We need to be aware of these these issues, they reach beyond computer users so please take a few minutes to read the following articles. Apart from wages, copyright is the highest cost in education and a lot of the time it restricts the teachers from doing the best that they can do so please help stop these parasites reaching into their pockets and killing their profession.
Posted: July 9th, 2006 by Pascal
Janet has published the DMCA quiz on Square One Media – you can read the full article
here.I like how it was ended:
So you see, its not just the computer nerds of the world who will be up in arms when the full impact of DMCA laws are felt. Anyone who proposes to transfer songs to their iPod or lend a book to a friend is potentially breaching the new rules. Linux Australias IP Policy Adviser, Rusty Russel thinks consumers should continue to enjoy full use of their legitimately purchased digital material, whether it be playing DVDs, copying CDs onto their iPods, using computer programs of their choice, or playing iTunes-bought songs on non-iPod MP3 players. Youve paid for it, you use it as you see fit.
Thats right! So head over to linux.org.au/law and print out a copy of the petition. Get friends, workmates and family to sign it so we can collate them. This directly affects what you can do with what you purchase and can end up criminalizing things you take for granted and might even do on a daily basis.
DMCA set to make Australia a Penal Colony?
Posted: July 2nd, 2006 by lucychiliWhats all this then?..
DMCA is the digital management copyright act. It has been imported from the USA as part of the latest Free Trade agreement. It is not a law about making things free and easy to trade – quite the opposite. It sets the scene for primary brands to control markets and reduces the rights of developers and owners of all kinds of software and hardware.It is combined with DRM(digital rights management) technologies to lock down software and hardware so that only their publishers have the right to interact with them. Interaction by anyone else could be called circumvention by the publisher and described as an illegal act.I can change this?If this is a democracy then Australian interests can define our rights. The laws should be developed on our behalf.
Perhaps our lawmakers have become too willing to accept international recommendations uncritically.Time for Australian consumers, developers, inventors, artists, musicians, educational institutions and businesses to identify our Digital Access Rights and bring those to any agreement which impacts on our right to innovate, communicate and trade.
Please sign the petition and talk about these issues with
friends family and business partners. Make your digital rights
an issue for your government representative.What should we ask for?
Providing right of way to manufacturers and publishers at the expense of all other members of our digital community establishes a feudal system of control over our rights to access and interact with digital information.Free nations are built on a precept that freedom comes from sharing rights jointly with others. Not on excluding the rights of the many in the interests of the few. Digital media is a chattel, a commodity. Digital media should be something we can own and use flexibly, not something which then owns our future choices.
Digital products should not cause anomalies in our civil rights.
These tools and the content on them increasingly are becoming our means of communication with each other. Distortions of our rights on these products have dramatic implications for our cultural, community and business freedoms.As an interesting contrast:
From the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:Article 17.
(1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.Article 19.
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.Article 20.
(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
(2) No one may be compelled to belong to an association.Article 21.
(1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.
(2) Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.
(3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.Article 27.
(1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
(2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.Article 28.
Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.