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

[Anonymous Coward]

My completely anectdotal experience living in NZ is that people just found other ways. Seedboxes especially may have actually made the industry's problem worse as they're much faster for P2P connections than local NZ broadband connections have ever been and as such the volumes achievable are higher. For example I used to hear people talk of only getting averages of 200-300Kbps with P2P using the cheap ISP supplied modems, but they can get 2Mbps+ over an HTTP connection to a seedbox, and that seedbox itself might achieve 10MBps or more.

There was a 10% drop in NZ internet volume when the law came into effect, but little mention of the numbers since.

So yes, I'm inclined to believe they are seeing less infringement, but in reality there's likely more than ever.

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

[Sulphur]

given that the little buggers can't fly, its kinda hard to spot them on radar

They fly at mach 6 and over a hundred thousand feet. They can pull 40 g in a turn, and they are being trained to protect the planet from spacecraft

Their radar cross section is less than a female mosquito's antenna. They also make a great sandwich.

Re:Pays to Be Sneaky

[GameboyRMH]

I was just thinking this morning about an incident many years ago when a rich old dude who owned MS stock lost his shit at me when I talked about the practical necessity of pirating a copy of Windows as a broke 3rd-world teenager, calling me an entitled brat who didn't deserve to have it because I couldn't pay for it (keep in mind that in those days there was really no other practical desktop OS). I should simply have refrained from using any computers to stay within the rules, he argued in effect.

I thought to myself, that is one of the most ridiculous and silly things that I have ever experienced. This rich old man blasting a poor kid for subverting the rules of the silly game that made him rich, in a way that harmed exactly no-one. But it shouldn't be funny, his worldview was monstrous, horrible, a level of hyper-selfishness that transcends physical wealth and extends to symbolism.

To think that I had enough respect for that guy that I didn't respond...I should have told that disgusting man to go fuck himself immediately.

Begpardon?

[Tastecicles]

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.

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

This is getting interesting...

[Anachragnome]

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.

Some thoughts on studies and numbers

[Grumbleduke]

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.]

Re:Some thoughts on studies and numbers

[Kalriath]

Actually, the New Zealand government is also obliged to review the three-strikes law as well, and this is that review happening. Interestingly, although the music industry has been utilising their weapon quite frequently, the motion picture industry has flat out refused to, until the $25 fee is abolished (making it so ISPs have to foot the bill for enforcing their content - they claim that "ISPs make all of their profits from infringement of our copyrights, so they should pay"). Additionally, there have been a small number of people who have hit three strikes, and the music industry has not pursued disconnection for those people - presumably because pursuing it means taking it to a tribunal which might actually require evidence of infringement.

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

[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.