Slashdot Mirror
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."
As I New Zealander I speak for everyone when I say:
Hah!
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.
Three Squirrels
It's not rights holders doing the complaining, it's the industry associations (read: RIAA/MPAA or NZ equivalents), who themselves hold no copyrights apart from their corporate logos.
To them, I refer them to the response given in Arkell -v- Pressdram (1971):
We acknowledge your letter of 29th April referring to Mr J. Arkell. We note that Mr Arkell's attitude to damages will be governed by the nature of our reply and would therefore be grateful if you would inform us what his attitude to damages would be, were he to learn that the nature of our reply is as follows: fuck off.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
When the law came into effect, everyone shifted to direct download sites, which can't be tracked like torrents can. Then everyone heard from friends who didn't shift that they didn't get any notices, so they've all shifted back.
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.
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
"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
This is getting interesting.
Earlier this month ISPs came to an agreement with the recording/movie industry to enact a "6 strikes" policy to punish copyright infringement. (see ArsTechnica article, as previously discussed on /. -- http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/07/major-isps-agree-to-six-strikes-copyright-enforcement-plan/ )
The very next day after the article was published, I noticed something interesting when I was using BitTorrent--aside from request overhead, I was uploading zero data. I'm currently watching a 3.1GB torrent--1.79 GB downloaded and 0.0 uploaded. And no, it isn't my client settings. I have checked them several times, nor did I change them any from when I was uploading normally. Seeding a completed torrent does nothing--it just sits there with no activity.
To put it in simple terms, Comcast (my ISP) is throttling uploads by 100% but not touching download rates (at least mine). Are they, in essence, protecting their customers from the "6 strikes" policy they agreed to enforce? If so, I assume they are doing this to prevent losing customers that continue using P2P software.
I can't imagine the MPAA/RIAA will be very happy about this.
a small but not to small fees keeps out abuse and let's small Rights holders have there say.
Have sales gone up?
If sales have gone up, then congratulations, you've scored a minor victory against those stealing to avoid paying for decent content, but if not, what exactly have you achieved? Sure, people have stopped *cough* "stealing" your content, but they're not buying it either, it simply proves it wasn't worth paying for in the first place.
Either that, or they're still downloading it for free, they just figured out another way to do it without getting caught. Thus continuing the perpetual cycle of cat and mouse between the consumer and the dying business model of the entertainment industry.
Only halved? I thought these things were supposed to have a 70% reduction according to the earlier surveys. Oh wait, those surveys are complete rubbish, as is most data on this sort of thing. The surveys for how much this sort of thing would reduce filesharing are all over the place; according to the IFPI, the French version, Hadopi, would cause 71% reduction in unlawful file-sharing, whereas a ZdNet.fr survey put it at 4%. Then there was a really fun Hollywood-sponsored survey from Australia that found 74% would stop infringing - unfortunately, in the fine detail, it turned out only 11% were actually committing copyright infringement on a regular basis, so at least 15% of people don't infringe regularly, but wouldn't stop even if threatened by their ISP.
This is definitely one of those "detailed-study-complete-with-full-figures-and-methodology or it didn't happen" situations.
However, it is interesting to see that the RIANZ are claiming that half isn't enough, and that more needs to be done. It mirrors my concerns about these laws elsewhere (particularly in the UK, obviously) that they have no criteria for success or failure, nor any real way to measure effectiveness. It means that once implemented the RIAA/Rianz/BPI are free to say "This is working, so we need more!" or "This isn't working, so we need more!" or "We're not sure whether or not this is working, so we need more!" no matter what actually happens, and we're back to copyright enforcement for the sake of copyright enforcement.
Fortunately in the EU these sorts of charges to ISPs were declared unlawful, so copyright owners are being forced to meet most of the bill for the UK three-strikes program (although subscribers will have to pay an arbitrary £20 to appeal allegations made against them).
The one good thing about the UK version, though, is that the government were persuaded that, once the three-strikes law is in force, someone should actually look into whether or not such a law is needed or will do any good, so in a year or so, after over 1m letters being sent (and however many lawsuits and prosecutions), we may actually get some independent and reliable data on this whole "online infringement of copyright" thing.
[Disclaimer: I 'work' as a lobbyist in this area and am currently in the middle of consultation work on the UK version of this sort of thing - so I'm rather biased. For anyone in the UK interested in this, the Ofcom consultation is available here and closes on Thursday.]
While it's true that P2P traffic has decreased in NZ after the law, the tunneling traffic has increased. See bellow: :)
http://www.matthewtaylor.co.nz/2012/03/11/three-strikes-law-shifted-file-sharing-from-torrents-to-tunnels/
http://www.wand.net.nz/sites/default/files/nznog12_0.pdf
I'm sure Melissa Lee could put it on a CD for you. It was all legally obtained after all!
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
The problem is that 40% of the people are breaking the law as it is written.
There are two basic ways of solving this:
- Punish 40% of New Zealanders, or
- Change the laws
Methinks the second option deserves more consideration
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.