[[!meta title="New Copyright Law for New Zealand"]] 
[[!tag 2008 wordup politics copyright nz]] 

Back in 2007 I was lucky enough to be at [BaaCamp](http://www.baacamp.org/) where [Judith Tizard](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Tizard) participated in an animated conversation about proposed ammendments to New Zealand's copyright legislation.  Despite the frustration among the geek crowd over the bills [inadequacies](http://syntho.org/articles/read/67/), the mere fact that Judith took the time to not only attend, but to *really* listen to what a bunch of geeks had to say at an [unconference](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconference) ... is amazing.

Now that the ["Copyright (New Technologies) Amendment Bill"](http://www.legislation.govt.nz/bill/government/2006/0102-3/latest/096be8ed801aae8a.pdf) has been announced it looks like we did okay out of it.  There are still some fairly serious issues (the lack of protection for format shifting video is one), but over all it looks pretty good, and a damn site better then the DMCA.

[Ars Technica](http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080410-new-zealand-copyright-reform-law-schools-us-dmca-on-fair-use.html) has a good summary and 
Canadian law professor [Michael Geist](http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2829/125/) offers an encouraging interpretation of the bill.  Russell Brown [weighs in](http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/10/new-zealands-dmca-is.html#comment-162387) on Cory's ([initially scathing](http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/09/new-zealand-bends-ov.html) and [then apologetic](http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/10/new-zealands-dmca-is.html)) posts on Boing Boing.