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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
I can quite honestly say this is one of the most insane things I've red. Fortunatley for the population in nz, once evry one and their grandmas has lost internet connections, which should happen in about 3-5 weeks, they will have to see how stupid this is and redraw the law.
:p
Also an economic rescue pacage for isps with no customers should be prepered now
www.aleo.no
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?
I am repeating this ad nauseum but it's really the best, most effective solution.
1. Stop buying new music
2. Stop going to shows of new acts
3. Don't "pirate"[sic] music, just KILL the demand. P2P only lends credence, however tenuous, that they are "losing" money due to "theft"[sic].
4. Don't listen to top 40 radio
5. Did I mention stop uploading/downloading music on P2P networks? Boycott the big labels.
Bankrupt the RIAA(or whatever it's called in your respective country) members. Then, sanity will be restored to copyright.
Oh, in case you think your favorite label is an indie, remember this family tree - it's a little out of date but you'll see that a lot of "indie" labels you like, aren't! Check it out:
http://www.arancidamoeba.com/mrr/whoownswho2.html
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
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.
It was New Zealand on the Internet with the Candlestick!
Because all the other Anglo-Saxon countries still have the visage of a hereditary monarch on their coins. ;-)
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
So if you commit a burglary at night and use a flashlight, are you banned for life from ever using electricity? If you get caught dealing drugs and taking orders by cell phone, are you banned from ever having a telephone again?
Cutting someone off from access to communications technology for an indefinite term in modern society is a *very* harsh punishment. It's like these things all get written by some geriatric lawyer who's thinking "Those damn whippersnappers aren't doing anything important on that intarthingy anyway".
They can shut down independent musicians simply by saying so (like Shakespeare said "With but a prick, I damn him"). Furthermore, they can shut down anyone who legally downloads any independent work through Bittorrent (it's filesharing) just by claiming it violates their copyright.
None of these laws were ever about protecting artists. They are all about giving the established monopolies a method of protecting their predatory business practices.
Reminds me of a couple years ago when I created a myspace music page for 'music' created from 'cat [some file] > /dev/audio'. I uploaded two files, and on the third one, myspace claimed it was copyright and locked the page up. It's _still_ locked up. Years later. Because whatever the hell they use to determine copyright screwed up.
Wikipedia confirms, but since being made a life peer in 1983, that's now Baron King to you.
Which of course requires a similarly flippant American comment about how in the UK, "industrial baron" and "robber baron" and so on aren't just figures of speech!
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
"The controversial act provides 'Guilt Upon Accusation,"
The law is vaguely drafted, but requires ISPs to reasonably implement a disconnection policy. Now, I don't know about you, but since everyone thinks that immediate disconnection upon accusation is not reasonable, this is probably not a reasonable disconnection policy.
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 :/.
*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
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?
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.
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.
The citizens of NZ should ask for a constitutional amendment to include internet rights as a basic human right, just as Greece did in its 2001 constitution:
1. All persons have the right to information [...] 2. All persons have the right to participate in the Information Society. Facilitation of access to electronically transmitted information, as well as of the production, exchange and diffusion thereof, constitutes an obligation of the State [...]
Of course even if something is codified into the constitution it could be limited by law (as it does in the case above if you read the PDF) or not implemented at all, but it is in general a good idea even just for the sake of the symbolism itself to have internet rights codified into the constitution.
What defines somebody as an infringer?
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.