PIR = parallel importation restriction. Basically, every country around the world (except a choice few like Hong Kong and New Zealand who did away with it) is a 'territory' so far as publishing is concerned. If you publish a book in Australia, you can't just ship it over to the US and sell it wholesale to the bookstores over there. No, you have to find a publisher over there who will by the licence to reproduce the book for that market. India looks to be thinking about doing away with that. On the plus side for consumers, they'll have access to the entire Amazon e-book range - Hooray! Publishers won't be so happy, as they will lose out on royalties from selling 'local' e-books (hardcopy books will also be affected, but that's not at issue here). Of course, it doesn't work both ways - India will still have to go through the usual channels to publish overseas. the US protects its own. Australia debated this last year, you may remember. Woolworths and Coles were all for PIR abolition, but not really anyone else was ...

As yet it is unspecified, but the Conservative government is to table a bill on copyright that will strike a balance between consumer rights and artist rights. They don't want to stop people who may breach copyright in their day to day life, they just want to go after the baddies who destroy artists royalties. I predict anger from all sides - too weak, too strong ...

Yes, I know you love this - we all do. The regulations have been released! We'll never know if they are a best-seller, as they are free for download by anyone (a little ironic, actually), but the Ofcom, the ACMA of the UK, has released the regulations for the Digital Economies Act. What this does is fills in the details of what the ISPs will be doing exactly, what the processes will be - basically just the fussy details that are too specific for an act. Also, it will have information that may need to be updated regularly (like lists of prohibited sites). Regulations can be made and changed without consulting the government, so Ofcom basically has free rein from hereon in ...

The Digital economy Act in all its glory. There was a LOT of debate over this Act. It was introduced by Lord Mandelson of the Labour party, tossed back and forth between houses with amendments that were argued to the minutest detail, then finally spat out for the public to revile. All ISPs are now required to monitor their subscibers use of listed sites and warn them when they enter a site that enables pirating. They must then record every such warning, giving every subscriber a number, then make the list available to the government when they get a warrant to look for excessive downloaders. Only the government like this idea, because it makes their job easier. I wandered onto one of the listed sites recently in my quest to find Dr Who episodes before they aired in Australia. The message was like driving down the highway and suddenly seeing a police car parked on the side of the road. You might know you haven't done anything wrong (yet) but you still get a scare ...

Copyright is big news over there right now. This party sprang up during the election, in direct response to the new copyright laws. Given the UK's voting system, they never really had a chance, and managed just over 1000 votes nationally. Still, the important thing is that they tried - yes?

So, The UK legislated, before the election, to make ISPs monitor subscribers using illegal downloading sites. As you see in the article. The Lib Dems don't like it much. But since they are just the whiney younger sibling in the New Coalition, their opinion doesn't matter that much and the Conservatives decided to keep it for the moment to 'see how it goes'. Watch this space ...

An international internet treaty has been drafted regarding controlling copyright infringments. ISPs are worried, because their role in the issue is greatly increased. Of course they don't like it, it means more responsibility for them. But it is also a cop out for the governments, as they propose to share the regulatory role with unelected organisations.

Following my Diana Gabaldon post, I have an earlier post regarding the take down of the much parodied Hitler clip from the Movie 'Downfall' Again conflicting ideas of ownership of content once it's in the public domain

Diana Gabaldon recently lit up certain areas of the blogosphere with a post ranting against fanfiction writers. In particular, she stated her displeasure at people writing fanfiction about her books. Her reasons basically boiled down to the fact that she considered fanfiction as stealing her work. She described it as 'immoral'. The main response to her post was negative - there was several posts made in response, not to mention the responses on the post itself. I've posted one here - by an author who got her start writing Harry Potter fanfic. I can't post the original Gabaldon post, or her follow-up post - she's taken them down. The issue really highlighted the changing use of copyrighted material on the internet, and how that use is at odds with the current view of copyright.

If you are going to look at copyright on the internet, you really can't go past this settlement. This is Google's next step at world domination: control of our intellectual property. No one likes it, but everyone is going ahead with it because Google has them over a barrel ... The basic deal is that Google wants to digitise every book ever written and make them all searchable online by google customer. On the surface this is all shiny; it seems commonsense that all material should be digitised - we have to keep up with technology. The problem arises when you get to the sticky situation of copyright - generally with books, owners get royalties every time someone buys a copy. With the digitisation, Google wasn't too keen on the idea of pay-per-view. Ideally, they would have loved to present all that information free and just reap the benefit ... well, however Google reaps benefits. There was litigation all round - publishers were against it, yahoo and other internet giants were against it (because it wasn't their idea) and it went to the doors of the US Supreme Court, but not quite to trial. Google's rivals were not too sure that they wanted to go to trial, because the outcome was a little on the uncertain side. So the Google book settlement was drawn up, objected to, fought, signed up to, taken to the US Supreme Court for approval, rejected, modified, fought over a bit more, and sent back to the judge. The last move was in Feb 2010; we're still waiting for Critics argue that the deal gives Google too much power over digital books and will not benefit customers in terms of cost, possible censorship issues, privacy. Copyright owners will also lose out, as Google's royalty policy cuts them out of the system and reduces their royalty - and they are automatically included in the agreement unless they 'opt out' (even if they have not 'opted in'). Really, Google is the only party that seems to benefit, and yet for all of the fighting, the settlement seems

I know this is a piece of fluff, but it raises some questions for me: 1. Was Twitter the only medium through which this event was advertised? Could there not have been other ways to advertise the cancellation of the signing? 2. Is private Twitter usage able to be publically regulated? If so, to what extent? 3. To what extent is the shopping mall responsible? OHS and Fire codes would have mandated the number of people allowed in an area - should they not have made provision for that? 4. Was the failure to tweet reckless endangerment on the part of the manager, or have the law enforcement agencies taken social networking and used it to increase the level of responsibility a person owes to the general public (at least in this instance)? I'm not saying that the manager is in the right, I'm just wary of the level of importance placed on one aspect of this event. Has the way we operate changed to such an extent as to warrant this sort of police interference?