Sudden Silence continues

The dearth of commentary on the new copyright laws continues in Australia.
For nearly a year, Kim Weatherall was filling her blog posts with important commentary on the subject, along with a number of other blogs and news outlets around the country, but suddenly - silence.
YouTube continues to be under fire, - It may be directed indirectly at Google since they own YouTube. - with a diminishing number of comments from any media. Considering the potential for public harm and expense from the Cooper decision, it is hard to believe that nothing has happened in over a month. I mean, this stuff even had Australians working and reading until late December. Even the Attorney-General wanted to go home in mid-November, but stuck around to deal with the crisis.
And now: nothing.

This is the sort of thing that evokes a nationwide sense of helplessness borne on a fear of conspiracy.
Never have I seen a nation so certain of conspiracy. Conspiracies are so ubiquitous in Australia that even people who have shared the same experience cannot trust one another. There is such a morass of real and imagined conspiracies as to hamper any expression of thought, even between 'friends.'
And the sad thing is most of the conspiracy fears prove true.
It's a morass of lies and silence; half-lies and silence. A tangled web no one understands, but everyone fears - even those involved in it.
John Howard has publicly lied about so many things, you have to wonder if he has any idea what reality is anymore. But he'll probably be re-elected next election.
There is this image in my mind of a Jabba-character sitting rudely on the whole of Australia with John Howard's face on it.

Has some government cabal put out the word that no one is to mention the copyright laws until they find a good spin on what's happened? I hate, literally hate, saying it, but: Yeah.
The next time the public will hear about the stupidity of the Cooper judgment, they won't.
Politicians do not appear on the scene unless the scene has been properly prepared and vetted. Judges don't appear until after they have made mistakes and the errors can't be fixed. And lawyers lurve that sort of error. It means lots of money for them.

It isn't hard to figure out what will be the next thing the public hears about copyright laws and Cooper. It will be a small article on the edges of the news section, easy to overlook, which will report dryly how much Cooper has to pay MIPI in costs.
Considering that MIPI and its four deep-pocket clients investigated Mr Cooper's site for more than 2 years - employing a small army of private investigators - and then the court case ran 18 months, Mr Cooper's grandchildren may be paying off the debt.
He may was well organize a pool on how many grandchildren he'll have. It might alleviate some of the expense, but it'll never happen unless the story gets out to the public. - And it may never get out.

Complaints about infringement are sent to the website's ISP. Copyright infringement notices are sent by the copyright holder to the user's ISP. IP addresses identify infringement. Before the new law was in effect, this was usually just a notice and warning. There is no provision for warning in the new law.
The efforts have already become overzealous. One user reports he was sent a notice for downloading a game which was freely offered.
Downloads are tagged with special code segments to identify illegal ownership. That's not new. There have been confirmed reports of copyright owners posting to P2P sites, like Limewire, copies with known worms in them - which would notify the copyright holder of the name, IP address, and email of illegal copiers.
That was declared illegal in the US. It isn't illegal in Australia.

The problem is knowing whether the worm is reporting you for an illegal copy, or using your email address book to spread itself across the Internet. At least one of MIPI's clients, Sony, didn't think it mattered.
They got sued for including code in some CDs which damaged computers, too.

Australian law is already prejudiced, in both word and administration. And in a form that would have been antithetical even to Gutenburg.

One of the quirks of globalization that creates a distinctive hypocrisy when an Australian court attempts to make its judgments affect rights in other countries is that when Australia ratifies a treaty, or signs onto a UN Resolution or Agreement, it is legally meaningless within Australia.
When the US, UK, or most of the nations of Europe ratify a treaty or Resolution, it becomes the law of the land. It has the force of law, meaning the courts and police must enforce it.

Australia's constitution is configured so that ratifying a treaty only truly binds other countries to enforce the treaty (or Resolution, since UN Resolutions are treaties). Within the borders of Australia, treaties with other countries have no legal meaning. (This little-known fact makes the complaints about Free Trade Agreements a legal joke, and must provide a lot of humor for lawyers.)
The only enforcement mechanism for international treaties and resolutions within Austraila is the media, if the story can be explained to a cynical, apathetic public.

Schools and universities are going to great lengths to protect their students and faculty, and themselves, from infringing under the new laws. Monash Univ, for example, has a series of documents on a subdomain - a separate server just for copyright issues. But they appear to have a hard time practically incorporating the new law. There are 17 copyright advisors listed with contact information. In the irony of reality, the Arts department has not appointed an advisor.

Older aussies will tell you Australia has had a "For Sale" sign on it for a long time.