Archive for the ‘New Zealand’ Category

S92A: Interim Repeat Infringer Termination Policy

Sunday, December 21st, 2008

The Telecommunications Carriers Forum have released a note to ISPs saying that while they're working on a policy that will comply with S92A of the Copyright Act ("An Internet Service Provider must adopt and reasonably implement a policy that provides for termination, in appropriate circumstances, of the account with that ...

Submission on NZ IP law and a free trade agreement with USA

Sunday, December 7th, 2008

SUBMISSION ON THE TRANSPACIFIC STRATEGIC ECONOMIC PARTNERSHIP AGREEMENT NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE UNITED STATES 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 ...

National Library joins Flickr Commons

Wednesday, November 26th, 2008

Way to go, National Library of New Zealand! They're the latest addition to Flickr Commons!

Good one, National Library!

Thursday, November 13th, 2008

My friend Aaron Swartz writes about the increasingly-evil OCLC: 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 ...

More on the bizdev shortage in NZ

Saturday, October 11th, 2008

James McGlinn emailed me a great reply to my piece on the business cofounder shortage in NZ, and he's finally posted it. You should read it because I agree with everything he says.

NZ Broadband Pricing and Network Neutrality

Sunday, September 28th, 2008

In this Ziff-Davis Australia article, the leaders of Australia's three largest ISPs declare network neutrality to be an American problem and explain why. It's an interesting argument, but I think there are some key elements unstated in the article. In America, largely for historical reasons, residential customers have "all you ...

Software Freedom Day Notes: ACTA

Friday, September 19th, 2008

Mark Harris lead this session. Was at SSC, MORST, now Independent. When Wikileaks in May released ACTA doc, saw NZ mentioned, began digging. 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 ...

Business values

Sunday, September 14th, 2008

I had dinner tonight with my friend Cath Lewis, the awesome real estate agent. She told me that her new company felt right because honesty and empathy were at the top of their values. I think most of us aspire to those, but it was lovely to see ...

Software Freedom Day

Sunday, September 14th, 2008

I'll be in Wellington on Saturday, September 20th, for Software Freedom Day. It's open source's open day, a chance for the general public who might have been curious about open source to come along and learn more. There'll be copies of Linux given out and a WellyLUG installfest ...

Webstock 2009 Lineup Announced

Wednesday, September 10th, 2008

I'm speaking at Webstock 2009 and really looking forward to it. What an amazing lineup of talent they have! I've been privileged to meet many of these folks before, and I'm honoured and intimidated to be in their ranks. I can safely say that New Zealand has never ...