New Zealand Three-Strikes Law To Be Tested

Dangerous_Minds writes "Next month, tribunals will begin for the first people receiving their third strikes in the New Zealand 'Three Strikes Law.' In all, 11 people will have their cases heard, including one who said that her connection was used without her knowledge. Freezenet notes that there has been a long history of controversy for the law from the Internet blackout protests of 2008 to the cablegate leak which revealed that the law was financed and pushed by the United States."

Comments

That's about the size of it

[Anonymous Coward]

"the law was financed and pushed by the United States"
New Zealand, control those music listeners, or we send in the marines.

Re:That's about the size of it

[88Seconds]

"the law was financed and pushed by the United States"

and pushed through on the back of legislation for assisting those affected by the Christchurch earthquake. So anyone opposing this bit of the bill would also be denying help to those who really needed it.

Re:That's about the size of it

[hairyfeet]

Uhhh...how EXACTLY are we supposed to " take responsibility for the laws" when our election cycle is as fake and rigged as pro wrestling? If you aren't from the USA let me break down how it works, in the primary you are given a choice of 4 to 5 shills, you may get one "dark horse" that isn't a shill but the MSM is owned by the megacorps and will make sure nobody knows they exist. See the video on Ron Paul by Jon Stewart where Paul was literally "He who shall NOT be named" when they would announce the first, second, and FOURTH place winners in a contest.

Then after the corp owned MSM has made sure "the people's choice" is two shills they already own you then are given a bunch of "hot button issues" that the corps don't give a fuck about and therefor don't care which way they go, abortion, gay rights, shit that won't affect their bottom line, and then you can "choose" from shill A or shill B, either of which will keep passing corporate friendly laws that benefit the rich old fucks that have been ruling this country for a good 150+ years now, your JP Morgans, your Goldman Sachs, the whole 7 media conglomerates that own every single thing you see, hear, and read, its the same names over and over and OVER getting their way, and if anything goes wrong they just get another "too big to fail" like Golman Sachs who used Wall Street like Las Vegas and when the bubble busted got 125 cents on every dollar out of the pockets of every American, nice.

You see friend you simply can't change a corrupt system by working within that system and the reason why should be fairly obvious...because its corrupt! So I would like to hear how EXACTLY the American people are supposed to "control" or "change" anything when the entire media is owned by a handful of uber-rich, when you have "free speech zones" and every movement ends up with 2 fed infiltrators for every 5 people, how EXACTLY are we supposed to "take responsibility" when we have less of a voice now than we did before the revolution?

Re:The obvious question here....

[Calydor]

By being sued for illegal downloads she knows she did not do herself?

Sort of one sided isn't it?

[thogard]

They have several images on their web site that count as "derived works" of my work under US copyright law and they haven't payed me anything.

Can I send them 3 take down notices and then pull their internet access and get them fined $15,000?

Streamlined extortion queues

[girlinatrainingbra]

Seems like streamlined extortion to me: The tribunal can make awards of up to $15,000 against pirates, and Rianz had sought awards of several thousand dollars in at least two of the dropped cases. In one, Rianz sought about $2700 from a Wellington student whose internet account was allegedly used without her knowledge to download five songs valued at $11.75. That case also seemed destined for a formal hearing.Fairfax NZ

Really ridiculous to seek fines of $2700 for an acknowledged value of $11.75, at least in my eyes.

Re:Easy Money

[nzac]

This is New Zealand its not going to be the maximum fine or probably even an order of magnitude less. They will likely not recoup the costs to get it there.
Last fines RIANZ tried to push were based on figures based on the damage it cause. The only way for to them get 3 MP3 downloads into the 3 figure mark was to try to argue that they were shared 90 times (would like to know how they got this figure) and then triple it (at least this is what they tried to do to the last distort person before it was thrown out).

As long as it stays tied to real damages NZs fines will not make it to the 500 dollar mark, covering the 250 or so in court fees to get it there in the first place. Internet is too expensive here to seed.

Re:The obvious question here....

[Mistakill]

NZ law specifically written with sponsorship from the MPAA/RIAA (about $1m NZD) and is written so that the account holder is fully the responsible party, even at say a school, library, starbucks, etc

Re:3 Strikes

[Dexter Herbivore]

I send a "fuck you" to every ISP on the planet, you couldn't wipe your own ass without being told to

Don't tar them all with the same brush, iiNet in Australia has been doing great things championing the rights of the user.

So everybody has to do what X Corp. requires, yes?

[silviuc]

It is appalling how corporations, mostly US based, have managed to get everybody working to protect their interests. Ofc, they could not have done that alone, they have the US Gov that throws its weight around if need arises. They basically have every police dept. working to enforce copyright/DMCA and whatever else they cook up. This might be all fine and dandy if those corporations would bother to pay taxes in the countries they do business in. As it turns out, most of the time, they manage to skip paying them. So we, the citizens, pay taxes to keep police depts that enforce laws for entities that pay nothing in return. Meanwhile, serious crimes do not get solved because there is "personnel shortage". I would love to see how much countries spend per month or year on "defending" copyright and how much they copyright holders paid in taxes for the service.

While I do not approve piracy, I certainly enjoy reading how another attempt to down the piratebay has failed.

Re:The obvious question here....

[Mistakill]

This makes for good reading http://lawgeeknz.posterous.com/nzs-copyright-proposal-guilty-until-you-prove

The form of an infringement notice is to be prescribed by regulation. However, the fact that the form is correctly completed is not relevant to the issue of whether or not there has been copyright infringement. So that does not explain why the mere filing of a notice should be conclusive evidence.

Merely CORRECTLY filling out a complaint notice, is deemed sufficient evidence that an offense occurred if it goes to a tribunal

To put it another way, if someone accused me of downloading X song on Y day, and i didn't, i still have yet to find anyone who can show me a way to prove i didn't

Example:"Sir, you are accused of downloading one mp3 titled 'Justin Bieber - Baby', please prove you didn't if you wish to defend yourself"

Um.... /pass??