtue of office or position; 'by right of office'. Often used when
someone holds one position by virtue of holding another. -Wikipedia
Tag(s):
More information
Other related posts:
I'm not protesting S92a
watch Al Jazeera on XBMC
National's broadband plan
Comment by Mark Harris, on 13-Mar-2009 14:18 , user id: )
"Section 92a was probably one outcome of the last round of ACTA negotiations"
I don't think so. They're two similar but separate prongs of the fork of IP enforcement, but s92A is more likely to be the result of a potential FTA (Key has admitted as such) than ACTA. I've got a wiki http://acta.tracs.co.nz where I've been chronicling my investigations into ACTA, which is far wider reaching than s92A
Add a comment
Please note: comments that are inappropriate or promotional in nature will be deleted.
E-mail addresses are not displayed, but you must enter a valid e-mail address to confirm your comments.
Are you a registered Geekzone user? Login to have the fields below automatically filled in for you and to enable links in comments.
If you have (or qualify to have) a Geekzone Blog then your comment will be automatically confirmed and placed in the moderation queue for the blog owner's approval.
Comment by grant_k, on 11-Mar-2009 15:44 , user id: 24195)
"I live in New Zealand, where we elected National, a party of poor repute"
Would you mind explaining your justification for this seemingly biased and highly emotive statement???