NZ Illegal Downloading Crackdown Law In Effect 329
First time accepted submitter sfranklin writes "As of Sept 1 at midnight, 'anyone caught downloading copyrighted content illegally could face fines of up to $15,000 and have their internet cut off' in New Zealand. You don't even have to do the deed yourself. The 'account holder needs to know what's going on even if they themselves don't do anything online ...' Scary stuff, although I wonder how much actual enforcement is likely to happen."
Re:Simple (Score:5, Informative)
It doesn't work like that at all.
The copyright owners must contact the ISP with proof of an offence (an IP address from a torrent would be enough), then the ISP passes on the warning.
If you get three notices, then you have to go to court and defend yourself by proving that you didn't download the material.
That is a terrible link in the summary, more detail about the law can be found here [legislation.govt.nz].
Some links to the actual bill (Score:4, Informative)
Its only for torrents!! (Score:4, Informative)
The law only applies for using p2p at the the application layer. I would think about 3 out of our 120 politicians have a basic understanding of torrents/internet.
There are so may obvious ways around this but they either cost or are less convenient. http://bayfiles.com/ [bayfiles.com] is just in time.
It also makes it so you are very unlikely (a little less than before) to be prosecuted under our general copy-write law. I would say the stupidity of discrimination against protocols makes will make piracy easier.
Re:Not all bad (Score:4, Informative)
Said so from the land of 3 strikes-your-out.. seriously besides France, I thought Australia was the worst place to be if you're a pirate
Don't believe anything AFACT tells you. There are no baseball inspired laws in Oz against downloading, rumours of such were just another AFACT wet dream [itnews.com.au]. The MO of these parasites is simple and obvious, make exaggerated claims in country A about what is done to "battle piracy" in country B, if country A is dumb/corrupt enough to actually implement it in law, reverse A with B and repeat.
Also it is not a crime to download copyrighted material in Oz since everything on the internet is copyright by default, sure AFACT can try and sue you in civil court for damages but it's never been done because the only damage they can claim is the real cost of the material, as such most cases would not even make the $50 minimum damages bar to get the case heard in the small claims court. If AFACT conducted themselves like their brethren do in the US (pay $X,000 or we will sue), I'm pretty sure they would be investigated by the authorities for racketeering and/or extortion (admittedly I may be giving them too much credit).