Slashdot Mirror
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."
Oh don't worry. THEY will lobby/bribe 3 strikes laws into existence pretty much everywhere. Won't be a reason not to move anywhere, because everybody will have one.
Sure, they might encounter some resistance but they'll try until they will succeed; see France and New Sealand and Britain and so on.
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)
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.)
I read the article and all it specifies is for "copying material". Does that mean uploading, or also downloading, or what? What if it is for downloading?
We have become so accustomed to think copyrighted material = songs or movies. How many times do we stop to think that web page we're looking at, with 20 different .gifs or .jpegs might be a violation? Are those lolcat pictures properly licensed? If I email a few, will I be in violation of the distribution part?
And what about text?
This is what is so insane of copyright, and specifically of criminalizing it. Because it makes 99.999% of the populace guilty, and then it's purely up to the state to use it on a person when they feel like it. 3 strikes and you're out of you mind if you think this is a fair deal. Fuck you, I'd rather live in a free and open society, not one where the next step is to consider libraries copyright thieves for providing a copymachine near the books.
Honestly, this legislation is but a foot in the door. MPAA and RIAA rather not waste their own resources with civil trials, they'd rather waste the taxpayer's resources to prosecute people and put the fear in them, the populace's own money used against them. What a load.
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).
Ensuring that it's mainly useful for large corporations rather than any smaller artists.
at least this legislation has judicial oversight
With fundamentally unethical laws like this judicial oversight doesn't make up for it, and the lack of democratic and social foundation for the laws invalidates their existence.
It's become obvious that the disastrous abomination of a legal experiment called 'copyright' needs to be completely abolished to protect a free and open society. The corrupting influence it has on courts and politics simply isn't possible to tolerate in a civilized society.
"(*) Work is something that you produce in return for renumeration, once you move out of your parents' basement." ...and therein lies your FAIL. You do not even know what work is, which does not come as a suprise.
Work is actually something you do, not something you produce. Something may be produced as a result of work, but it is not itself, work.
You see, this is the problem with people like yourself, you believe it's acceptable to do a small amount of work to produce something, and then profit off that small amount of work indefinitely without actually doing any real work afterwards, or at least doing so infrequently. You believe that you shouldn't have to do much work but everyone else who does actually work for a living should pay for your lazy lifestyle, you believe they should pay for an amount of work you did some time ago and have already been paid for many times over. No, what you want, is to be paid for doing a little work initially, and then get paid for not doing any work thereafter, you are a scourge on society.
Don't try and pretend the people on the side of strong copyright are the hard working ones and the pirates are not, that's bollocks. The hard workers are the pirates who do not see why they should have to work 37hrs a week, 5 days a week, every week, so you can work for a few weeks every few years and do nothing in between, living off your copyright.
If people are pirating your work, then, cry more, do some work they can't pirate, provide a service- sing live, perform continued development or whatever it is you do, actually work for a living.
Ensuring that it's mainly useful for large corporations rather than any smaller artists.
Even the maximum fine is going to be quite trivial for a major corporation and can you really see a broadcaster, record or movie company being taken off the Internet for 6 hours, let alone 6 months, how ever much copyright infringement they get up to?