Mark Gibbs reports on a, oh, let’s say over-zealous New Zealand copyright law:

This insanity, found in Sections 92A and C of New Zealand’s Copyright Amendment Act 2008 establishes – and I am not making this up – a guilt upon accusation principle!

Yep, you read that right. This means that anyone accused of “copyright infringement” will get his Internet connection cut off; and treated as guilty until proven innocent.

And if that weren’t enough, this crazy legislation defines anyone providing Internet access as an ISP and makes them responsible for monitoring and cutting off Internet access for anyone who uses their services and is accused of copyright violations. Thus libraries, schools, coffee shops, cafes – anyone offering any kind of Internet access – will be considered ISPs and become responsible and potentially liable.

Yikes. That is some extra nasty legislation.

[Minutes later] GlobalVoices reports:

A large swatch of New Zealand’s political blogosphere shut down its websites for a half-day on Monday, February 23 in protest of a copyright law that could have required internet service providers from disconnecting users who download pirated materials like movies or music.

…

The protest appeared to work as Prime Minister John Key announced he will stall the proposal for one month as he looks to forge a compromise with ISPs and copyright holders. If a solution cannot be found, Section 92 will be scrapped.

Be sure to read the entire GlobalVoices article, though. It explains how the boycott happened, points to similarly scary legislation elsewhere, and, of course, aggregates what the NZ blogosphere has been saying about this.

[Tags: new_zealand copyright copyleft conchords hobbits ]

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Nicole Aylwin at iposgoode suggests that we ought to consider “intellectual property” policy in terms of its effects on culture, rather than sticking solely within the “property” frame. Seems right to me.

[Tags: ip copyright copyleft free_culture ]

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Directors of ten law school libraries, including Harvard’s John Palfrey, have signed an “aspirational” document, called the Durham Statement on Open Access, that “calls for all law schools to stop publishing their journals in print format and to rely instead on electronic publication coupled with a commitment to keep the electronic versions available in stable, open, digital formats.”

This is wonderful.

The statement calls for the end of paper versions of the journals, not merely supplementing them with electronic versions, because printing them costs so much and is bad for the environment. I don’t know if the drafters of the Statement were also thinking that going purely digital would help force a change in mindsets, but I suspect that that would be one of the most important consequences.

[Tags: open_access law_school law_journals publishing media scholarship copyright copyleft everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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… in the dark, threatening, and one-sided.

Thus, the RIAA is appealing the decision to let a hearing in its suit against a file sharer — Joel Tennenbaum — be webcast.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (did you remember to join?) has filed a brief in support of webcasting the hearing, in which it says:

“The record companies have long maintained that they brought these lawsuits against ordinary users to start a national conversation about peer-to-peer file-sharing,” said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. “What better way is there for the public to learn what the record companies are doing than by seeing for themselves what happens in these lawsuits?”

[Tags: riaa eff tennenbaum nesson download copyright copyleft ]

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Not that Doc needs validation by the mainstream media, but I still think it’s pretty cool that the Washington Post has snagged one of his photos off of Flickr to illustrate their article about Dean Elena Kagan being selected as Obama’s Solictor General. (Of course that’s Jonathan Zittrain behind her.)

Dean Kagan is beloved at Harvard Law. Deservedly.

[Tags: doc_searls elena_kagan harvard_law copyright copyleft flickr ]

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The national media syndicate GateHouse Media owns 125 local newspapers in Massachusetts, and runs the Wicked Local local news sites. The Boston Globe is not part of GateHouse Media. The Globe has started its own local sites, such as this one in Newton, MA. The Globe’s local sites run lots of news from the Globe, but they also aggregate local headlines from other sources, including from GateHouse. Those headlines link to the original sites, of course.

So, GateHouse now has sued the Globe‘s parent for copyright and trademark infringement, because GateHouse would prefer that no one know about or care about what it writes.

GateHouse is apparently unsure of how this whole Web thang works. Plus, the company’s lawyers skipped class the day Fair Use was discussed. Bad combination. Bad for GateHouse. Bad for the Web.

By the way, the title of this post is the headline from the Newton Tab, a GateHouse publication.

PS: There’s some feisty coverage of this in Cape Cod Today. [Tags: copyright copyleft boston boston_globe gatehouse fair_use ]

Later: Dan Gillmor raises good points, unsurprisingly. He usefully complicates the issue.

Later: Berkman’s Citizen Media Law Project has written up some preliminary thoughts. These are some topnotch lawyers and legal writers, so that’s the pond in which you’ll want to do your initial dives.

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BugLabs has named a breakout board after Eric von Hippel, open innovation guru and Berkman Fellow. Here’s an interview with Eric, in which he says, among other things: “Users are becoming the dominant innovators”:

[Tags: innovation berkman eric_von_hippel breakout_boards open_source copyright copyleft ]

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Last Friday, Berkman hosted a panel discussion among some of the founders and leaders of Creative Commons: Jamie Boyle, Joi Ito, Molly S. Van Houweling, and Lawrence Lessig. The conversation was guided by Jonathan Zittrain, who is brilliant at this and quite hilarious. Here’s the video.

Don’t forget to support Creative Commons.

[Tags: creative_commons berkman copyright copyleft ]

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The RIAA has announced that it’s not going to sue music downloaders, although it’s holding open the possibility of suing the most egregious offenders.

I like to think it took one look at Charlie Nesson’s case and fled with its short tail between its legs.

This is good news not only for those who have felt the full, brutal force of the RIAA’s whim-driven prosecutions, but because it helps the clear the ground for a longer, more considered redressing of the balance of rights and values.

[Tags: riaa music copyright copyleft charlie_nesson ]

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Blown to Bits is an excellent, clear, thoughtful, fair, readable explanation of how the Internet works, the effects it is having on our society, and the effects we may want our society to have on it. And now, six months after publication, it’s available for free download under a Creative Commons license.

[Tags: blown_to_bits creative_commons copyright copyleft ]

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