Twitter Highlight of My Week
@7daykaties Does Some Lovin' On #nethui And Talks About Why Fair Deal NZ is Crucial to New Zealand's Economic Future
#nethui Awesome!
The #nethui participants not only provided and took part in a great event, but also kept the interested informed and regaled with a lively twitter stream and plenty of streaming content (unavoidable glitches notwithstanding).
I was drawn right in by the twitter stream and had a great time reading and responding to the awesome stream of twitters that reached out to the wider community, keeping us "in the loop" in real time. Everyone did a fantastic job and the event was highly engaging even for non-attendees (or "remote" attendees). Well done to everyone involved!
Fair Deal NZ
Exciting and important developments #nethui drew attention to include the much needed #fairdealnz advocacy group.
If you are interested in copyright issues or potential implications of the #TPPA (IP chapter leaked draft courtesy of Knowledge Ecology Internation) trade deal, this is a great place to start.
At Fair Deal NZ's website you can learn why organizations like the Royal New Zealand Foundation for the Blind, TradeMe and InternetNZ (amongst many others) are disturbed by potential Intellectual Property measures drafted for TPPA.
The TPPA
The TPPA is the super secretive trade agreement that New Zealand's current Trade Negotiations Minister, Tim Groser, concedes will cause "some loss of sovereignty for New Zealand".
Fair Deal NZ's website has accessible information as well as opportunities to participate democratically in these astonishingly secretive negotiations that will cause some loss of our sovereignty by informing our elected political servants (Members of Parliament) where kiwis stand in relation to the imporant issues being negotiated, currently without us.
In an age when the public expect more transparency and say in how they are governed by their political servants, it's not appropriate to leave us entirely out of decisions about ourselves and our nation's future.
Fair Deal NZ have set up their website so that taking part in this discussion is as easy as sending an internet postcard.
The Provisions of the Leaked Draft Would Effect Every New Zealander If Implemented
Amongst things slated to be prohibited (according to the leaked TPPA documents) are parallel imports (and this probably effects every single household in New Zealand) as well as more niche but vitally important and socially worthwhile activities like circumventing digital copy protection for lawful accessibility purposes (like making content accessible to the sight-impaired; it's difficult to imagine what kind of folk would be against sight impaired people having access to the same content available to everyone else).
There are Siginificant Human Right Issues at Stake
The fact is, if you cannot access information equally today, then you cannot fully and equally participate in society. There are sweeping implications in the leaked TPPA's Intellectual Property chapter for everyone, but also some very significant human rights issues where harms will be felt or not felt entirely on the basis of "protected characteristics".
In other words some of the implications are simply discriminatory, placing insurmountable barriers to participation in socity because copyright holders are simply not interested in meeting the costs of making information equally accessible, but would rather no one carried out this act as a public service either. That's wrong no matter how it's spun.
Because Dead People Might Feel Less Motivated to Author New Works if We Don't?
Kiwis would also be expected to pay dead authors for 20 years longer than the existing half century that New Zealanders are already obliged to pay royalties to whoever a particular dead author bequeathed their stuff to.
Copyright is unjustifiable as an anti-competition monopoly tailored for the benefit of a few rent seekers. It's is unjustified for censorship purposes. The only good justification for copyright that I have ever encountered is that enumerated in (of all places) the Constitution of the USA. That document sets out intellectual property monopolies (copyright and patents for instance) are justified in so far as they promote the arts and sciences.
In other words if people are rewarded by being given an assured but time limited monopoly for sharing, they will be motivated to share more creative works (books, or inventions, or music for instance).
Is there anyone in the world who will refuse to share their book with the world because their estate can only collect royalties for 50 rather than 70 years after they die?
TPPA Must Not Be Allowed to Force Software Patents on New Zealand
Probably the most dangerous provisions in the leaked draft of the TPPA's Intellectual Property chapter, is the requirement to allow software to be patented. We don't allow this in New Zealand, and for very, very good reasons.
The prospect of software patents is of particular concern for New Zealand. The reality is, we are geographically located so that there are heightened costs to getting physical goods to a large marketplace and this is a real competitive disadvantage in the physical goods market.
Software is the kind of market where the tyranny of distance need not matter for us. We can compete much more equally. So any risk to our software and tech industry is frightening stuff for our economic future.
The current draft, if enacted, would potentially destroy New Zealand's blossoming software industry by applying absurd monopolist rights over ridiculously obvious processes and astoundingly vague ideas, usually unsupported by any actual working code (aka invention) or so much as a hint as to how to implement the so called "invention" in practice.
Software Patents are Already Causing Huge Damage In the US
This problem is already being seen in the US.
In the US patents are supposedly granted in exchange for a precise description of an invention in a form that ensures anyone can replicate the invention simply by applying the knowledge contained in the patent application/description, and are only supposed to be issued for non-obvious inventions and in the absence of prior art.
Based on the evidence, in reality this exchange has become one-sided with patents routinely being given out for any old nonsense, including crustless, long life peanut butter and jam/jelly sandwhiches, and whether or not there is really any invention, or really any precise description.
The USPTO is Apparently Not Fussy
In an age of long-life convenience snacks, removing the crusts from a sandwhich, infusing it with preservatives, and shrinkwrapping it, are not all entirely obvious steps nor based on prior art according to the USPTO (the authority that issues patents in the US). Luckily the courts were sensible when the patent holders' inevitable anti-competion motivated law suites against competing food manufacturers arose, but relying on the courts is pot-luck and very, very expensive for unfairly sued innovators and competitors.
But even the wacky stuff that gets patented as an actual physical invention looks sensible next to the software and even worse "business methods" patents that the USPTO routinely hands out. The problem presents a particularly heightened risk to everyone in effected industries because courts are just as likely as the USPTO to be "bamboozled" by complicated descriptions of very simple and obvious stuff if someone adds "e" to the front of a word or term, or either the phrases "on the net" and "on a computer" to a description of a process.
Chilling Effects
Kiwi software industry insiders fear the chilling effects software patents would bring to innovation and progress in New Zealand, as do most people who look into what a wasteful, innovation destroying and customer disadvantaging mess this has devolved to in the US.
Attack of the Trolls
A parasitic profiteering "IP troll" industry has sprung up to exploit the vague and silly nature of many patents and the sorry state of copyright law in the US, and this is becoming ever more problematic in the tech industry amongst others.
Software Patents: Fast Road to Legalised Protection Rackets?
Our very sensible prohibition on software patents is no doubt the envy of every honest and innovative US tech company and start up. The situation in the US is so bad, it's probably impossible to innovate in the tech industry and not "infringe", and their courts and innovators are being bogged down by a wave of multi million dollar litigations, most of them no more meritous than a common thug's protection-racket shake down.
Start ups have been reported as describing these IP trolling parasites circling around, just waiting for the innovating startup to gain enough traction for a decent revenue stream, then pouncing to sue as though a hard earned revenue stream were "blood in the water" to a ruthless shark.
Negative Impacts on Investment
It's so expensive to fight these law suites, many companies simply settle and others go out of business even when they eventually, millions of dollars later, prevail in the courts. And a lot of investment simply never happens because the risks posed by potential patent litigation are frightening away potential investors.
The costs of IP trolling to honest innovators trying to bring new and better products and services to the market and consumers are estimated to be tens of billions of dollar, while research found that the cost to society could be as high as 80 billion dollars! This is frightening to both innovators and potential venture-capital investors who we cannot expect not to be startled and frightened away from investing in the face of the very real and unpredictable risks of being hit up in a patent "shake down" operation. Not to mention all the innovations consumers are being deprived of.
Litigious Lawyer's Paradise
Worse, the problem just keeps growing and even companies that actually sell products and should be using their funds for R & D are wasting huge amounts of money hitting each other over the head with obnoxious and destructive patent suites. The lawyers gobble up this huge waste and the consumers are the ones who have to cover these "costs of business" while missing out on the innovations that don't end up coming to market because of patents that it never made any sense to issue in the first place.
Kiwis have avoided much of the litigation madness seen in the US, in part through the no blame ACC insurance scheme. But allowing software patents could potentially undo the constructively non litigious nature of the New Zealand business environment. It would potentially open up the flood gates to a tsunami of unnecessary, destructive and parasitic litigation.
With Software Patents, Even Ordinary End Users Face Unpredictable Risks
And the law suites do not stop with technology innovators and providers. Even ordinary end-users of technology are not safe when IP trolls are allowed to proliferate in the manner apparently encouraged by the US's absurdly ramshackle IP regime.
Kiwis Deserve a Fair Deal that Promotes New Zealand's Economic Well Being
For all these reasons and many more, the establishment of Fair Deal NZ is crucially important to New Zealand's economic future and tech industry, as well as to New Zealand businesses and consumers more broadly.
The US would in fact be much better off adopting our IP regime. It's madness to even consider importing their's.
Fair Deal NZ's efforts are key to the future health and stability of the New Zealand tech sector, but equally as important to everyone from the sight impaired consumer who wants accessible content, to the ordinary retailer selling parallel imports along with those of their kiwi customers who don't want to pay more for the exact same stuff, just because they happen to live in New Zealand.
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