"Any medium powerful enough to extend man's reach is powerful enough to topple his world. To get the medium's magic to work for one's aims rather than against them is to attain literacy."
-- Alan Kay, "Computer Software", Scientific American, September 1984
DMCA and New Zealand 92 quick comparison
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0Lot's of Twitter is a-buzz (and blacked out) in a protest with our friends in New Zealand about the imminent implementation of their new copyright law, NZ92. Since I've spent a good deal of time lately digging into US copyright law, I thought I'd do a quick comparison. The New Zealand law seems to my non-lawyer eye to be the NZ version of US 512, the 'Safe Harbor' part of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
0Aside: Why is it that whenever anyone mentions anything legal, many people--myself included--feel compelled to say that they are not lawyers? What a disconnect that signals between the people and the laws we follow!
0The basic idea in both is the same. It's really about Internet Service Providers, and how they avoid litigation if some copyright holder asserts that their rights are being infringed by a user of the ISP. In a wildly over-simplified nutshell, the system is this:
- Copyright holder (or claimer) tells ISP that some user of their service is infringing their copyrights
- ISP removes the content immediately, and/or blocks or removes the user
- ISP is thereby off the hook for any lawsuits related to the infringement
0In both, the two most prominent actors are 1) the copyright claimant and 2) the ISP. Relatively little to protect the user. Looking at who has incentives to act, a copyright claimant is at the top. And the ISP wants to avoid any litigation, so immediately removing any material claimed to be infringing copyright is certainly in its interest. Interests of creativity, fair use (aka fair dealing in NZ), or users counter claims get far less priority.
0Here's just two examples of the effect of the DMCA in the US, both from the Electronic Frontier Foundation:
0Now, for some differences. First, bare statistics. DMCA word count is a little over 4100. NZ92: less than 900. It's not just that Americans are wordier. Despite the fact of problems like those I linked to above, the DMCA at least makes some effort to acknowledge users, and provides for a mechanism for the user to respond -- albeit one that overly burdens the user. The New Zealand law has nothing to provide a mechanism for users to respond.
0While both have pretty broad definitions of an ISP, the DMCA again at least makes an effort toward a definition. Little to nothing is done in the New Zealand law to that end.
0The DMCA explicitly says (section f) that anyone who misrepresents a claim is liable for damages. No such provision in the New Zealand law.
0Those are the biggies that stand out to me. Certainly others with keener legal minds could go on for quite a while. The point is that the DMCA in the US has a huge number of problems and chilling effects. If you think that's bad, it doesn't take too much of a comparison to see how much worse the New Zealand law is.
0Support creativity in the US and in New Zealand. Read the laws. Join the protest today.
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