Online activism gets a result

by Earl Mardle on 3 March 2009

In a posting called You could lose Internet access on a whim we published a couple of posts on the issues surrounding the new New Zealand copyright legislation, especially section 92a which requires that your ISP handle any accusations that you are downloading copyrighted material to which you don't have a right.

The legislation required that the ISPs have a process for dealing with those complaints up, and including, cutting off your internet access. The Telecommunication Carriers Forum has been struggling with exactly how that might work without becoming a guilt by accusation injustice, and largely failed.

That provoked the Creative Freedom Foundation, founded in 2008 by artists and technologists Bronwyn Holloway-Smith and Matthew Holloway to take action online and off against the Copyright law and it's effect on creativity, the economy, and public rights.

The online portion of that campaign was a Blackout Campaign that enlisted thousands of bloggers, website owners, tweeters and others, including actor Stephen Fry and renown publisher Tim O'Reilly who voluntarily blacked out the online presence in various ways to signal their support for the protest.

The upshot has been that the NZ Government has delayed the implementation of the law until March 27 while the stakeholders try to agree. If that is not possible, the law may be suspended.

Regardless of which side of the debate you occupy, the event has shown that, even in a nation as small as NZ, the ability of the net to organise, inspire and activate people to action can have effects at the highest level; what The NZ Herald correspondent Slavka Antonova calls the "'Fear' of web factor"

The controversy over Section 92A of the Copyright (New Technology) Amendment Act is indicative of two trends.

First, a hardening regime of regulating Internet use, and secondly, an evolving ability, on the part of internet users and the industry, to resist attempts to tilt the balance of power in cyberspace.

Indeed, in the last week, the public interest advocates have shown that they are able to create effective alliances with other stakeholders, such as service providers (ISPs), telecoms and digital content producers, when access to online information, freedom of sharing information and content distribution innovation are perceived as common stakes.

Are you involved in an online campaign? Let us know