Slashdot Mirror
1st Strikes Issued Under New Zealand Anti-Piracy Laws
Master Moose writes "New Zealand's largest ISPs confirmed yesterday that they had received their first notices under the government's new copyright regime, which came into effect on September 1. All the notices received so far appear to be from the Recording Industry Association of New Zealand. Telecom, for example, received 42 notices — 35 for alleged download of songs by R&B star Rihanna, six for Lady Gaga tunes and one for British recording artist Taio Cruz. Curiously, it was the music industry, rather than the movie industry, that fired the first shot. It was believed the Motion Picture Association was keen to go after copyright infringers."
It was believed the Motion Picture Association was keen to go after copyright infringers.
RIAA is already pretty universally hated. They killed Napster and are the ones who usually make the headlines. It makes sense from a PR standpoint to let them fall on the sword.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Kiwis that object to this system, feel free to take action.
P.S. No, writing to elected officials will not work.
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
The only way people won't put up with this crap is if everyone (not literally, but enough) to overwhelm the system into being incapable of stopping it. In a democratic society, if everyone broke the law, then not would the law fall under that it is not the will of the people anymore?
You know where they can stick their umbarrreellla-ellla-ellla-aaayyyy-ayyyy.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
When torrenting, you are usually downloading and distributing simultaneously. I suppose you could be a just a leecher, but most bt clients throttle you for this.
passetspike!
Not a Lawyer, am a New Zealander. After the 3rd warning notice the copyright owner can take you (the account holder of the IP address, as they are the one's liable) to the Copyright Tribunal (not a standard court), if they win it is damages in the range $275 to $15000.
For more information see the 3strikes website.
Everyone (not literally, but enough) is already breaking the law. That doesn't do anything to get laws overturned. That only works if everyone is also held to the law (sued/arrested/fined/etc). Ex - speeding. Damn near EVERYONE speeds, but that hasn't done a damn thing to get rid of that law. They just limit how many people they ticket to socially acceptable level.
I think there is another option, and believe it's time will come. Going back to the car analogy, this would be like filming the cops that are always filming us...
* Share non-RIAA artists' music (doesn't matter who does this)
* Log downloading/uploading IP's via a bunch of clients (bittorrent)
* Watch for RIAA related IP's (them, or the hired lapdogs that do their work)
* Have non-RIAA artist sue the RIAA for copyright infringement under the same laws they use. (or have them sign over their management of their "IP" to your organization)
Do this enough, and it won't be profitable for the RIAA to do their tracking/monitoring/prosecuting of the P2P networks. That's how they're finding people right now - by joining the same P2P share, and watching for the IP's the upload parts of the content to them. This would make a great EFF or similar project.
It would take very little to pull this off. There are fairly small companies doing this for the RIAA already. Just do the same for non-members but only sue the RIAA related people. Those non-RIAA artists would also benefit from an RIAA with reduced power and influence, as they'd be more likely to be seen and distributed in mainstream places.
If the claim is made that you are targeting them and not protecting your "IP" from all the other downloaders, there is already a precedent set for that - the RIANZ, in this case, is only suing a handful of people... and there were certainly many others they saw while doing their tracking. Ditto on the relatively small number of RIAA suits in USA versus the number of people downloading/uploading.
The other possible outcome would be that the precedent is set such that, if one is doing this kind of monitoring/prosecuting, they must do it to all offenders that they ID. That would actually be great because a HUGE carpet bomb of claims to LOTS of people would have to be sent out by the RIAA and, while that might scare a lot of people, there are going to be FAR FAR FAR more people that are horribly pissed off by it, including many people in power positions. That shit would end quick.
One disclaimer - I don't believe in violating copyright and do not endorse it, but I do believe there are fair use situations (sharing a song with a couple friends; getting a drm-free copy of content you already purchased; format shifting (downloading a vhs rip of a vhs you already own)) that are perfectly acceptable (though possibly illegal).
It's really not a big fuss down here. Since september 1st there has only been a few handfuls of notices dished out, to only high profile artists that make millions for a couple of big labels (Rhianna is signed to Sony Music OTTOMH) are getting a few notices sent out. Largely due to the $25 dollar fee to do so, which has prevented litigious rights-holders from sending thousands of notices as the would if it was like $2. It's also only easy to track peer 2 peer that would likely invoke the infringment notices, being BitTorrent without doing terribly much to hide yourself and services like LimeWire, also rather easy to track what you are doing. So it's also only the easy targets.
I can't count the list of other ways to pirate movies and music, many much less traceable, and can confirm that people have indeed switched to these, if were not using them already.
Add to that it's only three strikes PER rightsholder, and each warning expires after 9 months. As an IT guy when people are asking for my advice, I say if your not downloading much, your downloading obscure shit and not whatever the most popular Miley Cryus torrent is on some public tracker, your very unlikely to get a notice, and when you do, just avoid that rightsholder till the notice expires.
Also if the rights-holder has no history of suing anyone, your even more unlikely to get a notice. NZ also being small fry economically, it's also not terrible lucrative to go after pirates.
By shear fortunate accident of incompetent lawmaking, it's rather neutered and not causing a huge problem... yet. It could have been worse. The whole guilt on accusation is a stilly bit shitty of course. NZers have a way of duly igorning BS laws and carrying on doing what they do.
But I worry, NZ has lost it's testicular fortitude of late. In the 80s the French showed up in the south pacific wanting to test nuclear weapons, even 3000km from New Zealand, the response from NZ was strong and we ultimately suggested an alternate location they could shove their bombs. Hence NZ passing Nuclear-Free laws. If we still had stones like that, we would have told the foreign corporates somewhere dark to keep their law, and perhaps passed a law making piracy all but legal. Shame.
We'll get rid of this stupid law when we grow some stones back.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
It's hardly reasonable. I'm also a Kiwi, and I'll tell you what's wrong with the law:
1) Infringement notices are deemed valid on their face and not subject to review of their methodology.
2) Presumption of guilt on the part of the alleged infringer, which runs counter to the established notion of common law which heretofore held sway in NZ.
3) The tribunal does not have the same procedures as a normal court of law, in spite of its ability to hand down punishment. Rules of evidence and testimony are cut down, and the accused does not have any right to counsel.
4) If and when the tribunal gains the power to order service termination, a wrongly accused individual could lose internet connectivity with no recourse available.
5) The manner in which it was passed (under urgency) was a flagrant abuse of parliamentary procedure, and only a handful of MPs voted against it. Wikileaks has published diplomatic cables which document the meddling input of the US Embassy in crafting and shepherding the legislation, making New Zealand look ever more like a sad little banana republic eager to turn a trick for the rich foreigners.
The law reeks, almost as much as the government which imposed it. God save WB.
In other news, astrophysicists have announced that they now know what all that dark matter is: it's stupidity.
As outlined here, only the completely stupid will be caught by this law.
More important should be a closer look at the raison d'etre for originally creating copyright laws and how that's been corrupted by the movie studios and recording labels with their fat lobbying wallets.
As described in the linked article, it's time copyright protection was scaled back to recognize that if the rights-owner refuses to sell their product to a particular market then there can be no losses associated with its unauthorized distribution. To allow rights-owners to prosecute people for copying that which they would otherwise be happy to pay for but aren't allowed to is a license to extort!