A Joint Select Committee on Cyber-Safety has been set up as of 15th of March 2010. While this is a good thing as far as investigating ways in which Australians might need help or guidance online, those interested in online rights might be concerned that a committee has as much opportunity to confuse myth with reality in terms of online problems, as it does to come up with real world solutions to challenges online.
For all his faults, Stalin was a pioneer in the field of image manipulation. Airbrushing liquidated foes from official photographs was the photoshopping of its day. And although Stalin (like modern dicatators) would have loathed the internet for its uncanny ability to let the truth slip out, he would have admired the way information can be changed in realtime and disappear instantly.
Many companies and individuals have been caught out trying to redact embarrassing material, but we can't always be sure when, how and why information is changing. When do personal and corporate interests take over, and when is the law at play? As a champion of an open internet, while at the same time a corporate citizen in hundreds of jurisdictions around the world, Google has a fine line to walk. To many, Google is the internet and they are bombarded with requests to remove unwanted material. They have no choice but to take those that come from governments and the courts very seriously.
Today Google have announced a new initiative to bring some transparency to this process. Google's Government Requests page, announced here, shows breakdowns by country of the number of requests they get to remove information by service. The statistics for Australia for the last 6 months of 2009 are interesting in particular:
155 data requests (requests for private user data for purposes of criminal investigation)
17 removal requests (52.9% of removal requests fully or partially complied with)
Despite the important role they play, Google are a for-profit company and not a government department or some kind of public utility. This can be a cause for concern; when the corporate interest an the public interest conflict, such as in matters of privacy, we can only hope that Google's directors give the latter due consideration. We also have no explicit right to know about the inner workings of Google's information management systems. We are therefore encouraged with Google's latest move which we can only take as a good faith attempt to be a better internet citizen.
Around the world it has often been difficult to get a picture on how prevalent such requests are and the Google information will be examined with some interest. The fact that they have released these statistics voluntarily is a welcome sign and Google should be congratulated for doing so. They have raised the bar for the other companies that play such an important role in managing and safeguarding the information that makes up our digital lives.
Starting Thursday 10 December, the Department of Broadband, Communications, and the Digital Economy (DBCDE) will be holding a two day conference on the future of broadband policy in Australia.
A number of local forums are being run in conjunction with the Sydney-based event. Check them out in the following locations:
The main conference and each of the local events seem quite interesting, and we encourage anyone interested in the future of communications policy in Australia to go along, learn something, and make your voice heard.
The QUT Faculty of Law and Queensland Public Interest Law Clearing House are running two free intellectual property and technology law advice sessions in October and November in Brisbane.
Professor Brian Fitzgerald and Kylie Pappalardo from QUT Faculty of Law, in conjunction with Queensland Public Interest Law Clearing House (QPILCH), have established an IP and Technology Law Clinic to provide free legal advice for members of the creative and technology sectors with limited financial resources. Ask legal professionals about copyright, recording and publishing agreements, media rights, digital distribution, business models, and much more.
Book now for the inaugural advice sessions: Thursday 29 October 2009 and Thursday 26 November 2009, Brisbane CBD from 5:30pm-7:30pm.
To make a booking, call (07) 3136 6836
This is an excellent opportunity for those who need free legal advice in Brisbane. If you're not in Brisbane, you may even be able to get the lawyers at the clinic to give you advice by telephone.
This week I was interviewed by Phil Dobbie for ZDNet's Twisted Wire program. Also interviewed were Peter Coroneos from the Internet Industry Association and Adrianne Pecotic from AFACT. You can listen to the podcast (direct link (mp3)).
One thing I found disturbing about this interview was AFACT's suggestion that the law was clear and that iiNet had a clear responsibility to monitor its subscribers' internet use and disconnect users who infringe. This is obviously a contested issue, and the law certainly is not clear. The particular requirement of the Safe Harbours are largely untested - both here and in the US - and particularly against ISPs. We have mostly assumed that ISPs were more like common carriers than the P2P networks that have been found responsible for secondary copyright infringement. The iiNet case challenges that assumption, but it is misleading to argue that the law is clear in any meaningful way.
Cory Doctorow is reporting that Australia is part of a group of countries that are opposing a treaty that would ensure that people with a print disability have greater access to published copyright material.
The draft treaty (MS Doc; Google cache here) includes several important clauses, including:
Please help us ensure that people with a print disability have access to published copyright material in an accessible form by raising awareness and contacting the Attorney-General's Department.
newmatilda.com presents a national series of public forums about the internet regulation debate in Australia.
The Federal Government's proposal to block internet sites with a mandatory filter has drawn overwhelming opposition from voices across politics and civil society. So what are the real questions for policy-makers?
These forums explore the ethical, social and political questions raised by government regulation of the internet. With the growing intersection between technology, politics and media, how do existing and proposed classification regimes measure up? Is filtering inevitable? Or are there better ways to regulate the world wide web?
SPEAKERS:
Senator Scott Ludlam, the Australian Greens
Michael Flood, Sociologist
Colin Jacobs, Electronic Frontiers Australia
WHEN:
Monday April 27th, 6.30pm
WHERE:
ACMI Cinemas
Federation Square
Flinders Street, Melbourne
Tickets for this event are $5. RSVP is essential: enquiries(at)newmatilda.com [Please inc: “Melbourne Forum” in the subject line]
A few days ago, a Swedish court found the four figures behind thepiratebay.org guilty of criminal copyright infringement and sentenced them to pay approximately $5M AUD in damages and serve a one year prison sentence. The severity of the punishment is surprising, particularly as the operators of the Pirate Bay played a fairly loose role in any copyright infringements -- merely providing an index of torrents already posted and tracked elsewhere.
But whatever we may think of The Pirate Bay, this case raises another example of a very troubling period for copyright law. Pirate Bay and other public trackers are clearly responding to consumer demand, and tougher sanctions for copyright infringement are unlikely to change that. Over the past ten years, we have seen that these actions have rarely, if ever, been successful in curbing the volume of filesharing. New filesharing technologies developed after Napster, Aimster, Grokster, Kazaa, and the creators of other networks were successfully sued. This trend is likely to continue, because the underlying demand is not being addressed.
The goals of copyright are noble. We all want to ensure that professional creators have the ability to be paid for their work. But the current approach of imposing harsh punishments on users and intermediaries is not helping with that goal.
Thanks to an impressive campaign spearheaded by Creative Freedom NZ, New Zealand's controversial 'guilt upon accusation' clause, s 92A, will be delayed and may be suspended and may be abandoned.
Section 92A is a graduated response provision that requires ISPs to “adopt and reasonably implement a policy that provides for termination, in appropriate circumstances, of the account with that Internet service provider of a repeat infringer.”
Unfortunately, the definition of 'repeat infringer' is not clearly defined. The provision states that “repeat infringer means a person who repeatedly infringes the copyright in a work by using 1 or more of the Internet services of the Internet service provider to do a restricted act without the consent of the copyright owner.”
This wording is familiar - it is almost word for word identical to the Australian limitation on safe harbours in s 116AH, which provides that “The carriage service provider must adopt and reasonably implement a policy that provides for termination, in appropriate circumstances, of the accounts of repeat infringers.”
There has been an incredible showing of online protest at the forthcoming introduction of s 92 in New Zealand, and a lot of international support. We at EFA are heartened by the change that New Zealanders have been able to achieve. This is a notable victory for users, and is very encouraging for similar action worldwide.
EFA has lodged its submission to the Department of Broadband, Communication and Digital Economy's Future Directions review.
The submission tackles a number of important issues for the digital economy, including open access to public sector information, electronic accessibility of printed material to people with a print disability, broad-based ICT training, and copyright policy.
We conclude the submission with a reminder that our policy framework ought to empower Australians to access and build upon information in the digital economy:
As Australia transforms into a knowledge based economy, the policies we choose to adopt for the creation and dissemination of information become crucially important. It is becoming increasingly clear that greater access to information and greater technical and legal abilities to remix, build upon and improve that information are fundamental drivers of innovation. EFA believes that the single most important issue in an innovation policy is ensuring that Australians are empowered to innovate, and that the barriers we impose to innovation are justified with reference to our social goals.
Edit: This submission is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License.
