New Zealand's government recently amended the copyright act, the results of which are about to come into effect at the end of this month.  Sections 92A and C of the amended Copyright act establish a seemingly draconian principle of "guilt upon accusation" that places all of us at risk of having our internet connection severed at the whim of a malicious accusation. That's right, no fair trial before punishment, no innocent until proven guilty - just one complaint and your ISP will be forced to cut you off, with the onus falling back to the accused to prove their innocence in order to have their connection re-instated. There have been numerous articles written on this topic so I won't cover the same old ground.  If you'd like some background though, you should start with this site http://creativefreedom.org.nz. What I'm more interested in, is how the concept of copyright has journeyed so far from its original intended purpose to the point where it is now able to have a direct impact on our individual civil liberties. The first copyright act was the Statute of Anne (1710), brought into law in Britain. It was created as an act "for the encouragement of learning". That is, it sought to protect the ability of authors to make a living from their works. This in turn would motivate them to continue to write and aid the flow of ideas and knowledge. So the question on my mind is this - does copyright genuinely create the right environment for furthering knowledge, ideas and learning? George Bernard Shaw once said;

If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.

The Statute of Anne along with other more recent pieces of copyright law clearly state their intention to be furthering knowledge and learning i.e. for the benefit of all. However the way copyright legislation is currently being used by big business seems somewhat at odds with this fundamental reason for its existence. My personal opinion is that right now, copyright (along with patents) are both necessary evils.  But if the human race is ever to achieve its full potential we need to find a way to remove our possessive approach to ideas and knowledge.  We need the freedom to take ideas and build on them, without fear of infringing someone's right to stop us. I know I'm being a little simplistic and a lot idealistic but things are changing fast and if we're going to shake things up, then shouldn't we try to do it properly?