Section 92A

According to the newspaper, a new re-worked draft of Section 92A as part of the Copyright Amendment Act 2008 is returning. Without a doubt that the new draft has bits that are significantly better than the old one, like the introduction of a third party Copyright Tribunal to handle the infringement allegation between copyright holders and ISPs; and also the possibility of imposing fine instead of disconnection to the accused ones etc. But why were we opposing Section 92A in the first place - was it only because of the details of the implementation of the law?

Without repeating what a lot of people have said and debated already regarding how copyright has been misused to attack online sharing, I recommend policymakers of this country to watch this presentation from Professor Lessig which was given last year here in New Zealand. Then try to answer this question raised by him: why do we want to criminalize our children for what they do normally online (which we did the exact same thing offline before the Internet comes along)?