Posts Tagged ‘Copyright’
section 92A, Copyright Act
I just read the news on that new section 92A of the Copyright Act.
I'm not an expert on copyright issues, but thanks to Wikipedia, anyone who regularly contributes to it should understand a fair amount of copyright laws.
Despite of being a "teen", I'm not anti-copyright, instead, I respected copyright whenever I can. I think copyright protection is very important for our society today to progress as it encourages originality and creativity. Therefore every time I want to use external materials for blog, I make sure that I only use free materials (public domain, Creative Commons) or apply the fair use policy.
But the problem is, although I did my best and tried to respect copyright, I feel that no copyright owners, especially the big ones, respected me for being a good citizen. In fact, in my eyes copyright organisations like MPAA and RIAA are more like "copyright terrorists" now. They abuse their powers as a copyright owner, pointlessly terrorise people so they can earn just that extra bit of income.
There's a classic case on copyright terrorists in action in UK, I cannot find the exact source at the moment but I have no problem to recall the details . A copyright group accuses workers in a vehicle workshop of infringing their copyright, because workers listened to radio stations while they work, and that, in a sense, is a "public display".
Copyright terrorists worldwide also tried to demonise legitimate tools and file shares. P2P is a classic example, as a tool, it is not illegal, it is the share of copyright materials that is illegal(not under all circumstances).
Copyright terrorists won't tell you that sometimes it is legal to download copyrighted materials. In many countries, if you own a music disc, it is actually legal to download a second copy from the internet as your back up. And there's also no problem to download a TV series if it is also available to you via your local TV stations - it's no different than recording the programme from your TV, it only becomes illegal when you distribute the materials for commercial purposes.
Back to the topic then, what section 92A is about?Here's that piece of meat（just 92A, but 92a - c are all relevant, see pdf here.)
92A Internet service provider must have policy for terminating accounts of repeat infringers
“(1) An Internet service provider must 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.
“(2) In subsection (1), 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 restricted act without the consent of the copyright owner.
So how do the copyright terrorists get to know who's downloading their copyrighted material? I don't expect ISPs to monitor internet traffic because that would be too costly to any ISP. Copyright terrorists will depend on themselves to find out what you are doing.
In a P2P network you need to disclose your IP address in order to get others share what they've downloaded to you, so there should be no problem for anyone to see what your IP address is downloading or uploading. However, as I said, just being a part of a P2P network doesn't necessarily mean you are bad. So will the copyright terrorists make sure your download is illegal before they send the request to cut your Internet? Yeah right.
Not to mention that quite a lot of people's computers are infected with trojans, viruses and malwares. Sometimes these nasties download stuffs without your knowledge.
The law provides a mechanism that allows copyright terrorists to cut your internet connection without the need to prove you guilty, in fact, you have to clear yourself in order to get your internet restored - where's the principle of innocent till proven guilty?
In that sense, I regard this new section of the copyright law as a great threat to the funding principle of our justice system. Copyright terrorists will abuse this new law for sure.
As an Internet user, I think every one should start to worry about this section 92A thing and do something right now.Yes there are piracies, but most pirates are ordinary people like you and me who cannot do much harm to our society, and big film makers and Microsoft survived with them; now what we are facing is copyright terrorists trying to abuse their power as copyright owners, they use lawyers, political powers to invade our privacy, punish us without any kind of trial.
Who is the lesser of two evils? Simple.
