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New Zealand Reintroduces 3 Strikes Law
An anonymous reader writes "The New Zealand government has reintroduced a newly rewritten addition to the Copyright Act which will allow rights' holders to send copyright notices to ISPs, and force them to pass them on to account holders. Section 92A of the Copyright Act will allow rights holders to take people who have been identified as infringers more than three times in front of a Copyright Tribunal. This law will allow the Copyright Tribunal to hand down either a $15,000 fine or six months internet disconnection. The law specifies that the account holder himself is responsible for what is downloaded via the account, and doesn't make allowances for identifying the actual copyright infringer if there are multiple computers tied to an account."
There goes any hope of migrating to New Zealand once I become financially independent.
Kid-proof tablet..
"New Zealand Reintroduces 3 Strikes Law.... will allow rights holders to take people who have been identified as infringers more than three times in front of a Copyright Tribunal."
Unless '3 strikes law' has become the phrase for all N-strike laws.
There is always a bigger fish.
On the face of it, this at least looks better than the UK law. Over here they want to make it three accusations and you're out. At least the New Zealand law is back up by due process and has to be done by a tribunal.
On the down side, I guess it is tied to the account owner rather than the person who did it, which could lead to parents taking the punishment because of their kids.
Well if the 'owner' of the line gets in trouble, and not the person using it, seems like having a throwaway shelf company as the billing contact on your broadband is the way to go!
Guess they'll be seeing increased numbers of appeals where the majority of those disconnected own an access point.
Which were not password-protected.
Might see just one good thing come out of this mess.
Does this exist yet? We need a truly anonymous network for P2P transactions, even if it is slower, being free would be nice too.
(although sadly, I can imagine our pals the kiddie porn crew making use of it and having whatever it is, outlawed)
I'm damn sure that if I found some ripping off my work(*), that I wouldn't want to be reduced to sending them three "Pretty please stop" letters before finally being given the chance to inconvenience them temporarily.
Clearly the NZ government is heavily biased in favour of the leechers and pirates, and hates rights owners with a passion.
(*) Work is something that you produce in return for renumeration, once you move out of your parents' basement.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I've hit pause on all my torrents :(
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Will this allow any rights holder to give ISP notice or only large corporations?
So, how does an Internet connection set-up with a corporation/partnership/etc. work?
If I am likely to run afoul of this law, what is to stop me from forming a Corp, running the ISP connection under that Corp's name, and when caught, folding up that Corp and re-doing the whole thing with another Corp.?
BTW, assigning your car to a Corp is also a way to defeat photo-radar cameras, as their is no database connection between the car and the driver.
The fact that they weren't able to use the word "breasts" in THAT article, to me, implies that New Zeeland is a completely fucked up place.
FRA: STFU GTFO
When was the last time a US citizen was punished for copyright violations on DOWNLOADED materials? Enforcing any law on what has been DOWNLOADED means snooping on every connection... heard of that happening in the US?
Actually the $15,000NZ and the six month disconnection are just the maximums the Copyright Tribunal can hand down. The summary makes it seem like they are the default judgements: they aren't. Rights holders will need to prove that they were damaged severly to get awarded this. Really, the maximum penalty of $15,000NZ for effectively three infringements is tiny compared to judgements in the US against people like Jammie Thomas.
As much as I despise three strikes laws like this, at least this legislation has judicial oversight and the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. As I understand, there will be a fee associated fo lodging and infringement notice, so it won't be a free for all for the MPAA or RIAA (or their NZ counterparts). However, penalties for false notices haven't been addressed yet, although organisations like the Creative Freedom Foundation are pushing to have this addressed before it becomes law.
Why did I find out about this via slashdot before I find out via local news? Government thinking of telling people? Or am I actually under a rock. (Entirely possible however.)
Next stop Australia.
*sigh*
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
"The law specifies that the account holder himself is responsible for what is downloaded via the account, and doesn't make allowances for identifying the actual copyright infringer if there are multiple computers tied to an account.""
Hmmmm. So if, say, the Ministry of Defense is the account holder for all the employee Internet connections, and one person within the MoD downloads in an infringing manner, the entire MoD will be disconnected from the Internet for 6 months?
Could be interesting!
Might make for an interesting development if collectives form to hold ISP accounts, rather than individuals....
A far better solution to copyright violations: abolish copyright entirely.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Since they don't care about _who_ actually downloaded the content only who owns the account and pays the bill for the ISP, could you not use this law against innocent people or as a weapon of choice against your enemies by tapping their wireless networks to download your torrents and media?
I propose that everyone in NZ goes out and cracks every wireless network they can and do just that, show them the backwards thinking of not caring about going after the actual infringing party but the account owner.
Dear Law Makers,
Fuck you.
Sincerely,
People on the Internet.
So what is the status of this 'tribunal'? The ones proposed in the UK equivalent won't be proper courts - I hope for the NZers' sake that their tribunal is different.
This is entirely different from the 3-strike laws of other countries, where your account is pulled immediately (3 strikes refer to different, infringments that may be unrelated to each other) and where you have no recourse before an impartial court.
New Zealand's law officers have nothing to do so they spend most of their time turning the country into a police state. Nice place, beautiful landscape, so sad about the authorities. I wonder when they will start wearing funny mustaches
..you know what? I'm one of those honest dufuses that actually purchase music, dvds, blu-rays and games legally, and have done so most of my life. Other than that - I use Open Source a lot, and basically all the alternatives to the commercial software.
But hearing about 3 strikes, and the HATRED and witch hunt on ordinary people all the time, makes me think - am I the only one thinking...soon I'm not going to give a f*ck and just pirate the hell out of them just because I can?
If they keep this up - I'm telling you...they're digging their own grave!
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Assume you write up a generic example of a "letter to a member of parliament". You know, with the usual fluff people include in them. Then publish it on the internet with all rights reserved. Then a friend of yours, who has no rights to redistribute the work, emails it to members of parliament. They open their email client in the morning and bam, they have just downloaded illegally distributed copyright-infringing material. Which is why a law like this cannot work, target the distributors not the receivers.
Why are we introducing law that enforces control of a product produced by a predominantly overseas industry? Shouldn't the wishes and rights of Kiwis come before the rights of an overseas entity that wants us to keep sending our cash over to them, even though their business model is slowly but surely becoming defunct?
What exactly are the ISPs' responsiblities in this new bill in terms of storing, monitoring and reporting on copyright traffic? This is not mentioned in the article and seems like an important gap.
The law seems absurd. What are the penalties for willful ignorance?
Account holders aren't gate keepers. You cannot hold them responsible for their internet connection's use any more than you hold a car owner responsible instead of the driver. "Sorry gov, you car was nicked and was used to commit a hit and run, your under arrest". Law cannot work like this. I'm sure one of the politicians isn't tech savy enough to have a secure home network, someone please download something copied via their network, then report what's happened with the politicians home network. I hope I'm misunderstanding this because I'd like to think law makers aren't this stupid.
Given that companies such as Google is caching copyrighted material several zillion times a second this new law could be a good way for those who don't like Google to get it kicked off the internet.
Or is the law designed to give rights to and protections to corporations that are not available to mere people?
is good for you
> The law specifies that the account holder himself is responsible for what is downloaded via the account, and doesn't make allowances for identifying the actual copyright infringer...
It just takes three times of parking outside the houses of the law makers who voted for this, hack their wifi and download copyrighted material.
How hard can it be to stop doing it after you've been hauled before two tribunals?
You *are* breaking the law....
No sig today...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sippenhaft
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
I've long been enamored with and have long wanted to emigrate to New Zealand and, in spite of this story, I'm still interested in getting down there.
I have a lot of web resources about emigrating but I can't for the life of me figure out how to move there and be sure I'll have a job when I get there (I'm a developer / sysadmin). I don't see a lot of tech jobs so I have no confidence about initiating a process to move there.
If you're from New Zealand, what is the best chance of success for emigrating?
Selah.ca. Pause, and calmly think on that.
...exactly this, and have done it for 8 years or more. Wonder why they're re-inventing the wheel? It will be painful, I assure you :).
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Much as I deplore overly restrictive copyrights themselves, holding the people who pay for the data transfer responsible for what is being transferred makes sense. What we need to change is the restrictive copyrights themselves (terms should expire much sooner), and who is actually responsible for the infringement.
In particular, the person doing the downloading should not usually be held responsible. I should be able to assume that anything that's accessible on the Internet for downloading without a password is something I have an implicit license to download. If there is no license, then the person owning the connection where it is being offered without a password should be held responsible (but only if downloading actually has taken place).
Holding the person downloading the information responsible is bad, because it basically creates a huge legal uncertainty. Am I now responsible for verifying the copyright status of every video on YouTube? What if someone puts a copyrighted image or video into an ad on some page that I visit?
There goes any hope of migrating to New Zealand once I become financially independent.
good call there HD channels suck there
Land of beautifull nature, Peter Jackson and crazy stuntmen.
/ The Arrow
"How lovely you are. So lovely in my straightjacket..." - Nny