LIANZA joins Fair Deal Coalition

The ‘Fair Deal’ coalition is pleased to announce that LIANZA (the Library and Information Association of New Zealand Aotearoa) has joined the group’s ranks.

Launched last week, the Fair Deal campaign is driven by organisations concerned about possible changes to the country’s copyright law under the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

Fair Deal spokesperson Susan Chalmers says LIANZA has strengthened the coalition’s voice, describing their involvement as a sign of growing cross-sector unease at US copyright proposals.

LIANZA spokesperson Tony Millett says it wants to ensure that New Zealand libraries and their users are not disadvantaged by further changes to the country’s copyright law.

“The TPP is understood to include a significant extension to the length of copyright, keeping works out of the public domain for longer. Also concerning for libraries is that the TPP could see a ban on parallel importing. This would result in an increase in the purchase prices of library materials, seriously affecting the number of works libraries are able to acquire.”

In addition, the TPP might see an increase in the protection given to technological protection measures (TPMs). Millett says this could prevent libraries from legitimately overriding TPMs to make materials available to their users which, at present, is allowed under New Zealand copyright law.

“In the present copyright environment, LIANZA and New Zealand libraries need all the support they can get from related organisations,” he says.

“The Fair Deal Campaign has a clear focus, which will assist in ensuring that the concerns of the library community are widely heard.”

Fair Deal members include InternetNZ, NZRise, Creative Freedom Foundation, Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind, TUANZ, Consumer, the Institute of IT Professionals, Trade Me, the New Zealand Open Source Society and now LIANZA.

More information about the Fair Deal campaign is available at www.fairdeal.net.nz.