Posts by Ben Austin
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Great to see at least one politician has made a stand on the side of the consumer.
Lets be clear on this: This is not an issue of right vs left, this is an example of an industry attempting to co-opt government to extend their commercial control over a market. It is rent seeking behaviour. Law needs to be written in such a way as to benefit all the people or groups covered by it's reach, not just the publishers. This is afterall, the Copyright Act, not the Music Industry Market Protecion Act.
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You will probably fail at step 1 - since I suspect music publishers will start issuing TOS/EULA that prohibit form shifting, which they are allowed to do. Yes, you can contract out of form shifting.
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It is not immediately obvious to most people that using the word Nzer as short hand for White, English-speaking Nzer could be racist. Sure, if you explain the logic, most people might see your point. But most people are not going to get into that discussion, they are just going to be offended that you called them racist for asserting an identity that they identify with. They will read headlines in North and South, listen to sound bites etc, and they will be upset. What will be the next thing they do, after being offended? I suspect they will even more strongly identify with this label. Then before you know it your opposition has ended up solidifying the ethnic identity in question.
A lot of cultural practices work like this. For every pronouncement of politicians in France and the UK about the headscarf wearing ‘issue’, I am sure more women of Muslim communities in those states feel the desire to wear such scarves.
So what am I saying? Be careful with how you approach this issue if you want to change the behaviour of the offending people. Labelling them as racist, even if carefully qualified, could easily be totally counter productive.
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As stated before, there is no reason why NZer cannot become an ethnicity. Sure its a nationality as well, and that should always be its primary usage, but the two can merge to some degree. There are people that are citizens of this country that clearly identify with different national identities and that is perfectly fine, then there are those that do not, that share a common identification - why shouldn't they be able to make their own new ethnic group?
If NZer does become an ethnicity I'd hope that it would be an inclusive one that is not just shorthand for white and english speaking. But it may not.
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I was reading through this again last night, after a discussion with a friend overseas, and I noted something that kind of worries me about the format shifting clause.
"81A Copying sound recording for private and domestic use
"(1) Copyright in a sound recording and in a literary or musical work
contained in it is not infringed by copying the sound recording, if the
following conditions are met:There are then 7 conditions that must be met, all of which I find reasonable. However, subsection (2) is the kicker:
"(2) Subsection (1) does not apply if the owner of the sound recording is
bound by a contract that specifies the circumstances in which the sound
recording may be copied."SO it is entirely possible that a person by purchasing the music originally may well contract out of all format shifting rights - I suspect that any publisher that introduces DRM/TDM measures would also have some sort of EULA/TOS/TOU/etc that forbade format shifting. Whether or not the aforementioned could be deemed to be contractually binding I'm not so sure. But worrying all the same.
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I am but the Avatar of Institutionalised Humanist Advantage. Remember that next time you judge me
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I’m not sure if questions of ethnicity are entirely relevant in the context of wider galactic socio-economic trends.
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Damm, I was meant to re-affirm my ethnic identity in this topic? If only I could edit my posts!
National identity can become an ethnic group - at least according to my reading of the ethnicity definition used by Stats NZ (See bottom). Sure, it makes things a little confusing, but in a well designed questionaire one should be able to select multiple identities as most people do have multiple ethnic or other identities.
Otherwise what we are really saying is that ethnicity is always about things one cannot change, like skin colour, or geographic origin of one's ancestors - which to me seems like a overly restrictive definition of ethnicty and one that jars with a liberal perspective. Sure there are some ethnic identities that one can never belong to if not born into it, but there are some that one can chose to belong to, despite origin.
(refer to page one for Stat's definition)
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Thanks for the links guys, I must admit to having laughed out loud when I saw the slashdot tags for that link...
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I find the whole idea of life + 50/70/etc years to be rather repugnant, surely the exclusive economic control over an artistic work should have no relation to the length of time the creator lives. It seems totally irrelevant. What other property rights are based on a life + X formula?
How does that rule in any way change the behaviour of authors or creators? Are more people writing books, authoring music now that they have such protection in foreign jurisdictions?
NZ will have to be very careful when we enter into free trade agreements with other states, or we could very easily commit ourselves to such a copyright regime. For example, the US – [Insert Random Country] FTA deals of the last 5-10 years have almost all (possibly all, I forget) included a chapter that specifies adoption of rules or laws that closely mirror the US rules or laws. If I recall correctly that is chapter 17 of each FTA – which adds weight to the conclusion that this is a non-negotiable part of such an agreement with the US.
So, the next question is – do we have an organised method of protest around which to mobilise? Aside from writing letters to the relevant Minister?
Links
The Gowers Report:
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/media/537/D3/gowers_cipilreport.pdfChapter 17 of the US-Australian FTA:
http://www.dfat.gov.au/trade/negotiations/us_fta/final-text/chapter_17.html