Posts Tagged ‘New Zealand’

More on section 92A of the Copyright Act

As you noticed, the original Act lacks details on how ISP should react in relation to copyright holder complains. Telecommunications Carriers' Forum recently published a draft Code of practice and is open for public submission.

I kind of like this code. In summary:

• Four strikes out, final warning after three strikes;
• No matter how many times you infringed copyright, only one time is counted for a month;
• The strike expires 18 months after it was first issued;
• ISP serves you a "education notice" (one strike) when copyright holders made a complain.
• If you dispute,  the notice is revoked, and the copyright holder won't get your personal details ( you don't have the right to dispute after three strikes).
• If you don't dispute, that counts as one strike.
• Four strikes, and you are out.

If this is the way the ISPs will act after section 92A comes in force, then I'm pretty happy.This code of practice reminds me of another important Internet copyright Act - DMCA. They are pretty similar as the duty of identifying whether someone infringed copyright ultimately falls to the justice system, and ISP, as a neutral party, only act upon notices.

If you dispute the "education notice", the only way left for copyright holders is to sue you in court, which is quite unlikely in my opinion, unless you've downloaded too many stuffs justifying their cost and benefit analysis.

TCF definitly made a good call.

Fonterra knew the milk was contaminated

I am actually very surprised to find out that today's the first time many in New Zealand  know this fact. The current evidence shows that Fonterra learnt the whole issues sometimes in Augest last year,  a month ealier before the whole thing made public.

As the Herald reported today, Fonterra confirms that it has sent Sanlu an European Union "provisional statement" on health effects of melamine, the file states a safe level of concentration below 20mg/kg . I blogged this  in my Chinese blog month ago, but forgot to mention it here:)

This changes the whole situation a bit though, what I knew was an "EU standards", not "provisional statement". One of the reasons why Sanlu kept selling tainted milk powders even after contaminants were discovered, is because that its boss, Tian Wenhua was confident that the "standard"  provided by Fonterra shows there's a safe level, so Sanlu mixed good powders with bad ones to keep the concentration of melamine in individual packaging below that level. To this date the evidence shows that they really did well to control the concentration of melamine below 10mg/kg for products after August.

As reported by Chinese media, Fonterra directors did not "reject" the whole idea of the controlling measures - this tells me Fonterra not just knew the contamination, but also did not try to stop production of melamine contaminated milk.

Now this directly contradicts to what Fonterra said today:

" ... However, he (Andrew Ferrier) said Fonterra was "vividly clear" to Sanlu that the only acceptable level of melamine was zero"

Really? So what happened between August and September? They dodgy Chinese did all without Fonterra's knowledge? Well, we are talking about common sense here, if you got a 43% stake in  a large company, and you know it is in trouble, will you keep your eyes shut on your investment?

I still maintain my position, although none of Fonterra directors faced court in China, they should at least face investigations here at home.

The Northwestern Motorway shooting

I'm not an expert on police procedures so just a little bit of my opinion.

Herald got a nice illustration on how the whole thing happened.

First, under certain circumstances police in this country has the right to shoot to incapacitate or  kill. In this case, the offender is armed and fired shots, dangerously speeding, threatening the safety of the general public, I would guess this is one of  the circumstances that justifies the use of firearms.

So the death of an innocent civilian, 17 year old Halatau Naitoko  is a case of whether the police should took more care, not the case of whether the police should fire shots in the first place.

As the Herald report shows, Naitoko's van is stopped just behind the gunman, and within the line of fire.  The situation looked like this:

Police/AOS |------|Gunman|------|Naitoko in his van

I think the key is, whether the AOS knew the car behind the gunman got  people in it or they were just too concentrated on the gunman. The police probably should took more care but I cannot see any wrongdoing in this case - police or even AOS are not Naval Seals so you should expect some of their shoots to miss, and unfortunately, Naitoko was caught in the line of fire. Gun battles may look exciting in the American TV series and Hollywood movies, but in real life, police need, and pressured to make  split-second and sometimes random decisions, and that could lead to tragic consequences.

I don't think  there's the need to charge  whoever fired that shoot as AOS were simply doing their job. This is rather an unfortunate case for both police and the Naitoko family - if the police and gunman swap places, then Naitoko could be killed by gunman rather than the police - will that make the this case easier to swallow? Probably not, as some would still blame the police for not doing enough to protect the public.

This is one of the things that happened in the wrong place, probably in the wrong time as well.

If we blame police for doing their job then next time if something similar pops up, officers will be more hesitate to fire, worrying that if he/she got wrong then he/she may end up in jail, and put themselves and general public in a greater danger.

The Naitoko family are more than entitled to receive compensations from the crown as the police is responsible for his death, police should also apologise to the family, but hold someone accountable for doing their job is bit of a step too far. You may argue that AOS and police officers should receive more training, but that's the problem of the Police as a whole, not the responsibility of individual police officers.

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.

Yay, McCully's holiday is finally over

Few days ago I blogged in my Chinese Blog on Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade(MFAT)'s slow reaction to the Crisis in Gaza. New Zealand was like one of the very few Western countries which didn't have a offical response to the crisis there. It looked like that all MFAT people were enjoying their summer holiday and forgotten there was a war going on. Some even attributed MFAT's silence to the fact that John Key is a half Jewish, which I don't agree and many right wing bloggers fiercely attacked that suggestion.

But finally, Foreign Minister Murray McCully, issued a response today:

"New Zealand is deeply worried by the mounting humanitarian crisis in Gaza as a result of the continuing Israeli ground offrensive," Mr Murray McCully said.

"We call for Israel to immediately cease military attacks and for Hamas to immediately cease rocket and mortor attacks.

"New Zealand also supports the intensive efforts of world leaders, including President Sarkozy of France, to halt the fighting.

"It is imperative both sides -- Israel and Hamas -- focus on the mounting humanitarian situation for the civilian population of Gaza.  Both sides have obligations to avoid putting civilians in danger."

Given the fact on the nature of the governing party we have, I wasn't surprised on this kind of the response at all, and I have to say, it's fairly balanced as both sides are responsible for the large amount of civilian casualties.

Sanlu tainted milk update

As you may know, top executives of Sanlu are currently before the court,  facing charges which the maximum punishable sentence of death.

The herald has a report on the reaction from Fonterra, New Zealand's biggest company which had 43% share of the Sanlu Company. The prosecutors of this case also disclosed more details on the case, here's my translation of  the summary, and the original is here (in Chinese).

• While sick babies appeared as early as in march last year, Chairwomen of Sanlu only learnt the problem with their product in May, and nobody knew the actual cause (melamine) . Sanlu product was sent away  for inspection on July 24. To keep the issue secret, the inspector was informed by Sanlu that the samples they received are "some raw materials".
• An emergency meeting was held on 1 August, hours after Sanlu received the report back the inspector.  Fonterra claims this is the first time that the issue has come under their attention. News from the Chinese side seems to confirm the claim, however, with one thing missing in the herald report: although Fonterra wanted a product recall, their directors "did not reject" the proposal of not to recall openly but to do it in secret.
• Chairwoman of Sanlu, Tian Wen Hua, made a report to local government a day after the emergency meeting, but had no clear response.
• First Chinese media report on the link between kidney stones and Sanlu products, published on September 9. As Herald reported earlier,   New Zealand Ambassador to China was instructed to act on the issue on September 8.

You know the rest.

I think it's becoming more and more clear that New Zealand government played a big part of making the scandal public, and NZ officials' should be praised for their effort.

However,  there's also more evidence pointing out that there was indeed a cover up at some level, possibly between Sanlu and Hebei Provincial government. And I have to say, if Fonterra really tried hard to make the recall happen as they claimed before,  there's no reason why the total public recall shouldn't happen in Augest. I'm still very suspicious of the Fonterra's involvement in the cover up.