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NZ Illegal Downloading Crackdown Law In Effect
First time accepted submitter sfranklin writes "As of Sept 1 at midnight, 'anyone caught downloading copyrighted content illegally could face fines of up to $15,000 and have their internet cut off' in New Zealand. You don't even have to do the deed yourself. The 'account holder needs to know what's going on even if they themselves don't do anything online ...' Scary stuff, although I wonder how much actual enforcement is likely to happen."
This should snuff out the last vestiges of culture in New Zealand. The RIAA's own recent study found downloaders are their best customers. If this law is effective in stopping downloaders, the New Zealand music industry should collapse completely. That will be funny!
1. All Content is Copyright by default.
2. How do you distinguish the legal from the illegal content?
I'd invest a couple of bucks a month to rent a seedbox in Burkina Faso or Tonga.
I haven't been able to hit 5Mbps for 3-4 years (it's not much, but I'm in rural New Zealand), and I've never been able to stream video in high quality, but tonight I'm totally able to. My ping is only 25ms, and I never thought it would be possible to have a ping so low. Now I can play games online!
I was against it, but, maybe it's not such a bad thing? What do you guys think?
Except that it's practically impossible for someone to be driving your car without you knowing about it.
Unless they were driving it illegally, in which case you'd have a total defense.
Does an equivalent defense exist for internet usage? If so, then there's a simple solution:
Every day or so, submit a filing to the NZ Police, to the affect of:
"I have reason to believe, having just reviewed my logs, that at some point on [day], a person or persons without authorization to access my WiFi probably downloaded copyrighted material. Should you wish to investigate further, these logs will be kept available for an officer to collect in person, until my next review in about 24 hours' time."
Insist upon a report number every time (hint: they won't give you one. They'll give you an "information number" instead, which means "any person quoting this number is wasting our time").
Then, you'll always have a complete defense!
CAPTCHA: idealism
here is some good reading by a leading NZ IP lawyer, on the new law...
http://lawgeeknz.posterous.com/copyright-cheapskates
and http://lawgeeknz.posterous.com/nzs-copyright-proposal-guilty-until-you-prove
The NSW police in Australia are being taken to court this month for pirating a few thousand copies of some terminal emulation software that really should have been replaced a decade and a half ago and is licenced at an insane price per seat for what is effectively abandonware. So there you go, even the police force does it.
While nice in theory, it has a downside... I'm originally from NZ but haven't lived there in a long time. When I did though, I was once talking to a guy on IRC who was pretty seriously talking about doing some rather nasty things involving explosives and a jet liner... While I couldn't be certain if he was serious or not, I decided to do the right thing and let the police know about it.
What happened for doing my civic duty? Well, the police turn up at my house with a search warrant citing "attempted murder and breach of the telecommunications act" (interesting combo, but yes, that's what it said) and took all my computers away to "investigate". Several months later, I finally got them back, with the HDD wiped on a couple and the power switch physically broken on one.
I made a complaint to the police complaints authority, but was essentially ignored the whole time.
Only minor plus was I got in the Southland Times (newspaper) and it raised a fair bit of attention with the general public (enough that people recognised me on the street for a few months)
Back on the topic at hand: If you did do something like you suggest, I'd expect similar treatment would ensue...
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