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."

Comments

$15,000NZ is just the maximum

[NimbleSquirrel]

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.

Re:Time a truly anonymous network for P2P

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Well, the point of such a thing would be that it is not possible to ban/detect without also banning any and all VPN, HTTPS, TLS and other "legit" Internet traffic. A properly designed successor to BitTorrent, Gnutella, Usenet, Freenet and Tor would by definition require banning of the whole Internet to stop it.

Not that the villains known as politicians and "lawmakers" won't eventually try that too, this whole actual (as opposed to being-paid-pompous-lip-service-to-but-in-practice-next-to-impossible) "freedom of information" basic-element-of-democracy thing has been a thorn in their sides from the get go. They and similarly interested big-media and big "entertainment" mega-corps would like their control of the narrative back, thank you very much, even if it somehow involves our dead bodies as one of the steps to get there. And the sooner we get to the ammo-boxes stage of the "boxes-of-change" sequence the more likely things will be decided one way or the other for better or worse, this of course amongst many other pending outrages and societal devolutions that have been galloping ahead of late heading in the same general direction of utter tyrannical dystopia or general bloodshed.

Re:Aw, piss.

[rolfwind]

Honestly, I think this is one of their moments. Considering the Draconian punishments in most other civilized countries for copyright infringement, this is very reasonable. 3 warnings, then you go to jail and at most have to pay 15,000... which is about 1/100th of what US courts are handing out?

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.

Re:Aw, piss.

[Smegly]

Oh don't worry. THEY will lobby/bribe 3 strikes laws into existence pretty much everywhere.

Know your enemy. "THEY" are the International Intelectual Property Alliance (IIPA), and they have the full political clout of the US government behind them - working to subvert democratic process in just about every country in the world via three strikes/no presumption of innocence for the sheeple. As one small example of many, check out their recent "report" on Spain. Witness the resulting political clout and of course, the result they were after with local laws against P2P. Spain is the 8th largest economy in the world - not so easy to boss around if unwilling to cooperate. UK, France appear to be more than happy to bend over for IIPA without any fight - at least Spain managed to keep judicial process in the loop, for now at least.
All of it does not bode well for tiny countries like NZ that do not stand much chance against combined international coercion from the "IIPA Club".

Re:Better than the UK

[holloway]

Hi folks, I'm a New Zealander who's been following this law as part of an organisation called the Creative Freedom Foundation (I don't know what I can do to prove my credentials to an international audience... er, lowish /. id#?) Anyway here's the gist of the new proposal,

• People are innocent until proven guilty either by the Copyright Tribunal or the courts.
• Termination can only be ordered by the courts, not the Copyright Tribunal
• No special sanctions on right holders for false or malicious allegations.
• Penalties of up to $15,000 may be awarded by the Copyright Tribunal. This is in keeping with the maximum of the Disputes Tribunal.
• The courts have existing maximum fines that are already established under the Copyright Act.
• New definition for ISP that is narrower and excludes organisations such as businesses and universities. Too early to tell what this means for shared connections such as internet cafes, open WiFi, etc.
• It says "right holders will pay a fee per notice" although as regulations not set might be premature to read too much into that. This is as opposed to a process that allowed many notices on a flat-rate for rights-holders.
• No resolution to the overlap with s92C disputes. As outlined in our submission s92C lacks a counternotice procedure and due process. Further due to technology changes there may be no functional difference between an s92C or s92A dispute.
• Privacy is maintained by anonymizing details until a verdict is reached by the tribunal.

It's not a conventional "3 strike" process which is based on Guilt Upon Accusation, this is a tribunal system (as you asked, an extension of the existing Copyright Tribunal) to deal with copyright infringement online. If you have any questions about this let me know. Cheers.