Digital Copyright Workshops

A final reminder that Wellington workshop on the Digital Copyright Bill is on Tuesday and the Auckland one on Wednesday. It isn’t too late to RSVP. This bill will affect almost every New Zealander who has a VCR, an IPod, uses an ISP etc. Submissions are open until end of the week.

Full details of the workshops are online here.

It’s a top line up of speakers, with I am sure a wide variety of views. They include:

* Peter Dengate-Thrush, a patent attorney and barrister specialising in intellectual property law and Internet law. Former President of InternetNZ and a Director of ICANN

* Chip Dawson, President and Chairman of the NZ Software Association, Co-Chairman of ICTNZ

* Clive Elliott, a barrister and patent attorney. past co-chair of the Intellectual Property and Entertainment Law Committee of the International Bar Association, vice president of the Intellectual Property Society of Australia and New Zealand (IPSANZ) and co-convenor of the Intellectual Property Committee of the New Zealand Law Society.

* Susy Frankel, Associate Professor of Law at VUW on intellectual property law and international trade. A co-author of the textbook “Intellectual Property in New Zealand” and also an independent Hearings Officer for the Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand.

* Peter Gutmann, A researcher in the Department of Computer Science at the University of
Auckland working on the design and analysis of cryptographic security architectures. Helped write the popular PGP encryption package.

* Chris Hocquard, a principal of Dominion Law, a specialist entertainment law firm that looks after the affairs of entrepreneurs, artists, musicians and other creative people. He is
also the founder of www.amplifier.co.nz, New Zealand’s leading online music resource.

* Dr Stephen Marshall, Senior Lecturer in Educational Technology at the VUW University
Teaching Development Centre. Member of the Ministry of Education
Tertiary E-Learning Reference Group and Chair of the E-Learning Directors of the New Zealand
Universities Group.

* Brent McAnulty, Senior Counsel for Telecom, responsible for content, emerging technologies, Telecom’s television and music issues, and its agreements with media organisations. Also responsible for intellectual property within Telecom.

* Dr Owen Morgan, a leading intellectual property academic at the University of Auckland. An author of the New Zealand text, Copyright and Design. Also an advisor to the Media and Advertising Copyright Board.

* Rick Shera, a partner at Lowndes Jordan a specialist corporate, commercial and ICT law firm. Involved in many IT organisations including current Chairman of NetSafe and a former VP of InternetNZ.

* Clark Thomborson, a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Auckland, Has published more than 100 refereed articles on topics in software security, computer systems performance analysis, VLSI algorithms, data compression, and connection networks.

* Jim Thomson, solicitor for Television New Zealand, and practices mainly in the law relating
to media and intellectual property, including copyright, defamation and privacy; and information
technology, licensing, telecommunications, and competition law.Was chairperson for twelve years of the copyright committee of the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union, and is the founding and current chairperson of the New Zealand Media and Advertising Copyright Board

* Nathan Torkington, identifies, comments on, and commercializes technology trends for O’Reilly Media, in which capacity he blogs at http://radar.oreilly.com/ and is co-chair of the Open Source Convention He also builds Internet businesses through He Hononga Software in New Zealand.

* Bronwyn Turley, Manager of the Ministry of Economic Development’s Intellectual Property
Policy team responsible for providing policy advice to government on intellectual
property issues.

* Andy Williams, has spent time managing bands, producing music and
hosting radio and is presently the New Media Manager of LOOP Media Ltd & LOOPdigital.