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If you haven't quite got it yet, public relations people, I'd like to explain a simple fact to you. We live in a networked society with really short attention spans. While simple parody of your expensive public relations campaign may be quite clever in its own way, it generally doesn't justify our attention.
Telling us that we can't look at it, however, and abusing the take-down provisions of the Copyright Act to do so, makes it ever so much more interesting. Remember www.johnhowardpm.org? The parody site where John Howard finally owned up to his mistakes? Well, that really wasn't attracting any undue publicity until the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet decided to call in the Australian Federal Police to slap down this insult to the dignity of our Fearless Leader. It's a pity they omitted to figure out a lawful basis for doing so.
This week it's the NSW Mineral Council who seems to have an overinflated sense of its own imporance. Apparently, the Mineral Council has been running an expensive publicity campaign about how mining is the basis of all of society - your jobs, your economy, clean water, your environment - at www.nswmining.com.au. Naturally, some environmentalists thought there were certain flaws in their arguments. Rising Tide Newcastle thus created the parody site - www.miningnsw.com.au - which explains why the Mineral Council message is, to put it bluntly, doublespeak.
But it's the abuse of the Copyright Act that particularly bothers me here. The purpose of that Act (and yes, there are flaws) is to protect intellectual property, not to promote censorship of free speech. Placing ISPs at the front-line of copyright enforcement through the take-down notice scheme is an underlying flaw, but I find it far more serious that there are no penalties for those who abuse the rights granted under the Act without lawful justification.
It's time that the other side of copyright was given a say - if a company takes action that isn't justified, because the use is a fair dealing such as parody for political comment, then the company should be subject to fiscal penalties, payable to the victim.
Telling us that we can't look at it, however, and abusing the take-down provisions of the Copyright Act to do so, makes it ever so much more interesting. Remember www.johnhowardpm.org? The parody site where John Howard finally owned up to his mistakes? Well, that really wasn't attracting any undue publicity until the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet decided to call in the Australian Federal Police to slap down this insult to the dignity of our Fearless Leader. It's a pity they omitted to figure out a lawful basis for doing so.
This week it's the NSW Mineral Council who seems to have an overinflated sense of its own imporance. Apparently, the Mineral Council has been running an expensive publicity campaign about how mining is the basis of all of society - your jobs, your economy, clean water, your environment - at www.nswmining.com.au. Naturally, some environmentalists thought there were certain flaws in their arguments. Rising Tide Newcastle thus created the parody site - www.miningnsw.com.au - which explains why the Mineral Council message is, to put it bluntly, doublespeak.
But it's the abuse of the Copyright Act that particularly bothers me here. The purpose of that Act (and yes, there are flaws) is to protect intellectual property, not to promote censorship of free speech. Placing ISPs at the front-line of copyright enforcement through the take-down notice scheme is an underlying flaw, but I find it far more serious that there are no penalties for those who abuse the rights granted under the Act without lawful justification.
It's time that the other side of copyright was given a say - if a company takes action that isn't justified, because the use is a fair dealing such as parody for political comment, then the company should be subject to fiscal penalties, payable to the victim.
