Andrew Easterbrook

Draft of an essay I may or may not get around to finishing. No guarantees as to readability! Click more if you really want to read my idiosyncratic ramblings.

The New Zealand legal system requires all prospective legislation (“bills”) to pass through the Attorney General’s office, which produces a report on its consistency with the NZ Bill of Rights Act 1990. This is a crucial part of our process – since the Bill of Rights is not supreme law (it doesn’t trump other statutes [...]

The draft Code of Practice generally does the best of a bad situation. However, there is one major issue and a few minor issues I think arise out of a close reading of the code.

Bear in mind that the delay announced today is to allow the “sector” to agree on a final code of conduct. The reason the sector (read: RIANZ etc and the major ISPs) do not currently agree is that the recording industry wants to make the code more pro-rightsholders. So more time makes it more likely [...]

This is precisely the misleading viewpoint I think has been thrown carelessly around the internet, while the real reasons s92 should be repealed are skimmed over: “I always believe in ‘innocent until proven guilty’ and the changes to the Copyright Act will mean a person is automatically judged as guilty, with no re-course for proving [...]

The recently inserted sections 92A-E of the Copyright Act 1994 are a hopeless mess. But not because they create a guilt-on-accusation law. Instead it’s because together with the TCF Code of Conduct, record companies and other pre-approved copyright holders are given too much power and trust.