Section 92a - Guilty by Accusation

As part of the DRM (Digital Rights Management) and Copyright regime's push worldwide for compliance, a law is being proposed to be passed in New Zealand. Section 92a, that amends the country's copyright law is expected to come into force on February 28.

What has drawn near-universal criticism, is the provision that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are to terminate the connection of anyone labelled a 'repeat infringer' of copyright violations. So just 'repeated accusations' are required, without further proof. Certainly a deviation of normal justice. The lack of response of the government to the criticism is drawing increasing ire.

At the Webstock conference, one of the game trading cards is used to highlight this.



At creativenewzealand.org a protest NZ Internet blackout has been called. Hence you see my profile photo blacked out on most of social websites.



Another potential side-effect is it adds another reason to the creative IT community in NZ to leave for other shores.

The legislation
News article on parliament protest.
Blog post on Geekzone

Webstock '09

This is the conference I look forward to every year. A huge amount of thought and energy by come of the most creative people in New Zealand web community goes in organizing this event. Sponsored by a plethora of companies and institutions such as Google. A typical attribute of the gathering is the rather forward looking and upbeat atmosphere which is easy to catch.

This year we have speakers include people from Apple Inc., Google, and Flickr. The forum provides a good community where they can share their insights and battle-stories and the audience understand, sympathize and learn from these.

They've finally induced me into starting a twitter micro-blogging account. I'll be putting live twitter updates when I can here, and will add further Scio-sphere blogs for some of the sessions later.

Conference website: http://www.webstock.org.nz
Flickr photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/webstock/
My Twitter: http://twitter.com/apanand