Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party

Broadband

While New Zealand lumbers towards speeds of 10-20 megabits per second across old copper wires, countries at the top of the OECD are targeting speeds between 100 megabits per second and one gigabit per second across fibre access.

1 - Using a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is irrelevant and 10 is critical; please rate the importance of an Internet-enabled digital future to New Zealand’s society and economy?

10 - The geographical isolation of New Zealand, plus the rapidly growing importance of creative, value-added production (as opposed to farming or manufacturing), makes international communication essential to our future economic health.

2 - Should the investment model for rolling out fibre access be private sector or public private partnership, and what is the appropriate role for government, both central and local?

A public private partnership. The appropriate role for government is to ensure access to all citizens and take into account that communications is a strategic national asset. If public money is to be invested then the public has a stake in the ownership. The public private partnership model has been used to wide success in various Scandinavian countries, where private homes have been able to get
government grants to defray the costs of installing broadband since as far back as 2001.

3 - Do you consider the existing international connectivity to be a bottleneck? If yes, what options would you pursue to deal with this?

New Zealand's existing infrastructure is a hindrance and an embarrassment. Given our answer to question 1, we believe that heavy and immediate investment is needed.

Infrastructure

Passive infrastructure, such as ducting and laying the fibre cable itself, can account for up to 70 percent of fibre access deployment costs.

4 - What policies would you support that would encourage co-investment and/or coordination in laying fibre cables?

As mentioned above, there is the potential to follow successful models that have already been applied in Europe. Maintaining a cutting edge quality of Internet connectivity ought to be a national project. To this end, we believe that the Swedish model of government subsidy for installation of broadband to private homes is an investment strategy that will repay itself with tremendous interest.

5 - Would you support requirements on duct access, sharing of fibre access inside buildings, and requirements to install fibre in new buildings?

Internet access needs to be considered a utility, and therefore subject to similar requirements as water and electricity. Yes, we believe that this measure should be supported in legislation.

The ALCP has not investigated the intracacies of the network market, but we are willing to consider suggestions that could achieve our goals as stated above. 

Digital Divide

The term ‘Digital Divide’ refers to the gap between those with effective access to digital and information technology and those without. The recent World Internet Project survey said that Digital Divide issues in New Zealand are driven by household income and location. The more rural you are, and the poorer you are, the less likely you are to have good access to the Internet.

7 - How will your party assist the poor in New Zealand to get decent access to computers and the Internet, and what will your party do to ensure every school, library and polytechnic has fibre access?

The Swedish model for Internet development involves government funding to ensure high quality Internet connectivity in schools and libraries. The ALCP will create economic prosperity by saving millions of dollars currently lost to cannabis prohibition. We also offer the potential of a new cannabis industry which will create jobs, assisting citizens in more difficult socioeconomic conditions to have a better life. As the most forward-thinking party contesting this election, we foresee an opportunity to invest this wasted money in Internet development.

8 - The rural sector is often called the engine room of our economy – how will you improve rural connectivity and access to high-speed broadband?

By reducing expensive and dirty dairy farming and developing the hemp industry. This will save our forests, reduce pollution, and provide for all the basics of life - building material, textiles, bio-fuel, food, and medicine. The low carbon footprint resulting from the development of the hemp industry will enrich and enhance our rural sector, easing the cost of high-speed broadband.

Copyright

Copyright law lets people benefit economically from their creative work. It should balance the rights of individual users with those of the copyright holders but in recent times significant concerns have arisen that the balance has shifted towards copyright holders as society grapples with the implications of digital media.

9 - How far should Government go to protect the interests of copyright owners against the rights of citizens and do you think our copyright laws are being unduly influenced by the US entertainment industries?

Citizens must be allowed the right to backup their valuable programs and other files. While creative work is crucial to the New Zealand economy and will become more so, a clear distinction needs to be made between copyright infringement and theft. The deliberate blurring of this distinction by American powers such as the RIAA must be discouraged.

10 - As a result of industry pressure, the Government has delayed Section 92A of the amended Copyright Act, which will require ISPs to terminate the accounts of repeat copyright infringers. What is your position on s92A and how would you resolve the issues?

Care must be taken not to allow knee-jerk reactions that result from industry pressure. We believe that a scale of fines that increase with each successive infringement is the fairest way to deal with this.

11 - Will you commit to a balanced approach to copyright reform that reflects the views of all New Zealanders by pledging: to respect the rights of creators and consumers; to not support law change that undermines or weakens copyright user rights; and to fully consult with New Zealanders before introducing law changes or signing international treaties that would impact copyright user rights?

The ALCP is highly skeptical towards international treaties because of the foreign pressure that has been put on New Zealand to adopt the grossly unjust system of cannabis prohibition - pressure that Labour and National leaders have spinelessly caved in to. New Zealanders must be consulted before decisions are made in their name - we believe that this is an undeniable right of any citizen living in a democratic country.

12 - Should there be a first-principles review of New Zealand’s Copyright Law and, if so, when would you begin this work?

The ongoing debate that has been caused by easy access to Internet file-sharing sites is evidence that New Zealand's Copyright Law is broken. The ALCP is the most forward thinking party in New Zealand, and therefore we support doing as much as possible to prepare ourselves for the Digital Age. We have fallen badly behind other OECD countries in this regard; a complete overhaul is needed as soon as the Cannabis laws are fixed.

Cybersafety

Connection to the Internet exposes the public of all ages to inappropriate material, online predators, and net nasties such as viruses, worms, Trojans and malicious software.

13 - Last election there were pledges of 1,000 more cops on the street. What about online? How many more cops do we need in cyberspace? And will you increase the capability of the Police E-crime Lab, Internal Affairs Censorship and Anti-Spam Units, Customs, and the Centre for Critical Infrastructure Protection?

The ALCP believes that the greatest problem with Internet crime is the generally low level of computing education that our citizens have. Ensuring that the population has access to education is of a higher priority than strengthening law enforcement. Of course, the ALCP would support legislation and funding that allow the necessary action to protect New Zealanders, as long as this are balanced with due consideration to personal rights and privacy.

14 - Does NZ need to establish an NZCERT (Computer Emergency Response Team) and if yes, what role should Government play in the establishment, operation and funding of an NZCERT?

We would consult with industry leaders and citizens to determine this.

Privacy

The UK Government is planning to spend £12 billion on a database to monitor and store all its citizens’ Internet browsing, emails and phone calls, in the face of huge concerns globally about privacy breaches surrounding Government and corporate data.

15 - What is your party’s view of the UK approach? Are you in favour of more, or less, intrusive actions by Government and enforcement agencies? What will your party do to ensure the privacy of each individual’s identity and information online?

Given the demonstrated tendency of government to harrass and imprison people who use cannabis responsibly, the ALCP places an extremely high importance on privacy. The British approach is a gross and unneccessary abuse of human rights. Recent cases of government officials losing storage media containing the confidential information of hundreds of thousands of citizens is simply more evidence that government cannot be trusted to competently deal with this issue. Big Brother style surveillance is incompatible with the values of a modern democracy.

IPv6

The Internet is currently reliant on IPv4 as the network layer IP addressing protocol. The entire IPv4 address space amounts to around 4 billion addresses available globally and exhaustion of this address space is likely to occur within the next two years.

Governments are increasingly concerned with the lethargy of conversion to IPv6, the next generation of IP addressing, and the USA and Australian Governments are showing determination to migrate, particularly in the area of their Defence Forces.

16 - What steps do you intend taking to accelerate the deployment of networks using IPv6 in New Zealand, particularly inside Government?

Increased funding to train experts to deal with this problem is necessary.

Convergence

The Internet and traditional broadcast media are converging and the Government is reviewing broadcasting and content regulation. The boundaries are breaking down between digital and analogue worlds, across business models, delivery channels and access devices and fundamental differences between traditional broadcast and the Internet need to be addressed.

17 - How will your party address the issues of regulation of content in New Zealand as content becomes more and more available online and outside of traditionally regulated broadcasting channels?

The current system of censorship is a Sisyphean exercise in futility. In the same way that government has no right to deny responsible users access to cannabis, it has no right to determine what is and is not subject to censure. The nature of the Internet means that regulation of content is futile.

18 - Do we need a converged regulator of broadcasting and telecommunications, and if so, should there be two such converged regulators, one for content and the other for infrastructure?

This question would require consultation with industry leaders and experts to determine the logistics and funding required by the two alternatives. Then a decision could be made as to which better suited the needs of the industry.

19 - How do you see the increasing delivery of media content over the Internet affecting the way content creation is funded by Government?

Content creation funded by government always reflects the propaganda that is in fashion at any given time. For example, modern government propaganda involves endless reports of cannabis linked to guns, losers and violence. The ALCP, as New Zealand's strongest defender of the human right to liberty and self-determination, believes that citizens must always be allowed to give and receive all sides of issues relevant to them. The ALCP would like to see funding for creative content distributed more widely to groups outside the mainstream.