The big thing this week has been the protest against the new section 92(a) of the New Zealand Copyright Act which will cut off the Internet for people or organisations repeatedly accessed of copyright violations. The new law says that after repeated infringement complaints (4 strikes is the current proposal in the code of practice) ISPs will have to close the account of their customers.
So I thought I’d have a look around the website of APRA (The Australasian Performing Right Association) when I came across this page which is a cut-and-paste of a recent New Zealand Herald story. After I started poking around it looks like the story has mostly been removed (which indicates APRA did not have permission to host it) but there is a google cache of it here (mirrored below) and the original page still has a photo from the Herald story.
So it appears while APRA is happy to on one hand to write press releases about about how “Those working in the creative industries need the protection from theft of their work” but on the other hand it is quite happy to rip off material from websites when it thinks they might be of interest to it’s members.
Of course the Law hasn’t come in force yet so APRA has managed to avoid the threat of having it’s Internet cut off and instead just gets a bitchslap from the Herald but it is certainly an interesting combination of hypocrisy, stupidity and arrogance on their part (they can’t claim ignorance I’m afraid).
