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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."
Just download a phone directory and spam everyone with generated accusations. They would either have to disconnect the whole country or rethink this utter stupidity.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
How is it that the other Anglo-Saxon countries are all WORSE than the US when it comes to digital rights and freedoms? Canada's version of the DMCA is worse, NZ has this, Australia has its wonderful new Great Barrier Firewall planned, and don't even get me started on Britain and encryption. Seriously?
More proof that politicians pass laws to please their political donors and lobbyists, without understanding their implications. These infringement notices have been shown to be unreliable and easily spoofed.
http://dmca.cs.washington.edu/
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080605-study-paints-grim-picture-of-automated-dmca-notice-accuracy.html
http://torrentfreak.com/study-reveals-reckless-anti-piracy-antics-080605/
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/05/the-inexact-science-behind-dmca-takedown-notices/
So now any New Zealander can have their internet connection cut if anyone knows their IP address: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/95089
So today's Political Enemy of the Internet Award goes to New Zealand's Judith Tizard, who joins Australia's Stephen Conroy and Britains Andy Burnham. I could handle it when all politicians did was rort the system, but this is getting really annoying. I don't recall voting for any of this stuff, and I'll put them last on the ballot next time.
Reminds me of a couple years ago when I created a myspace music page for 'music' created from 'cat [some file] > /dev/audio'. I uploaded two files, and on the third one, myspace claimed it was copyright and locked the page up. It's _still_ locked up. Years later. Because whatever the hell they use to determine copyright screwed up.
It's like these things all get written by some geriatric lawyer who's thinking "Those damn whippersnappers aren't doing anything important on that intarthingy anyway".
umm.. they're written by lobbyists for the music industry.. an industry of which "geriatric" is a gross understatement. They've failed to keep up with technology and now they're sinking fast. If they could get the Internet banned outright, they would.
How we know is more important than what we know.
You are missing the subtle half of the plan.
If the policy implemented by an ISP is found upon later inspection to be too lenient on the 'evil pirates' then the ISP becomes legally responsible for the copyright infringement.
Then again, if someone gets incorrectly disconnected, I suspect the ISP could at worst be forced to reinstate their connection, IF they can prove this.
So, the only 'sane' thing an ISP can do is disconnect anyone at the slightest hint of trouble - anything else could result in the blame falling in their lap.
I bet the ISPs are very happy at providing free policing services to the music/movie industries.. after all, they make SO much more money :/.
An interesting question is what happens if a companies internet link is used to download 'copyrighted material'?
Surely by this same measure, that companies link will be removed and they will not be allowed to have one? That should make staying in business interesting.
Should, for example, some foreign 'pirate' decide to share a large quantity of copyright material, log the IPs downloading it, scan for NZ companies static IP addresses, then forward all of that data to the ISPs/Authorities involved it would create quite a problem..
Could ALL the large companies/govt. dept. in New Zealand guarantee none of their staff will do such a thing?
That is after all much the same situation as cutting off a families internet connection when their 10 year old discovers music downloading before their parents notice (quite a common occurrence I suspect..).
yeap, we're the great fudgers - we avoid confrontation, heck, recent study showed that if New Zealand was offered a benevolent dictator and ran things better than now - most would ok it.
Sure, there will be a few loud people who will kick up a stink, but the rest of NZ will comtinue moving. The anti-smacking bill isn't going to get removed, nor any of the other reforms introduced by Labour. Both parties talk about change but the reality is that they keep the status quo once they get it - then add more of their own laws to the sporgusboard.
Its unfortunate that the green's are the only part who have their IT sorted out - and yet their economic and social policy royally sucks. How come there are so many idiots on the right - specifically, complete ludites when it comes to IT?
I can't help thinking there's a larger issue at play here. It seems that governments the world over have suddenly realised that we were serious about a space beyond government control and are taking steps to "rectify" this and using the likes of the MPAA/RIAA as their diversion. I wonder if the various industry associations know they're being used? Let's look at what we've got so far:
And that's just off the top of my head. Are the governments becoming threatened by the Internet's open architechture? More to the point, how far are they going to go to destroy it before we decide enough is enough? The biggest problem for them, as I see it, is that the Internet, with millions of people in open and free contact, has the power to keep them honest. They don't seem to like that, do they?
Resistance is futile. Reactance buggers it up.
If you are guilty upon association for file sharing then...
Share only CC licensed works and when the ISP cuts you off sue them and the government for rights infringement for preventing you from sharing Creative Commons works.
Also use P2P for FLOSS sharing and again sue them if the cut you off.
The real useful function of the labels was traditionally separating the hits from the duds. They weren't perfect at it, of course, but that was their job. They seem to have forgotten their job function, however, and instead chase trends ("hey this singer is hot, let's sign a dozen more like her!"), interfere with the artists ("we think your song would be more marketable if...."), and generally just try to get away with ripping off as many people as possible ("pay for play" musician law, "losing" the addresses of well known artists so as to be unable to forward on payments, P2P lawsuits, etc).
One of the things I like about Amie Street is that the users take on the label's job. Songs start out as free and rise in price to a maximum of 98 cents as people buy them. So if you buy a 98 cent song, you're guaranteed to have something that many people like. Otherwise, you could buy a free/very-low-cost song, taking a risk that it is as good as the song preview makes it out to be, and not risk much money. With the $15 that you might use to buy one 12-song CD, you could buy 15 hits and 6 nickel-priced possible hits. 21 songs versus 12 songs and that's not even counting free songs you could take a chance on.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
New Zealand was on the top of my non-crazy countries to move to list (here - NSFW, maybe) in nine months. Any other suggestions out there?
Silver Clipboard: Time Management Tips
Most (non-troll) slashdotters would be quite in agreement with all the Greens 'net policies and get a comfortable feeling that these guys actually understand and like the 'net.
The Main Stream Media tries damn hard to portray the Greens as dope smoking hippy nutters, but thats because they're the only party in parliament not deep in the pockets of big business.
If you actually look closely, the Greens are the only ones that give a shit about the environment, freedom, the poor and little guy. The rest of them only care about campaign funds, and a recursive frenzy between the media irrelavent sensationalized "human interest" stories and the politicians saying whatever ill-thought out thing that will make them look good on TV. Law and Order is a favourite.