New Australian fair trading agreement prevents 3rd party ink cartridges!

[ta bu shi da yu]

Don't beleive me? then check out Chapter 17, Article 7.4 section 7. This
states that the:

"circumvention of effective technological measures that authors,
performers, and producers of phonograms, use in connection with the
exersize of their rights and that restrict unauthorised acts in respect
of their works, performances and phonograms, each Party shall provide
that any person who:

(I) knowingly, or having reasonable grounds to know, circumvents without
authority any effective technological measure that controls access to a
protected work performance or phonogram, or other subject matter;

(II) manufactures, imports, distributes, offers to the public, provides,
or otherwise traffics in devices, products, or components, or offers to
the public, or provides services which:

(a) are promoted, advertised, or marketed for the purpose of
circumvention of any technological measure,

OR

(b) have only limited commercial significance or use other than to
circumvent any effective technological measure, or

(c) are primarily designed, produced, or performed for the purpose of
enabling or facilitating the circumvention of any effective
technological measure

shall be liable and subject to the remedies provided for in Article
17.11.13. Each party shall provide for criminal procedures and penalties
to be applied where any person, is found to have engaged willfully and
for purposes of commercial advantage or financial gain in the above
activities. Each Party may provide that such criminal procedures and
penalties do not apply to a non-profit library, archive, educational
insitution or public non-commercial broadcasting enitity."

What this means, is that if someone reverse engineers a chip on, say, a
Lexmark printer (in Australia) they can have criminal action taken
against them. Funnily enough, this FTA agreement is *just like* the DMCA
in MANY ways.

Interestingly, lots of the negotiations for this agreement were done
behind closed doors. What most Aussies don't realise is that this treaty
doesn't actually require their democratic vote to get it ratified, as
treaty agreements can be authorised by the executive. This will still
have to go through both the house of reps and the senate (thank
goodness!) because it's actually going to require changing laws to get
it through.

So what can you guys do? Well, unfortuneately our pollies don't read
newgroups so getting steamed in here is great, but I'd suggest
checking the following site:

http://www.darlug.org/Links/Advocacy/USFTA2004

and:

http://www.linux.org.au/fta/

My best advise is this: Read as much as you can about this issue, then
draft up a letter to your local member, your state member and your
federal member and show them that you care about this.

Don't let the DMCA become a reality in Australia! Remember that the U.S.
have already tried to Dimitry Skylarov and Jon Johanssen in jail! Show
that you don't want such an Orwellian situation in OUR country.

 

[dslr]

Don't beleive me? then check out Chapter 17, Article 7.4 section 7.
This states that the:

"circumvention of effective technological measures that authors,
performers, and producers of phonograms, use in connection with the
exersize of their rights and that restrict unauthorised acts in
respect of their works, performances and phonograms, each Party shall
provide that any person who:

(I) knowingly, or having reasonable grounds to know, circumvents
without authority any effective technological measure that controls
access to a protected work performance or phonogram, or other subject
matter;

(II) manufactures, imports, distributes, offers to the public,
provides, or otherwise traffics in devices, products, or components,
or offers to the public, or provides services which:

(a) are promoted, advertised, or marketed for the purpose of
circumvention of any technological measure,

OR

(b) have only limited commercial significance or use other than to
circumvent any effective technological measure, or

(c) are primarily designed, produced, or performed for the purpose of
enabling or facilitating the circumvention of any effective
technological measure

shall be liable and subject to the remedies provided for in Article
17.11.13. Each party shall provide for criminal procedures and
penalties to be applied where any person, is found to have engaged
willfully and for purposes of commercial advantage or financial gain
in the above activities. Each Party may provide that such criminal
procedures and penalties do not apply to a non-profit library,
archive, educational insitution or public non-commercial broadcasting
enitity."

What this means, is that if someone reverse engineers a chip on, say,
a Lexmark printer (in Australia) they can have criminal action taken
against them. Funnily enough, this FTA agreement is *just like* the
DMCA in MANY ways.

Interestingly, .....

Even more interestingly - I've never seen a printer that can play records,
nor a record player (phonogram) that takes ink cartridges, third party or
otherwise.