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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..
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'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?
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
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!
It sounds like you're missing a bit of perspective. Everyone in the world has seen Hello magazine or something along those lines and comes to the conclusion that the people these laws are meant to protect are already obscenely overprivelidged. Until celebrity status gets a good kick in the teeth and gets put in its place, no one is going to have an ounce of sympathy. It's got nothing to do with evil pirates against poor innocent rights holders. It's just that everyone outside of the deep underground forced labour entertainment mines thinks the industry is taking the piss. You just can't have mutual respect without ... mutual respect :)
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.
On a related note, how does a "three strikes" law really make sense in non baseball cultures? Wouldn't it make more sense to have soccer (football) focused countries have a "two card" law (yellow warning then a red ejection)?
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.
Have you never heard of the RIAA???
..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?
"Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceedest on to three. Five is right out." - Amen
A soccer equivalent would probably be something like "if the record company detects an infringing download, a representative will fall to the floor screaming, rolling from side to side in agony, clutching his face with his hands, until a charge is laid; at that point the record company representative will stand up and go about his business".
add to this the fact that right holder is not necessarily the author. And the authors are as fucked as the rest.
"(*) 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.
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.
And any fakery will be met with cries of "Hollywood!" from the onlookers. Oh wait.
signature is pants
You assume that the rights holder is a super rich celeb. What if it's me? What if - unlikely as this sounds - it's your work that's being ripped off?
Are you actually unable to comprehend that this mechanism would punish me and thee (OK, me) in terms of our ability to control our own work?
Ah, never mind, it's quite beyond your comprehension. Get back to leeching your Mettalicahead, or whatever it is that you kids are always playing too loudly on my lawn.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
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.
How hard can it be to stop doing it after you've been hauled before two tribunals?
You *are* breaking the law....
Curious, in the states you are not guaranteed legal representation for civil infractions. Do you get adequate representation at these 'tribunals'?
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Dude... what century did you post this from?
It seems like every other story on Slashdot was about exactly that, not too long ago.
Only reason it's not in the news any more is 'cause things are getting even worse down here in Australia, so we're making you guys look good.
Are you sure? Where I live, the ticket is sent to the registered owner of the vehicle. In this case, the corp. It's then up to the owner to prove they weren't at the wheel and provide the identity of the driver.
mediocrity rules, man
...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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How hard can it be to stop doing it after you've been hauled before two tribunals?
So tell us, have you stopped beating your wife yet?
In case you can't tell, I'm pointing out the ridiculousness of telling someone to stop doing something when they were never doing it in the first place, and then punishing them after you tell them a third time when, again, they never did the deed for which you are punishing them.
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
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?
Just a note, but AC is correct.
People don't get punished for DOWNLOADING in the US, but for UPLOADING. I.E. 'making available'.
None of the RIAA stories are about people DOWNLOADING.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
Land of beautifull nature, Peter Jackson and crazy stuntmen.
/ The Arrow
"How lovely you are. So lovely in my straightjacket..." - Nny