Motion Picture Association Commissions Study

…gets expected results.

UPDATE 2003/09/27:

Where are my manners? Hat tip: Kim Weatherall.

UPDATE 2003/10/24:

Hey, and a month later slashdot catches up! Advantage: Weatherall.

The Kiwi Agenda

Matthew Hall, who’s running the Digital Agenda review at Phillips Fox, presented this paper (doc format) in New Zealand earlier this month, which discusses some of the findings of the review so far. Some excerpts:

Presently, no economic data supporting the additional costs that are being or are likely to be incurred or that demonstrate how (and the extent to which) any costs savings generated by [squid proxies, etc] would be passed onto consumers has been made available to the review. Similarly, no economic data supporting any argument that this activity does, in fact, divert sales or otherwise adversely impact on an owner’s legitimate entitlements or markets has been made available.

There are no time or format shifting exceptions in the Australian Act. However, inclusion of these matters are issues being advocated by users’ interests and opposed by owners’ interests.

There’s some other interesting stuff in there about what’s going on in NZ.

Digital Agenda Forum in Sydney

Tim Lister of the south Sydney Greens attended the Sydney forum, and posted a summary. An excerpt:

One rebel, the chap who built the modchip that Sony got exercised about, had a good time denigrating the illogicality of the legal system, that made it illegal to modify legal hardware that he legally owned to play legal datafiles that he legally owned, but that was the high spot of the day. I talked to him afterwards, and he has a lot of support, but unfortunately nearly all of it from people with no money; and it will cost him $38,000 just to file his appeal.

Read the whole thing.