• Networking is important—often there are other groups doing similar things that are happy to piggy-back on projects or contribute resource. Before you start, understand your resource requirement and allow for growth, especially if updating/collecting info for the community. It’s easy to contact and update for 60 organisations, a lot harder for 3,000.
• Depth of relationship allows for more engagement and vulnerability.
• Keep raising the bar!
• “Personal” rewards from community involvement translates to professional reward and back again.
• Always have a back-up person—don’t be your own single point of failure.
• It can be important to reward people for participating in your online community.
• Go where your community already is, rather than expect them to come to a new ‘community’ that you just set up.
• Forums take 6+ months to establish momentum.
• Wikis suck.
• Comments at the bottom of pages of content fail to engage passive readers.
• Whatever you’re doing—whether it be in the online or offline world—you need to provide an “authentic” experience or voice for your audiences and community.
• You need strong reasons to make building a community worthwhile. It can take a lot of time and resource.
• I like the idea of incentives for users. e.g., points and rewards. For example, in our wiki originally we got a lot of new users to contribute through making the stats viewable. They could view numbers of changes made by users and a top 10. This lead to a competitive environment, especially with the boys. I had forgotten about that so am thinking how we can get that going again. Am interested in Shelley’s “submit a tag”, how that works. A problem we have is meaningless tags.
• I learned that preparation and planning should play a more important role than technology.
• Exposure to a wide range of online communities can teach us a lot about how people interact online.
• We had great success and learned a lot by piloting community interaction with small self-selected groups before trying to interface with the wider community. Benefits: tools are tested and tweaked; people from the pilot are great at kicking the wider community off.
• Be very proactive about responding to criticisms/suggestions by pointing out ways that the commenter/critic can get involved in doing something with their suggestion and solving their problem.
• Why? Social capital; information; value; connections. How? Authentically; where they already hang out; on their terms; multiple (appropriate) platforms. Who? By the community; for the community …
• Go to where your community are already hanging out to engage with them.
• Decentralise your community management by using your community.
• Who the customer is, what they want, what they need is key. Once the purpose is clear, that drives every other decision.
• Do you really need to do this? What will work best for your users? When will you stop if it isn’t working?
• Take-away: you need a community manager; build it and they won’t come!

Thanks to everyone who took the time to write down their advice!

1. First, I have to applaud the industry getting together to try and figure out how it can help the rest of NZ grow. The most exciting conversation at the short-lived Digital Development Council was when agriculture and manufacturing and other industries had an honest conversation with representatives of the ICT industry without being sidetracked into the failures or benefits of particular products or vendors.
2. Second, I applaud the idea that ICT can contribute to the lift in national economic performance that the government wants. Lately I’ve been thinking that there are three critical parts to NZ’s industries doing better: (1) make better use of ICT, (2) develop a global focus so our businesses don’t plateau once they get comfortable in the domestic market, (3) lift the skills of the people in leadership and management so that they can deliver on (1) and (2) without shitting on their feet as has happened all too often in the past. The report addresses (1) but I’d say that all three must be tackled together.
3. I don’t like the high-level generalities of the NZICT report. It’s their first report and in many ways is a stake in the ground to say “we’re here, we’re doing good things, we’re on the right side”. That would explain the vague parroting of political objectives (“step-change” is the new “sustainability”). The report is cannily aligned with political objectives (broadband, more efficient public sector, education, R&D) but many of the recommendations are little more than “we will work with you on what you’re already doing in these areas”. Government needs to be shown specific opportunities (e.g., “look to open source database alternatives in these situations”), and there are precious few specifics here.
4. And where there are specifics, they’re not great. For example:
   

   There  has  been  a  move  to  a  more  centralised  approach  to  Government  ICT strategy  managed  by  the Government Technology Services  group  within  the Department  of  Internal  Affairs. NZICT supports this centralised planning approach. It should clarify the strategic objectives of Government ICT spend, and enable consequent research and development opportunities for the industry to take. 

   NZICT proposes that the Government make an “Annual Statement of ICT Priorities”. This will enable transparency, certainty and direction of public sector ICT spending for all stakeholders involved. It will also encourage private sector investment, including research and development. This will stimulate ICT based innovation within the economy.

   Some problems with this: (1) annual is not a timeframe for strategic thought, it’s tactical; (2) annual is not a R&D timeframe, it’s a sales cycle; (3) it’s unclear that an annually-changing long-term strategy would provide any more certainty to investment than exists now; (4) the problem that this would solve isn’t clearly defined. This last failing is near-universal. Very few of the paper’s many recommendations come with a problem statement, and solutions to unknown or poorly-specified problems often turn out to be timebombs, turkeys, or turds.

5. I’m also aware that NZICT is an industry lobby group and as such its offers and advice should be taken with a grain of salt. New Zealand has precious few independent economic voices (New Zealand Institute has served admirably in the past), and NZICT is not one of them. “NZICT  will  establish  a  working  group  with  the Government Technology Services group of the Department of Internal Affairs to develop a programme for improving public sector ICT efficiency, including operational and process cost reduction to an agreed plan and targets” could be read by a cynic as “NZICT members will have privileged access to centralised government IT planners and buyers, bypassing or rendering moot a procurement process that attempts to provide a level playing field”.

So, like most things, it’s a mixed bag. I’d give them 6/10 for speaking with a single voice in such tight harmony with the government’s stated policies. There’s still work to be done in producing something that’s useful, rather than a positioning paper, but this is a promising first step from a new industry lobby group.

When it comes to promoting economic activity, it is easy to see why having broadband is better than not having it, but most benefits are likely to come from wiring people up in the first place rather than making existing connections hum faster. In Japan and South Korea over 40% of households have fibre links capable of blazing speeds, but that does not seem to have resulted in more rapid economic growth, or the emergence of new applications unavailable to consumers with ordinary broadband.

This argues for something like the Broadband Investment Fund, which is frozen but not dead (political cryogenics), aimed at getting broadband to places that don’t already have it. I still think NZ needs faster broadband to the home (I am personally far less efficient than I would be if I were in the US with blazing-fast broadband) and that the market has not and will not deliver it, but I wonder whether the mood in Wellington for broadband investment has dissipated now the election is over. It was always going to be bloody hard to do, and as the economy melts down there are many more candidates for investment raising their hands. I have no idea how it will play out, but I’m watching it keenly.

To: Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Trade

Introduction

This Submission is from Nathan Torkington, an author, musician, and software professional whose address is [...].

Summary

I strongly oppose any proposals to extend the term of copyright, entrench digital rights management, assign investigation or enforcement powers to rights holders beyond those already in law, or otherwise use copyright law against consumers and artists. I also strongly oppose any interference with parallel importing.

Submission

New Zealand technology companies and New Zealand artists are all creative professionals attempting to sell their work in the world’s marketplace. To be successful these creative industries need:

1. Open and ready access to markets overseas.
2. Open and ready access to the commons of production.
3. As little regulation and interference in possible in their production and distribution activities.

I support extending the P4 agreement to other nations. The more markets we can freely compete in, the better our local software, music, radio, television, and film industries will become. Competition forces local producers and distributors to improve the quality of their product and their distribution channels. New Zealanders have benefited from parallel importing, for example, as competition between distributors lowers the middlemen’s price.

Both software and the arts have commons, a set of works that new works can draw upon. In software, it’s open source. In the arts, it’s the public domain. It’s important to keep both wellsprings available and growing because the commons lower production costs. For example, a recent report found that the Linux operating system was worth US$10.8B and supports a US$25B ecosystem. As a folk musician, I draw heavily upon the commons of American folk music. Even the modern copyrighted songs in my genre are heavily influenced by the works that have gone before and frequently feature ‘quotes” or reuse traditional chord patterns and melodies.

The borders around the commons of software and arts are drawn by IP law, particularly copyright and patent law. “Strengthening” IP law consists of encroaching upon the commons. For example, extending copyright terms keeps works out of the commons that otherwise would have been available for reuse and repurpose. Extending copyright to cover previously uncopyrighted things (e.g., databases of fact) similarly turns previously public property into private property. As a software professional, I strongly oppose software patents in principle as well as in practice: they are rarely awarded for originality, and it has not been shown that their costs in retarded innovation justify whatever economic benefits they may bring. Even Microsoft, the most successful software company ever, has never been the aggressor in a software patent lawsuit–only the recipient.

Technically it is possible to reuse and repurpose the private property, but generally it requires the permission of the copyright holder. One exception is the common act of recording a “cover” of a song, which is governed by a compulsory license (meaning that Gloria Gaynor doesn’t get to prevent my bluegrass band from covering “I Will Survive” but we have to make a small payment for the privilege). However, most media and most acts of reuse and repurpose aren’t covered by compulsory licenses.

Extending copyright terms locks up these works to the point where authors can rarely be found. The problem of these “Orphan Works” is well recognized in IP circles (e.g., Google Print found 75% of the books they scanned were in copyright but the publisher and authors were unreachable), and the US Copyright Office has recently attempted to find a solution to the problem but it is still burdensome to the reuser. Extending copyright terms increases the number of these Orphan Works without providing a solution to a large and growing problem. It is unequivocably a bad idea.

On the subject of regulation and interference, I point particularly to Digital Rights Management (DRM, known in NZ law as Technical Protection Measures, TPM). DRM/TPM prevent reverse engineering, something that has traditionally been permitted as it is necessary to produce compatible products. Copyright law has traditionally respected the need for competition in the technology around the copyright work, because without such competition the artist is at the whims of the owner of the monopoly format. A recent change to NZ Copyright law has added support for DRM/TPMs without a reverse engineering clause, but there is hope in the technology community that this can be revisited. I do not want to see DRM/TPMs entrenched in trade agreements where a revisit of NZ law could not free it.

Another unnecessary burden of regulation and interference is the takedown provisions in NZ and US law. As a copyright rights holder (author of “Perl Cookbook”, composer of several pieces of music) I have measures enough under the Act to seek recompense if my book is pirated. In fact, my book is heavily pirated. My publishers send out frequent Cease and Desist letters. They do not need the ability to turn off the Internet access of infringers, and do not want that ability. I believe these measures are unnecessary and furthermore place a high financial burden on ISPs and web site owners. These financial burdens make New Zealand ISPs and web site owners less able to compete internationally. I do not wish to see them in an international trade agreement.

For these reasons, I strongly oppose any proposals to extend the term of copyright, entrench digital rights management, assign investigation or enforcement powers to rights holders beyond those already in law, or otherwise use copyright law against consumers and artists. I also strongly oppose any interference with parallel importing.

[for another submission, see maetl's]

Not satisfied with controlling the world’s largest source of book information, it wants to take over all the smaller ones as well. It’s now demanding that every library that uses WorldCat give control over all its catalog records to OCLC. It literally is asking libraries to put an OCLC policy notice on every book record in their catalog. It wants to own every library.

I’m on LIAC (a commission that advises the Minister for the National Library on matters digital), so I asked the CEO of the National Library of New Zealand, Penny Carnaby about this. She replied:

We signed an all of country agreement with OCLC last year with the proviso that NZ would keep its own IP, i.e. OCLC does not own the new Zealand’s National Union Catalogue the NLNZ does and therefore the crown on behalf of the people of NZ. I understand that we are one of the few countries to do this resisting the push from OCLC.

Great job, NLNZ! Amid increasing bad news for the digital freedom of NZ it’s great to see we’re ahead of the curve in keeping some things open.

In America, largely for historical reasons, residential customers have “all you can eat” plans. Buffet bandwidth is the order of the day, every day. As the number of people online continues to grow, and they do more bandwidth-intensive things (YouTube movies vs all-text web pages), telcos must buy new hardware. “How do they pay for it?” the article asks, and offers up three solutions: charge heavy consumers more (the Australian and New Zealand “metered Internet” solution); charge the people serving lots of data rather than we who consume it (which pisses Google off and starts a “network neutrality” war); or just suck up the costs themselves.

One element missing from this discussion is that every year brings more demand for bandwidth. Over time, we build more sophisticated applications that gain wider use: last.fm, Skype, YouTube, video chat, BitTorrent. To pick a number and say “this amount of traffic is reasonable use and will incur a reasonable charge” is to prevent the uptake of new applications that would drive the network use past the “reasonable” point. Unfettered, I’d expect to see this natural growth in our bandwidth use year on year. However, fetters are exactly what the ISPs have put in place to keep that down.

I suspect that the current ISP charging model is really: “3% of users take 50% of the traffic, so if we just price them out we’ll be able to get twice as many customers without having to buy any more hardware!”. The longer they can keep down our demands for bandwidth, the more customers they can “serve” without having to invest in new hardware.

But capital outlay is what growth is all about. If you want to double the number of customers, you should expect to have to double your bandwidth. One of the ISP CEOs said “I don’t subscribe to the view that network capacity is finite at all …. Optical fibre basically doesn’t run out of capacity, it’s just a question of how fast you blink the bits at each end.” Well if it’s not about capacity, mate, what’s left?

It certainly feels like you want your cake and you want to eat it: you want new customers without having to put in new hardware to increase your capacity, and you want existing customers to stay at their current levels so you won’t have to put in new hardware to increase capacity.

And if that’s not rorting your customers because you’re a greedy bastard, I don’t know what is.

ACTA is the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. Proposed by Japan and USA, but not limited to them at all. About eight countries, mainly G8 and a few others like us and Morocco. Mainly about IP. Calling it “counterfeit” gets it under the radar.

Also very much about the Internet. While it did talk about physical products, morphed over last four years and now about more. Don’t really know what it is about: unnerving level of secrecy. Can’t find anything official about what it is, other than US trade representatives office official line “it’s about enforcement”, a universal framework of enforcement procedures around the world. All have signed non-disclosure agreements.

Silence leads to supposition. People are supposing the worst. Are they trying to pull our teeth by getting us to say how bad it is, then come back with “it’s not that bad” but still bad.

Started at a congress sponsored by Interpol, International Trademark Association, WTO, and others. GBLAAC mystery group. From record of the congress, had one each year for last four years, no longer mentions that group. GBLAAC speakers from Proctor and Gamble, Unilever, Philip Morris, Coca-Cola. Also sponsored by Baker-McKenzie (global law firm), and Rouse & Co. (specialists in patent and IP law). Not RIAA and MPAA, the usual media players involved in IP restrictions and copyright restrictions. These are serious players with long-term aims and much patience. If they’re in the game then it’s moved to a whole new level of worry.

Tried to get it through WIPO first, and got a big fail. Developing countries said, “we’ve got more important things to worry about”. WTO failed for same reasons. In Oct 2007, Bush’s trade rep decided to push it through USTR. Put out press release, and invited people to pre-negotiation meetings (Nov, Jan, and May this year). First actual negotiation meeting in June, before the deadline for submissions on what MED should talk about there.

At July 2008 meeting, they said expected negotiations to be completed by end of this year. Suspicion: they want to get it through while Bush is still President. Still must go through Congress. Don and Mark went to see Judith Tizard, the Minister (Assoc. Min of Commerce), but the Minister opened with “all this lunatic talk on the web”. MED doing driving says this isn’t about counterfeit, it’s about IP.

While talking to them, were addressing Mark’s submission. Also talking about whether concept was a good idea. American publishing industry built through piracy. Didn’t become full member of Berne Convention until 1989. Books published in UK said “not to be sold in US or Canada”. Until US worked out they were becoming an exporter of IP.

Tried to find what NZ’s position was, what they were negotiating about. Failed. They said, “all we’re doing is talking about enforcing existing law”. Obvious question: does that mean changes on Copyright Act that’s come through recently. They denied correlation, and said there was no need to change the Copyright Act. Nobody’s sure what law they’re talking about enforcing.

MED are policy people, not experts–know crap about copyright (lost all the people who did know about copyright). They are historically very inflexible.

Fear is that it will affect knowledge, books, music. Fear is that it will move enforcement from courts to the front-line officers. Certainly talking about enforcement at front line for DVDs, etc. “So Customs will be regulating online stuff as well?” “Oh no nono” but wouldn’t say who would. We suspect ISPs.

“It’s not practical to do that!” Yes, but governments haven’t been worried about what’s practical. Looks unenforcable but if someone decides they want to enforce it, they have carte-blanche to decide how to go about it.

A third party, like a corporate, can use customs officials as enforcers. “We want to know what’s on Don Christie’s laptop every time he goes through customs, whether his MP3s comply with TPM provisions, does he have rights to them”. Becomes something for a busy, technically ignorant customs official to begin evaluating. Imagine the damage someone could do trying.

Worried about chilling effects.

USTR published the submissions they got. The summaries were written by MED and may not reflect exactly what was in the submissions.

Asked officials, “what’s IP? Anti-counterfeiting for pharmaceuticals and consumer goods–all for it”. They talked about the copyright industry, patents, and trademarks. Four distinct areas of legislation. By conflating trademarks (in perpetuity while defended) with patents and copyrights (limited term rights with obligations to publish).

Don’t have to prove you’re an infringer before they can have your stuff taken away. Container of DVDs that might be Debian, could be claimed as “our IP” by SCO, and you’ll have to fight to get it back. If it hasn’t been destroyed–possibility that seizure can be accompanied by destruction.

Mark made a FOIA request the same day he heard about it. Supposed to get answer in 20 working days. On 4:45 on the 20th working day, got a note they’re extending two weeks. They extended his submission date one week. When it came, 91 documents were identified in their index, and they supplied 13. The rest were withheld for various reasons under the act, and the ones they did send were redacted. Though I did want to know who we had negotiating.

Q: Talk to Ombudsman? A: Haven’t gone there yet, but still in the quiver of arrows.

Documents say nothing. What was redacted: anything that referred to the NZ position. Their argument is that they entered the negotiations with an agreement to maintain confidentiality, particularly around other country’s positions. Don and Mark said: we don’t care about other positions, just ours. NZ is not a net exporter of IP.

Q: China putting ENZA labels on apples. A: That’s counterfeiting. If you buy an Apple iPhone, you want to know it’s real. If you buy food or a drug or even smoking Rothmans cigarettes, you’ll want to know you’re getting what you paid for. The whole presentation of this agreement is around counterfeiting, but we know it’s more than anti-counterfeiting because they talk about the copyright and patent industry.

Q: From MED’s point of view, our exports of physical primary goods is single biggest chunk of our export earnings. So that’s what they care about. It won’t occur about them to worry about IT sector. Even if it explodes, better IT than dairy. A: Don saw figures that ITC’s contribution to GDP is significant. There is concern about ICT-they know and have been pushing ICT as enabler of NZ and talk about “Knowledge Economy” etc.

For last 15 minutes, what should we do about it? First thing, make non-hysterical fact-based noise. Focus on what we know is wrong, secrecy. Contact your MP. If 30ppl put in an OIA to MED, they won’t be able to deny that there’s a lot of interest in this. Raise it with your MP and your party. Ask them “what is your position on this?”, with a link to MED’s stuff. Mark’s waiting to hear back from doing that. Writing letters on paper better than emailing, although they’re required to acknowledge and answer electronic comms same as paper.

Then get the public to understand. Educate not evangelize. Computerworld been good, and Glynn Moodie in the UK. Don’t shoot the messengers, MED and the officials, because they’re acting in good faith and probably think they’re doing the right thing.

Don: with the Copyright Act, we didn’t talk to writers, artists, musicians well about it. What three statements can we take to musicians about why this would be bad?

My take: NZ artists biggest problem is breaking into overseas markets, not piracy. You need as few obstacles as possible. If untrained border guards stop only .01%, it’ll be the small acts like Kiwis rather than big US acts that bear the brunt. Keep powers in the hands of the courts, don’t devolve them to decentralized rent-a-cops.