NZ Copyright Tribunal Fines First File-Sharer

An anonymous reader writes with news that the first successful case was brought before the copyright tribunal under NZ's three strikes law. From the article: "The first music pirate stung under new file-sharing laws has been fined $616 but 'didn't realise' the actions were illegal. The Recording Industry Association of New Zealand (RIANZ) — which represents music studios — took an unnamed offender to the Copyright Tribunal last year for sharing songs on the Internet — a track by Barbadian pop-star Rihanna on two occasions and the other by Nashville band Hot Chelle Rae. In a decision released today, the tribunal found in RIANZ's favor and ordered the offender ... to pay a penalty $616.57." Torrent Freak has a slightly different perspective: a lack of evidence and pushback from the tribunal resulted in much smaller fines than the RIANZ wanted.

Comments

It was just $6.37 for the actual infringement

[crazyjj]

An amusingly reasonable finding from the tribunal:

So, with guilt under current law established, the Tribunal set about the task of a financial punishment. According to regulations, in a downloading case the cost of the infringed products must be considered. Man Down is available of iTunes for $2.39 (US$2.00) and Tonight Tonight at $1.79 (US$1.50). ...
With this in mind the Tribunal said it would order the subscriber to pay RIANZ double the iTunes price of Man Down (2 x $2.39) and the same for Tonight Tonight (2 x $1.79) – a total of $6.57 (US$5.49). This aspect of the Tribunal’s decision will be a huge disappointment for RIANZ.

Re:It was just $6.37 for the actual infringement

[crazyjj]

oops, misread my own quote. It was $6.57 (NZ), or $5.49 (US).

Re:It was just $6.37 for the actual infringement

[SJHillman]

The whole thing is pretty reasonable.

- $6.57 to cover the cost of the tracks
- $50 to cover RIANZ's costs of sending the notices (and presumably other administrative costs)
- $200 to cover the cost of bringing it before the copyright body
- $360 ($120 per infringement) as a deterrant. The only actual punitive cost.

Seems to me to be a perfect balance between high enough to deter people and low enough not to bankrupt people over an activity in which no one could be injured, no property can be destroyed, no one is harassed and economic damage is negligible.

Re:It was just $6.37 for the actual infringement

[Slippery_Hank]

This fine is only low compared to the ridiculous claims being made by the record companies. The actual cost of the music was less than 6$, so this works out to paying a penalty of roughly 100 times the value of the material he 'stole'.

Re:It was just $6.37 for the actual infringement

[ledow]

I would guess that if you stole, say, $6 worth of products from a store and got caught, they would charge you something similar, so yes it appears reasonable (unlike the "more than the earth is worth" fines that have been bandied about in other countries).

- Cost of the product (though whether you experienced "permanent deprivation" of that cost is dubious, I'd award it you anyway so that people who pirate $1000 pieces of software are $1000 times as fined as someone who pirated a $1 piece of software).
- Plus administrative fees.
- Plus legal costs once a denial has taken place in front of a tribunal and you're still found guilty.
- Plus a punitive damage for actually doing the naughty thing in the first place.

Seems to be the first SENSIBLE ruling in terms of copyright on the Internet in years, in fact.

Re:It was just $6.37 for the actual infringement

[SJHillman]

It depends on your perspective. From the seller's perspective, it's what you described. From the consumer's perspective, cost is the same as the price. It's pretty clear from the context they're referring to the cost to the consumer, which is the same as the price. You can argue that within a specific field, words have a very specific meaning, but the article is neither written by, nor targeted at, such a specific field.

Re:It was just $6.37 for the actual infringement

[Slippery_Hank]

I'm aware of the rational behind laws and fines. My point is not that the fine should be lower, but that because of penalties record companies seek (millions) that we already consider a 100x fine to be low.

Re:It was just $6.37 for the actual infringement

[grumbel]

The "per infringement" thing could end up really bad when people are sharing their whole music collection. I mean three songs seems rather tiny amount for the average act of piracy, most would probably at least share the whole album, if not the whole bands history.

Re:It was just $6.37 for the actual infringement

[Anonymous Coward]

You're totally missing the point.

The store analogy is wrong. The store paid 4$ for the product, they would have sold it for 6$, paying off the merchandise and getting a profit of 2$. Copying the songs costs nothing. NOTHING

Do you know how people that intentionally pirate things think? Just like the WTO and Antigua did.
The RIAA people charge you for music, that costs NOTHING for them to duplicate, and music that's so old, the artists died of old age.
They don't respect people, why should the people respect them?

Re:It was just $6.37 for the actual infringement

[JeanCroix]

Deterrent fines for listening to Rihanna? I.. think I could be ok with that.

Re:It was just $6.37 for the actual infringement

[ultrasawblade]

No. Wrong. It's infringing, not stealing.

And yes, true property has to be physical. "Imaginary property" is a terrible term that confuses things and encourages application of "age of scarcity"/pre-information age to things it shouldn't apply to, leading to inefficient artificial social and economic structures (ultimately doomed to failure anyway) to support them. It is wrong to treat things like music, art in the same method as commodities where quantity matters. Because the quantity of something does NOT matter if the cost of reproduction is zero. It simply doesn't, unless you buy the lie of intellectual property and think that everyone will always follow your notion of rights.

If something doesn't act like a car, it's wrong to call it a car.

Absurd

[Anonymous Coward]

I was convicted the other year of property damage. You know, actually breaking shit. Total fine, including replacement for the property fucked up and court costs? Roughly the same as this lady has to pay for downloading three songs. That's really fucked up. I went out and deliberately and maliciously broke shit. I was caught and convicted. This lady (allegedly) downloaded three songs (one of them twice...).

So she could have gone and thrown a rock through the RIANZ front window and got off with less*. That says something about the fucked upness of this whole situation. Hell, she probably could have gone and punched the head of the RIANZ in the fucking face and got off with a smaller fine (though probably some community work as well).

* assumes the front window isn't a huge plate.

Re:Absurd

[SJHillman]

"Hell, she probably could have gone and punched the head of the RIANZ in the fucking face and got off with a smaller fine (though probably some community work as well)."

Wait, so she'd get community work for doing community work?

statutory presumption!!

[SkunkPussy]

"but since there is a “statutory presumption” that each incidence of file-sharing alleged in an infringement notice constitutes an actual infringement of copyright,"

This is fucking scary that there is a statutory presumption at play here. I wonder what is required to submit an infringement notice, because it seems like a simple way to convert flimsy evidence into a crime.

Prometheus

[srussia]

The first fire-sharer was Prometheus. His punishment was getting his liver pecked at by an eagle every morning. NZD616 doesn't sound so bad in comparison.

In fact, the Prometheus myth is uncannily applicable to the current IP situation:
(a) He didn't actually steal fire, but rather replicated it (causing no loss to its owners on Mt. Olympus).
(b) He benefited mankind by sharing it.
(c) He got a totally incommensurate punishment from the jealous "guardians" of this easily replicable thing.

Re:But we pay for copyright for all sound carriers

[green1]

Depends on your countries laws. In Canada that's exactly how it works, hence downloading in Canada is legal. Uploading however is not. (You're allowed to get your content anywhere, legally, due to the blank media levy, however you still aren't allowed to give it to others)

Of course we've now completely gutted that by adding a "digital locks" provision, but that really just makes things even weirder. For example, I can no longer make a backup of my own legally aquired works as I'd have to break a digital lock to do it. But I can legally download stuff from the internet that I never paid for because it's the other person that breaks the digital lock, not me. (again, I can download, I can't legally upload. P2P is a grey area because it's both, however I believe the only court cases on that one in Canada decided that P2P was "downloading" not "uploading")

She was fined an extra $360 for using uTorrent

[eye_blinked]

The defendant acknowledged downloading the first song but without knowing it was from an unlicensed source. She says the download of the first song caused a a bit torrent client to be installed automatically. She was unaware of the download of the second song. She was given a notice for downloading the first song twice. She is not sure how that occurred since she believed she had downloaded it only once. Then the third strike was a completely different song. The $360 is a made up on the spot "deterrent" on very shaky ground. One of the aggravating factors the tribunal claims in setting this deterrent is: "The fact that the account holder had BitTorrent protocol (uTorrent version 2.2.0) software installed on her computer. It notes that the locating, downloading, installing and configuring of such software is a deliberate act and does not occur without direct action on behalf of a computer user" http://www.nbr.co.nz/sites/default/files/images/2013%20NZCOP%201%20-%20RAINZ%20v%20Teleom%20NZ%202592_1.pdf