Amendments to copyright delayed by New Zealand

John Key, the Prime Minister of New Zealand has recently announced that a delay of one month will be given regarding the rules to allow the industry to find solution that will work in light of the huge number of physical and online protests about the impending legislation.

The amendment to the country’s Copyright Act, which is known as section 92A, was created to allow the rights of holders of copyrighted material to be strengthened. These provisions, however, created a lot of anger in the New Zealand online community who said that it allowed copyright holders to force ISPs to block websites just by demanding it.

The recently elected centre-right National-led government have inherited the legislation from the previous Helen Clark Labour administration and this legislation will take effect on February 28th.

The implement of this controversial clause of the copyright legislation would be set back to March 27th said Key at a post-cabinet meeting press conference in Wellington recently.

He said “We are hoping that by that time we will have come up with a voluntary code of practice.” Section 92A will be suspended if an agreement cannot be reached.

The latest announcement was called “a step in the right direction” by Bronwyn Holloway-Smith, the director of Creative freedom Foundation, which formed in order to fight the impending legislation in 2008. She said “We are encouraged to see National listen to the New Zealand public. It’s really encouraging.”

The delay would allow for certain aspects of bill to be addressed, said Holloway-Smith, and a deadline of March 6th has been issued for the receipt of submission to the Telecommunications Carriers Forum.

As this issue had not seen much interest from the mainstream media until the arrival of the bloggers, many online campaigners are seeing this move by the government as a great success on their part.

Holloway-Smith added “It’s a real sign of the times. As a grassroots organisation, it’s been amazing to see how successful an online campaign can be, to get the message through and inform the public.”