Three-Strikes Copyright Law In NZ Halves Infringement 202
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."
Yeah na bro (Score:2, Interesting)
As I New Zealander I speak for everyone when I say:
Hah!
This is getting interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)
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/ [arstechnica.com] )
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [ifpi.org] in unlawful file-sharing, whereas a ZdNet.fr survey put it at 4% [musicweek.com]. Then there was a really fun Hollywood-sponsored survey from Australia that found 74% would stop infringing [scribd.com] - 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 [ofcom.org.uk] and closes on Thursday.]
Re:Begpardon? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Some thoughts on studies and numbers (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Not anymore. (Score:4, Interesting)
Depends on the jurisdiction. I would imagine NZ law is similar to UK law, in which case downloading probably is illegal as well, but much harder to prove both that it happened, and that the copyright owner suffered a loss.
Actually, English law is completely insane at the moment due to a rather odd judgment that managed to slip through the Court of Appeal (although the Supreme Court will hopefully fix it next year). Under this ruling, merely visiting a website, or receiving an email can count as copyright infringement if you don't have permission to make a copy of the copyrighted contents of the page/email. While there was some discussion of website owners giving "implied licences" to copy by putting something on their website it was pointed out that these didn't matter if there was an express licence... which would, in theory, include something like "All rights reserved". So if you're in England, and you visit a website that says "All Rights Reserved" on it (such as /.), well done, you've probably just committed copyright infringement.
Re:Not anymore. (Score:4, Interesting)
They don't care about uploaders. They only go after downloaders who upload, never downloaders who don't upload. And uploaders aren't being targeted clearly. They "should have" gone after the megauploads uploaders. They didn't. They aren't. They targeted the owner, but not the uploaders. But they want to scare downloaders into thinking that just downloading will get you arrested. So they go after P2P almost exclusively. And people that upload to a direct download site are safe, so long as they aren't also the owner of the site, at least so far in the megaupload case.
Re:Pays to Be Sneaky (Score:5, Interesting)
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.