@Hitch: As I said before I am not going to carry on any discussion about the core matters that I raised, it is clear from your responses that you have very little idea of what I am talking about.
But in order to clarify my mention of the Government here actually placing a cost on increasing the copyright period from +50 to +70 and from which you seem to be assuming in the following quote that this was some specific standalone look at copyright and that in your view such an analysis would be corrupted to be unfavorable to "copyrights, patents and monopolies" and so dismissed as of no value. You said:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hitch
...Even the facts that you mentioned, in your prior post, about how your government argues that somehow, copyright costs society money and investment--those are all hypotheses, with pretty much zero factual backup. (Those whitepaper arguments are usually trying to conflate--on purpose--copyrights, patents, and monopolies. After all, how many investment funding opportunities are you aware of, dealing with copyrights, really? And what would those copyrights be "stifling," if you were an investor????)...
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In fact analysis was performed as part of a wide study of the implications of all the trade gains and losses on the economy arising out of a negotiated multi-country trade agreement - in that agreement, as part of the negotiations, NZ under USA pressure committed to increasing its copyright period to +70 years. So, as most of us would expect (but not you, apparently), any responsible government does an analysis of the expected consequences to the economy of the changing tariffs, trade volumes, etc. arising out of the overall agreement; that analysis was across the likes of agriculture and horticulture, manufacturing, services, etc. and, of course, included the agreed to increase in the copyright period. The outcome was an overall net gain to the economy, but among the few substantive costs to the economy (few, because NZ is basically a tariff free country) was that for the copyright period increase.
So, for a start, there was no focused analysis of the costs and benefits of copyright for the sake of any agenda other than contributing to determining what the expected overall outcome on the nations economy would be from the trade agreement. The copyright period was going to be changed regardless and the legislation was written ready to be enacted for the impending start date of the trade agreement. Also, due to a lot of interest from business, economists, quasi government and other stake holders, including anti-free trade activists, this whole analysis across all industries was released to the public - as far as I am aware there has been no particular criticism of it (in fact, the only dismissal out of hand of it that I have heard comes from you, who I would assume has never seen the report or even knew of its existence until I mentioned it).
Then at the eleventh hour the USA pulled out of ratifying the trade agreement, subsequent to which the remaining countries have regrouped and entered into essentially the same agreement and that came into force just a few days ago on 30 December. As a result of the USA pulling out the pressure on NZ to increase its copyright period disappeared and so there was no need nor economic desire to increase it.
If in the analysis there was to be any malicious conflation of the benefits of copyright extension by Government in its report to suit an agenda, as you are claiming there is, it would because of the circumstances actually be contrary to the Government's interest. That because the Government would hope to be seen in the best light by the electorate (many of whom expressed anti-free trade views) by having the net gain to the economy appear as positive as possible. It would also hope for its own self satisfaction to get a positive looking outcome of analysis of the agreement it had committed to. So in the case of any malicious doctoring of the analysis in order to meet an agenda, the analysis would misrepresent the contribution of the copyright period as being a benefit, not a cost.
You asked me the likes of "After all, how many investment funding opportunities are you aware of, dealing with copyrights, really?" (I like your dismissive use of "really"). Well I do not know of any, not that I would likely have paid the required attention to see them. However, that is of no consequence as again you do not understand what was being said. I said that the costs were to the nation's economy and that a cost to the economy stifles investment in it. A nation's economy is all the concerns and resources of the nation which its prosperity relies on. So it nothing to do with investment in copyrights except to the very small place that investment in them might take place within the overwhelmingly larger rest of the whole economy.