UK comedian and leading Twitterer Stephen Fry has called on users of social networking sites to black out their profile picture to protest so-called “guilt upon accusation” changes to New Zealand's copyright laws.
Fry wrote the following message on his Twitter site several days ago:
“If you’re on Twitter, would you change your avatar to black to show support for the fight against a ‘three accusations and you’re offline’ law in New Zealand?”
The star's campaign has found widespread support and even resulted in the website geekzone.co.nz which is running a concurrent protest, crashing yesterday.
The protest centres on sections 92A and 92C of the Copyright (New Technologies) Amendment Act, which comes into effect at the end of February.
The new law puts the responsibility for illegal downloading of copyrighted material in the hands of internet service providers, who will be asked to terminate the accounts of customers who infringe the law.
ISPs are being advised to offer a “three strikes and you’re out” policy – issuing up to three “education” notices before cutting off accounts.
The blackout protest is the idea of website
www.creativefreedom.org.nz, which urges people to black out the pictures on their social networking sites in support of their campaign against what they describe as an “unjust law”.
3 News
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