The dust has barely settled on the AFACT vs iiNet court case, but it seems it’s never too early to hold secret meetings about changing copyright law to be friendlier to the entertainment industry. John Hilvert at ITNews has uncovered that the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement is trying to offer extensive new powers for IP rights holders.
The Trans Pacific Partnership, which includes the US, Australia, Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, Singapore, Peru, Malaysia and Vietnam, was established with the goal to abolish trade tariffs between the member countries by 2015. But it seems that’s not all they’re doing…
According to ITNews, during their most recent negotiations in Santiago in Chile, the negotiations moved to the protection of intellectual property rights. Some of the measures proposed apparently included:
• A new legal regime of ISP liability
• ISPs to identify internet users
• Established damages for the rights holder
• Criminal enforcement for technological measures beyond WIPO internet treaties, even when there is not copyright infringement
• Outlawing parallel trade in any copyrighted good
• 95-year copyright minimum term for works for hire
This agreement, should it be signed and passed into law, would overrule any industry code put in place, such as the planned code from the IIA. Given everything iiNet just went through in their court case with AFACT, an international treaty that moves the goal posts from behind closed (and locked) doors is obviously going to benefit one side of the argument much more than the other.
Here’s hoping that the government can see fit to let the industry regulate itself and not change the law to benefit massive multinational corporations at the expense of local ISPs and their customers.
[ITNews]
Awnshegh
Monday, March 14, 2011 at 3:15 PMMaybe if they try and go this route we’ll have all of the ISPs, including Telstra and Optus freaking out and looking at a way to stop this.
Else we may all be paying a whole lot more to pay for their additional costs to provide a slower service.
Peter
Monday, March 14, 2011 at 3:19 PMHow about getting together to set a fair price for media internationally instead of price fixing? How about making DVDs more attractive by not bogging them down with the same old copyright warnings? How about making a distribution platform that is device agnostic so that people can play their media everywhere?
Fuckers…
matt
Monday, March 14, 2011 at 4:06 PM“Outlawing parallel trade in any copyrighted good”
translation:
make it so all local distribution arms of any games, movies, music or any other media, are the ONLY ones who can sell it in a region, creating a monopoly and leading to all the horrible unfair prices we get in aus with everything else.
why a lotus car is literally THREE TIMES the price here… even including the fees for importing one yourself…
that type of stupidity.
customers are more and more voting with their wallets. and if the only freedom given to them is the choice to either pay the ridiculous local prices, or go without, many are choosing simply to go without. for those who make their money from ripping off aussie consumers… the tide is turning.
Sam
Monday, March 14, 2011 at 4:30 PM“95-year copyright minimum term for works for hire”
Mickey Mouse about enter public domain again?
pan.sapiens
Monday, March 14, 2011 at 4:49 PMSetting “piracy” to one side, the bit that shocks me is: “Outlawing parallel trade”
-Isn’t that exactly the opposite of what a pro-free-trade group ought to be doing? I thought the Trans Pacific Partnership was supposed to remove trade barriers, not erect more of them. It was not too long ago that Australia changed the law to allow parallel imports of books (i.e. copyrighted goods) in the interests of free trade. This shows up these negotiations as serving the rent-seeking of vested interests, at the expense of the freer trade which they are supposed to be promoting.
Art
Monday, March 14, 2011 at 4:53 PMHa ha! THIS government letting an industry regulate itself when it has the chance to introduce more nanny-state laws, especially if it thinks other countries are doing it and it was planned in secret??? That’s some nice wishful thinking there!
Shane
Monday, March 14, 2011 at 6:29 PMDoes that mean that the organizes of swap meets, Sunday markets and the like will now also be held responsible for the sellers?
What they don’t seem to realize is the more they push this angel, is the more people will simply go back to what they did before, car boot sales. This means that there will be a who,e group of people profiting from selling cheap rip offs. At least right now most of this material is distributed more or less freely.
I’ve made more purchase discussions from downloading content they I have any other way. In fact I’ve brought tittles I would not have otherwise.
Sirlegend
Monday, March 14, 2011 at 8:32 PMPan, if they ever get around to stopping our ability to buy from overseas, the simple solution is to just stop buying those things like books, DVDs, games etc that had been blocked. If enough ppl did it, I reckon it would only take 2-3 weeks before the retailers would be screaming at the wholesalers, who would then have no choice but to get things changed quicksmart before they all went out of business. Lots of overheads in those businesses that they just couldn’t afford to carry if the revenue stream stopped.
Anika Nagy
Monday, March 14, 2011 at 11:21 PMI cant believe this. I get all my games from play-asia, im screwed.