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NZ File-Sharers, Remixers Guilty Upon Accusation
An anonymous reader writes "Next month, New Zealand is scheduled to implement Section 92 of the Copyright Amendment Act. The controversial act provides 'Guilt Upon Accusation,' which means that if a file-sharer is simply accused of copyright infringement he/she will be punished with summary Internet disconnection. Unlike most laws, this one has no appeal process and no punishment for false accusation, because they were removed after public consultation. The ISPs are up in arms and now artists are taking a stand for fair copyright."
Sign the petition against it!
cat <file> | mpg123 -
*snip*
Internet service provider liability
92A Internet service provider must have policy for terminating accounts of repeat infringers
(1) An Internet service provider must adopt and reasonably implement a policy that provides for termination, in appropriate circumstances, of the account with that Internet service provider of a repeat infringer.
(2) In subsection (1), repeat infringer means a person who repeatedly infringes the copyright in a work by using 1 or more of the Internet services of the Internet service provider to do a restricted act without the consent of the copyright owner.
*/snip*
Interpret it as you will, I personally don't see it as a "I'm an idiot MPAA lawyer and I say that whoever was on 123.231.6.250 at 1850hrs NZDT downloaded the latest Britney music video on the youtoobsmachine so therefore he/she/it is guilty!!! Jail for a trillion years!"* like the FUD being bandied about. It's flawed and retarded, sure, but it's not a sign of the apocalypse. Maybe some of the wannabe-faux-lawyers here can decipher it otherwise?
As I read it, the idiots at *AA still have to complain with a cease and desist orgy, the ISP's will just be legally bound to give multiple warnings before disconnecting a user.
As it currently is in NZ, a few ISP's will send you a warning and you simply respond with "NZ is none of their business or juristiction, tell them to bugger off and read the Berne Convention" and said ISP's will tend to leave it at that. Other ISP's shrug and say "not our responsibility Mr RIAA-tard, so kindly go and stab yourself in the face with a cricket bat." This change seeks to sort this situation out to make things clearer for all parties involved, it's just a shame that it seemingly puts too much power on the side of the accuser. Still, not as much power as the uninformed blogots seem to think.
My personal feeling is that there is a disconnect between the *AA, their friends and the consumers. They want to keep throwing physical media at us. What did the SACD vs DVDA battle show us (and DCC vs MD before that)? People were satisfied with mp3's or CD's. "Good enough" is exactly that, especially when "good enough" goes hand in hand with "easy". HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray was the same deal: Plain ol DVD is good enough for most people. Once they bump up to a 50"+ screen, then sure, the resolution vs viewing distance is required. Apart from that, the only interest I had in either format was as a mass storage media. And I still don't want to sit through 10 minutes of "Downloading is stealing" BS when I just want to watch the damn movie that I paid for.
The *AA crowd missed the boat on capitalising on the internet as a delivery platform, and because of their litigious nonsense, we're probably 5-10 years behind where we should be. Assuming an appropriate platform would have driven a higher rate of broadband expansion than we've had. Spotify without the stupid country requirements might be a good start.
* Jail for a trillion years in NZ is like three months real jail time
That would be the former member of Parliament Judith Tizard (she lost her seat during the last General Election in November). Now would be a really good time for all New Zealand based Slashdot readers to contact Steven Joyce (who is the minister for Communications and Information Technology). It would probably also be a good idea to contact your local electorate MP to voice your concern.
FYI, Canada doesn't have its own version of the DMCA (yet). Let me try to do a timeline of what happened to it.
In september 2008, Bill C-61 died on the table when Prime Minister Stephen Harper decided to dissolve parliament (he hoped that his then-minority government would come out of the election as a victorious majority government).
His party (the Conservative Party of Canada) declared in their election that a new bill would be introduced containing pretty much the same provisions. It was never really discussed during the election period, though.
Pretty much everyone expected to see that follow-up bill soon, but Harper did not win his bet and got yet another minority government. He never had a chance to introduce the new bill; barely weeks after the election, the 3 main opposition parties declared that they intended to bring down the governing party in the first motion of non-confidence to come. We then learned that they had signed an accord to form a minority coalition in order to take power when Stephen Harper will have to dissolve parliament again.
So Harper prorogated (ended early) the parliamentary session, which means that when parliament opens its doors again in late january, the conservatives are at high risk of losing power (either the coalition takes over, or parliament is dissolved and we have elections yet again). If Harper doesn't find a way out of that, we will have the very happy consequence of the Canadian DMCA's final death.
With but a "spot" (also meant a bit of blood). The term was used interchangeably with "prick" (which also had the double meaning of a stab wound) in that scene. For context, this was from the play "Julius Caesar". Mark Antony had previously spoken out in Julius Caesar's funeral against the assassins of Julius Caesar (who was earlier stabbed to death by a number of Roman Senators including Brutus, his former best friend). In this scene, Antony, Octavius Caesar, and Lepidus draw up a list of people to execute (including the assassins above). The "spot" is the chilling act of Antony writing in the name of his nephew and thus marking him for death. Definitely appropriate for this slashdot story.
In 2008 Judith Tizard championed an amendment to the Copyright Act which requires ISPs to develop policies to terminate the Internet account of repeat copyright infringers. She defended this position robustly when meeting Internet lobby groups, saying it is necessary to protect New Zealand artists, and referred to the release of New Zealand film Sione's Wedding, which, she claimed, was damaged by unlawful distribution on the Internet.
Did anyone actually see Sione's Wedding? Gods. That film was not damaged by unlawful distribution on the Internet, it was damaged by the fact that it was a terrible film.
Firstly, this bill is being brought in by the opposition party in parliament (Labour). Secondly, the current government has only recently been instated as of November 19th. So, basically, the bill was going to be introduced either way, and the next opportunity to vote is three years away. A better approach for concerned NZers is to approach their local body representative directly. There is a list here.