I didn’t really want to make my first post on such a subject but it is an important issue that needs to be addressed. The Copyright (New Technologies) Amendment Bill is the New Zealand Government’s answer to the notorious DMCA of the USA. It was passed back in April with only the Green Party and the Maori Party opposing it.

While there are some good things about it compared to other countries’ equivalent laws (software decompilation for interopability purposes is allowed for example), there are still some massive shortcomings. Most Kiwis are aware of the copyright laws introduced in the days of the VCR that effectively make it illegal to shift any digital content to another format (e.g. ripping your CDs so you can play them on your portable music player). These were retarded back in the day and are even more so now. One of the things this amendment was supposed to fix and indeed what most people are fixating on, is this problem of format-shifting. While the illustrated example has been fixed in section 81A, this only applies to recorded sound. There is no such provision for digital video. Quite frankly it isn’t fucking good enough.

If I were to purchase the “right” to download a digital video on to my hard-drive (that wasn’t protected by DRM but we’ll get to that later) and convert it to a format that would play on my iRiver that has modified firmware to let it play video, I would in fact be breaking the law. Fuck you Judith Tizard.

Then we get to the clauses on Technological Protection Measures (TPMs) of which DRM is a type of. Like the DMCA it is illegal to circumvent or provide/describe methods for circumvention of TPMs. Only if the TPM is preventing rights that fall under part 3 of the original Copyright Act of 1994, which effectively just covers libraries and educational institutes, is it allowed to bypass the TPM. Cases like the recent MSN Music debacle are not covered.

As any scientist worth his salt will tell you, it is impossible to produce a perfect DRM system. Those bits have to be decrypted at some point. Unless the Recording Industry is completely fucking retarded, they have to realise this and in fact this whole business with DRM is not to stop pirates but to impose further restrictions on legitimate users. But that’s another matter.

As a content creator and consumer I say this whole amendment sucks for both sides unless you’re a large content provider in which case it will make you bucket loads of money.

Copyright Law · DRM

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