Three-Strikes Copyright Law In NZ Halves Infringement

Bismillah writes "The 'Skynet' copyright act has been in effect for six months in New Zealand and rights holders reckon it halved the number of infringements in the first month. Even so, they're not happy and say over forty per cent of Kiwis continue to infringe online. The fix? Rightsholders want the current NZ$25 infringement notice processing fee payable to ISPs to be dropped to just a few dollars or even pennies, so that they can send out thousands of notices a month. ISPs want the fee to increase four times instead, to cover their costs. Unfortunately, the submissions for the review of the infringement notice fees are kept secret by the government."

Comments

Pays to Be Sneaky

[rueger]

New Zealand and rights holders reckon it halved the number of infringements in the first month.

Or just as likely, the heaviest downloaders just found better ways to fly under the radar. If "success" is measured by a drop from eighty percent to forty percent of users "stealing" content, I'd say it's time for the Industry to admit total defeat.

Re:Pays to Be Sneaky

[digitig]

My immediate reaction on reading the title was "Shouldn't it be 'Three-Strikes Copyright Law In NZ Halves detection'"?

Re:Pays to Be Sneaky

[anubi]

I guess what bugs me is something like policing copyrights of publicly available information, especially music is almost impossible to enforce.

Rightsholders are quick to privatize their profits, however they are eager to socialize enforcement costs.

I do not want to get into a shouting match on whether or not it is theft to copy a song. Technically, I think it is, but practically, its like trying to enforce a clean mind when seeing porn.

It stretches honesty when one is hungry and sees his neighbor's apple tree, knowing the trunk of the apple tree is his neighbor's property, yet the fruit is hanging in his yard, even dropping on his lawn, and only some law, passed by some senators lobbied by the tree owner, says he can't pick the apple off his lawn and eat it, or even take a picture of it.

There are some things which are are very difficult to enforce... and tend to function not as a deterrent, but as a starting place for learning to disrespect obedience of law. I see this kind of law as a prime example of this.

Like prohibition, trying to enforce law like this does more harm than good, as it gets people started at a very early age to have no inner respect for law, obeying it not for the common good, but only for fear of punishment if caught. It does not foster respect for law, instead it fosters a sense of accomplishment for finding creative ways of disrespecting the law.

Re:Pays to Be Sneaky

[tftp]

Like prohibition, trying to enforce law like this does more harm than good, as it gets people started at a very early age to have no inner respect for law, obeying it not for the common good, but only for fear of punishment if caught.

I'm afraid you are about 50 or 100 years (if not more) too late. I don't know how it is in NZ, but in the USA respect for the law is not even a theoretical concept anymore. Widespread violations cannot be detected and the law enforced; this leads to loss of fear of punishment. You do not need to go too far to see proof of that. Everyone drives faster than the speed limit allows and the police does not even bother stopping anyone unless they are way over the limit. People jaywalk with no care in the world; robbers rob 24/7 stores as if it is their personal ATM; people park under signs "no parking", have sex in public parks, set up camps in public places, use drugs, and take dumps on police cars. What rule of law are you talking about? It's pure anarchy, with occasional firefighting done by few LEOs.

There is no law to respect either. Over the years new laws accumulated up to a whole library of books - some with laws and other with their interpretations. Most people quite reasonably think that the law is not protecting them. And how it can be, with laws against "disorderly conduct" and with people arrested for "resisting arrest" or for filming police or for taking photos of cities? On the other hand, real criminals (petty or not) are in and out of jail faster than you can keep track of them. The police is most certainly not your friend; LEOs are not interested in helping you and they have no duty to help you. They might kill you, though, if you give them half of an excuse, because safety of one officer is more important than ten dead bodies of the rabble.

With this whole train wreck continuing downhill with ever accelerating speed we will see more anarchy and fewer places where an nonest person can safely walk around. Downloads of music are just a minor blip on the radar of widespread lawlessness.

Uh-huh, right

[artor3]

So, the people behind the law claim that it is effective enough to have been justified, but not effective enough to remove the need for even more industry-friendly laws.

How convenient.

Costs per infringement

[bmo]

Rights holders want the current NZ$25 infringement notice processing fee payable to ISPs to be dropped to just a few dollars or even pennies, so that they can send out thousands of notices a month.

So what they're really saying that infringements actually cost them less than $25 per infringement in the long run. Because if it was like the thousands of dollars per, that they claim, they wouldn't have a bitch about a $25 fee. It would be a no-brainer and the battle against piracy would fatten their coffers easily even with the $25 fee. But no, they say it's too expensive. It's only too expensive if the net gain is negative.

>the ISPs want it increased to $100

Considering the vetting and such and going through the motions to send a customer a notice, I believe it. Even inter-office memos are not free. You'd be surprised what one actually costs if you measured it.

The IP enforcers have no leg to stand on with regards to this argument. By all rights, the ISPs should at least double their price. And the IP enforcers should shut up and take it.

--
BMO

what are "Pennys"?

[Anonymous Coward]

"pennys" ... you'll never hear a New Zealander use that phrase unless they were talking about those antique coins granny has on her mantle piece.
Closest thing to a "penny" is a 10 cent piece (no longer any 1, 2 or 5 cent coinage) so stop trying to nickel and dime away NZ culture
 

a small but not to small fees keeps out abuse

[Joe_Dragon]

a small but not to small fees keeps out abuse and let's small Rights holders have there say.

Re:Begpardon?

[Grumbleduke]

Everyone is a rights holder. We all have some rights of some sort or another.

Also, (very nearly) almost everyone is a copyright owner. Given that copyright (in most places) covers anything from a doodle or quick email (or a /. post) to a great piece of artistic craftsmanship, the only way someone wouldn't be a copyright owner is if they had signed a contract with someone handing over all their copyrights (...talking of record companies).

As for the RIANZ doing the complaining, if the NZ law is anything like the UK one, it is specifically designed so that industry associations can make the allegations and so on (mainly because most copyright owners can't really be bothered with this sort of thing, but are happy to pay their industry association a fee to do it for them). If not, it will still be the industry association who kicks up a fuss, publishes press releases and does the research, because that's how they justify their existence and pay-cheques.

Re:Yeah na bro

[Mathinker]

As a critical thinker, I speak for everyone when I say:

"Never believe effectiveness reports made by industry groups who lobbied for the change in question, without actually reviewing the report methodology (which, BTW, is hardly ever disclosed in these so-called "reports")."

Re:Yeah na bro

[Anonymous Coward]

So infringement dropped. But did purchases of music and movies increase? That seems like a much more better question to ask.

Re:Yeah na bro

[Forty Two Tenfold]

the value of the intellectual property

You see, capitalism taught you all to confuse value with monetary "value", i.e. price. Sharing reduces neither [real] value nor potential income, while it improves cultural awareness of the society.

Re:Yeah na bro

[hairyfeet]

Especially when there is a simple fix and its called fix your broken ass business models you douchebags which Valve has proved can work quite well.

I'll be honest...I used to pirate the hell out of games, so did all my friends, now I can't even remember the last game I downloaded and I've even bought a good chunk of those games i pirated back in the day, why? Because Valve fixed the broken ass business model that was PC gaming, that's why.

Now if I can't get it on steam I simply won't buy it, nor will i buy those games that require a constant net connection even if they are on Steam. with Steam i get ALL the updates automatically, all my friends and family are on there so all i have to do is look in my friends list and say "Hey you wanna play some?" and BOOM, right into the game, easy chat, constant sales and most having included DLC, when new DLC comes out you can get it cheap, etc.

So if the damned studios would give me something just as easy, where I can buy in a USEFUL format, instead of some bug ridden DRMed to the 50th power crap, like say .AVI or .MKV to where I can just drop them on my netbook or my dad's media tank and just hit the play button? I'd be happy to buy their product. Instead i simply don't buy nor do I download, if I can't watch it online for free i just don't watch.

All these media companies are doing is speeding up the progress of P2P, that's all. By gouging for every last nickel they possibly can and screwing over viewers with region coded bullshit all they are doing with draconian crap like this is making sure P2P will end up with full crypto and obfuscation so nobody will be able to tell what anyone else is getting. How much you wanna bet their sales figures didn't go up for shit despite the drop in downloaders? I bet many just said to hell with their product altogether, it isn't like we don't have a wealth of entertainment online for free now anyway.

I would like to apologize to all the people of NZ as sadly we here in the USA lost any form of control over the cartels years ago so I'm afraid we can't do shit to stop them from fucking you over, sorry. Some tried writing a petition to the POTUS and all they got for their trouble was a flowery "Fuck you peasant LOL!" form letter and both parties are totally owned so we're screwed too, sorry.