ISP says new copyright law effectively useless
UPDATED:
Sony Pictures New Zealand general manager Andrew Cornwell said rights owners were working with the ISPs to facilitate a smooth transition.
"We're trying to work with them, we're trying to be cooperative, working with them rather than just burying them with notices on day one."
He said the notices were quite expensive and local companies might not employ them.
He said the Act was principally more of an educative process, with some more hard line about infringement by using methods to avoid detection than others.
"Ideally if people got their first notice and stopped, that would be great."
Mr Cornwell said the principles of the law had not changed but that the Amendment Act was a tool to enforce it.
"It's always been illegal to take copyrighted material without paying. This is basically a tool to effectively enable us to have a chance of catching people out."
He said the law was important to protect investment in intellectual property,
"Because without any protection at all, you bascially would not have a business, you wouldn't have movies full stop."
He said of the Act that people had the right to challenge notices, and that both parties at the Copyright Tribunal would have to prove their claims.
"People do have a right to challenge the whole thing, I don't think there's any question of just because someone says you're guilty, you are."
Mr Cornwell said he believed it was a reasonably robust process
"You couldn't go into this half-baked, so I think it's reasonably robust but if people wanted to challenge it, I think we would have an obligation to go through the proof."
He said there would be issues around account holders whose families infringe being held responsible, but this was not an unusual situation.
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The MED has said that free WiFi providers are not intended to be classed as IPAPs under the Amendment Act.
However it said free WiFi providers may be classed as account holders, and thus receive infringement notices from their upstream ISP for infringing activity on their network via file sharing protocols. The MED has said such service providers should take measures to prevent such activity occurring on their service.
InternetNZ sought clarification from the MED in July and found that the act covers copyright infringement by online file sharing using peer-to-peer protocols only, and is not intended to streaming sites or online file lockers.
The Act states that an IPAP, or ISP, is required to send infringement notices from rights owners to identified account holders and is not required to monitor user activity, according to Telecom, TelstraClear and Orcon.
Rights owners argue that the legislation will help deter copyright infringement and will protect New Zealand’s creative industries.
These industries provide 22,000 jobs and contribute more than $2.5 billion to the country’s economy, New Zealand Film Commission chief executive Graeme Mason said in a New Zealand Federation Against Copyright Theft (NZFACT) release.
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New Zealand Internet Service Provider EOL said today that the new copyright bill was ineffective and did not take into account hotspots, shared IP addresses and legal file sharing.
The Tauranga-based independent ISP has grown from a small family business in 1995 and last year was named one of New Zealand’s top Internet ServiceProviders (ISPs) by Consumer Magazine for the second year running. Managing director Terry Coles has called the Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment bill that was passed yesterday effectively useless.
Mr Coles told NBR the bill would be difficult to for EOL to enforce since copyright owners catch alleged offenders by identifying their IP address. But all medium to small EOL customers shared IP addresses which was more secure, he told NBR. This meant that there was a large number of customers that EOL would not be able to tell whether they were infringing copyright or not.
"The bulk of our users use one IP number externally anyway so from the outside world, from the internet side, all our users appear as one user."
The bill also did not take into account hotspots, such as Tauranga Hospital, where it was impossible to tell who was logging in, since names and addresses were not required when purchasing credit, and cash could be used, Mr Coles said.
He said he regularly received emails from Hollywood studios and international corporations looking to track down offenders' IP addresses, but EOL was unable to help them, despite being firmly against illegal downloading, due to IP address sharing and hotspot anonymity.
Mr Coles also said that not all peer-to-peer and torrent traffic was illegal, since a lot of it was used for downloading and sharing open source software.
"So you know the fact that we can, if we were to look at a customer, see them doing some file sharing, that doesn't mean to say that it's illegal, they may be transferring some quite legitimate files." He said this was not taken into account in the bill.
"I haven't seen that mentioned in the bill at all, it seems to be trying to block all peer-to-peer traffic."
Mr Coles said the ISPs should have been spoken to before the bill was passed, he said, since they were the ones who would be approached by copyright owners and would have to divulge the identity of the accused customer.
"Most ISPs, especially the small and medium ones, in order to do that, there's a huge amount of resources and time they'd have to put in in order to track that person down. They'd have to go through millions of lines of logs to try and find out who was transferring that particular data at that particular date and time."
He said these kinds of laws were being implemented all over the world and would force copyright infringement offenders to move to encrypted software to download files, which meant "that no one can see them anyway".
"They're not going to be able to be seen and no one will be able to see what they're downloading...the people on the internet who drive this sort of thing are a lot smarter than the people who make the rules, I think, or they're certainly a lot more IT savvy, anyway."
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Comments and questions58
I love the way there are a lot of comments along the lines of the above article where the ISP owner is apparently saying that the amendments "would force copyright infringement offenders to move to encrypted software to download files". Nobody is "forcing" anybody to infringe copyright!
Well, yes, the studios who wish to milk massive profits from every song/film do. App developers on the iTunes store charge 1 or 2 dollars for most programs, and 95% of those in use have been paid for.
If songs were cheaper (10-15c each) and movies about $3 to download, most people would find it more convenient to just pay. But greed causes an entire industry of money men to feel they have a right to a fancy suit & a nice shiny car, despite the fact that they never actually create anything themselves. As facilitators, they should get a fee, yes, but living it up as fat cats is out of balance with actual input, that model is over-blown and out-dated.
Set a fair price, and people will gladly pay (for an example, see bandcamp, which is largely donation based). Set a greedy priced, and people will find a way not to pay at all.
LOWER THE PRICE OF MUSIC AND MOVIES OR WE WILL FIND A WAY TO DOWNLOAD IT FREE ANYWAY.
We'll we live in a capitalist society. Just because I might consider current prices of milk, cheese, petrol outrageous doesn't mean I get to take it off the shelves / fill up without paying.
I'd also like a new european car and many would say they are overpriced to feed the already bulging wallets of Porsche / BMW / Mercedes - but again I dont get to demand I have one of those cars just because I think its unfair someone is making money out of it or that it is probably overpriced.
There are plenty of businesses now offering cheap price access to music and there'd be more options if more people took it up instead of taking for free...
Doesnt mean to say I dont agree that there should be more and better ways to have access to music and movies than the current situation - it's just that I don't take what is not mine and then justify it to myself in the same way so many do.
If the greedy b%ggers at the big corporations ever do manage to stop people downloading files, they will only be able to do so by restrictions so severe they effectively kill the internet - they insist on trying to work a cost model that is decades out of date, they refuse to accept the basics of demand and supply dictating price, they are all still billionaires but have got stuck in this 'game' of spending millions of dollars trying to stop an activity that is not actually costing them anything anyway.
Kelloggs speaks the truth. The success of the app store has a lot to do with their pricing model.
I find the entire thing both a totally appalling breach of political power, as well as being a completely unworkable law. 2 years after September, our rights will be further diminished when they give more power to the EOL. Bye bye freedom of information.
Yes, I totally agree, it is all in fair pricing. We honestly love to pay for something we can truly afford. The well priced CDs at The Warehouse are a great example of what people really would pay. Cheers.
Well said! I attest most people would agree to this!
I think movies are a different case because they cost so much to make.
But then you look at CDs and music and you can see what a load of sh*t it all is. A CD costs the same as a DVD, let's think about that. Movies: millions of dollars just for the actors. CDs: the price of renting a studio and the instruments etc that they all ready have. You don't even have to distribute, as it's online.
Itunes is cool, but only for people who download one or two songs. Trying to buy an entire CD is still overpriced and not worth it, especially when you consider that all it is is a hosted file. And then you look closer and it's not even the artist getting the money, it's just some d***** who signed them to his or her d****** label, and in the process destroyed the artistic process and forced them to sell out. I guarantee you that the small artists wouldn't mind sending their music out for free if it means more people at their shows. Piracy is a natural response to a broken system. Music's the main target because it's the most broken.
But something to be very worried about is being persecuted for sharing files without breaking copyright. And when one looks at the scope of the bill you have to worry about whether it's a patriot act in disguise.
Ooo, scary.
In response to Claire, milk and European car example does not fly as the basic principle of capitalism is that market determines the price of a commodity. If we remove the monopoly of Fonterra, milk prices come down drastically - for example, I buy my milk (Fresha Valley, Waipu) from a local grocery store for $2.50 per two litre bottle and the milk tastes far better than a Fonterra brand at a supermarket, nearly double the price. Similarly, if we remove the distorting power of a bank (or finance company) loan, the buying power of an average consumer will determine the price of a car. A loan creates false buying power and subverts the principle of "market determines the price".
Encourage?
So if your fridge could make unlimited perfect copies of anything put into it, are you saying you would still buy overpriced milk or cheese? How about if you knew that 90% of the cost of the overpriced milk and cheese went into the pockets of the milk board, advertisers, and investors rather than back to the farmer?
It like anything else. You 'stop' one area and someone creates 7 more areas to download. It's a LONG haul to manage let alone find the 'perts'
Schools and universities and any govt. dept. have peer - to - peer software. Even the latest windows operating system has peer - to - peer! Imagine the hard work to track these programs!
Then again. Someone will create a program that looks like file sharing but isn't And a program that acts like a normal browser but is really a file sharing site.
Bring back FTP sites and BBS! :)
This is a complete waste of time, first of all why would any of the big servers apply the 3strike rule on there customers... for example if telecom told you if you dont stop downloading they will cut your internet would it stop you? No, why because everyone downloads. Almost everything that we download these days are some kind of copywrite so they would basically have to cut everyone... and if they did that they would be out of business. Even if everyone reduced the amount of downloading it would cost the big companys MILLIONS of dollars as there would be no point on being on a big gig plan each month.
Most of everyones monthly gig usage is from downloading not uploading so if the average nz user has a 20gig monthly plan costing them $59 yet they were only uploading which would be only 2gig a mouth then they may as well change there plans to a 5gig plan costing them only $29 a month. If every new zealander reduced there monthly internet bill $30 the companies would loss millions
so why would they want to promote this. And to top that off they would have to spend millions monitoring it also which in the end they wouldnt be able to afford so what happens....???? thats right they pass the costs on to the customer... So we all end up paying more once again!!!
I personally download music, but if i really like a new zealand artist i then go and purchase it off itunes to help support them.
If i think there music is crap i wont.
And like alex said..... the clever people would just find away around it so that they couldnt be monitored. I already know how to do this and im not very smart in the IT so if i can do it everyone can. Also people will just start going to HOTSPOTS to do all there downloading. Pay acouple of dollars and download all there illigal music and movies from there.
And that's the crux of it...couldnt agree more
Unfortunately Follow the White Rabbit is wrong. If people can get something for free they will. Its hard to compete. Radiohead released an album a few years ago asking people to pay what they wanted to download it from their website. The reality was that people still file shared it for nothing.
Has anyone here ever tried to write a song? Something that others wanted to listen to? Anyone understand how long it takes, the effort that is put into it, the numerous misses for every "hit"... aren't these people allowed to play in the digital world? They too have families and mortgages? Or has technology overridden these basic rights? Just because something has become convenient doesn't make it right.
Simple solution my friends...switch to HTTP downloading. It's faster, more secure, higher quality, you don't have to upload saving you money on those internet bills and it's damn near impossible to trace. Problem solved, happy pirating.
Also on a side note I loved the Skynet comment made in parliament. Do National even know what they're talking about?
buy your music or do without it, whats so hard to understand copyright?
This flimsy piece of legislation hasnt even had its first real test yet and it looks to me like there will be some urgent amendments to the act once it is contsted and overturned on some obscure technology or legal point.
At the end of the day the same moral laws apply to any economy, be it digtal or otherwise. What is missing is the fact that things are vastly different in a real world economy and this is frequently confused by ignorant politicians who dont know any better and are essentially ticking a box off on a legislative to do list.
Peer to peer will continue, the law will drive it underground where it'll be harder to track... wouldnt it make a whole lot more sense for some real & legit tv/movie/music services to launch? Put a decent business model around peer to peer and it'd be unbeatable if it were legit
after enjoying pirated software for about 12 years now im a little sad depressed even but although i use pirated goodies its more of try before you buy, truly outstanding bits and pieces over the years have a way of making me purchase them diablo diablo2 warcraft starcraft about 100 or so other games about 600 dvds and 50 or so cds all packed away in big plastic storage bins where they are kept safe proved theslf
oh and buy a mobile data stick and use bit torrent via that - it isnt cheap but it is exempt until 2013
I think people are missing the point here - the amendments have been brought in to make the average internet user at home think twice before downloading pirated material and to make the account payer more aware of what is going on in their households.
Serious infringers can be dealt with via the courts under the criminal and/or civil legislation (which has been in place in NZ since at least 1994).
Under these laws a person can be prosecuted for up to $10,000 for each infringing copy or $150,000 for same transaction or to term of imprisonment of up to 5 years.
If you are one of these people, the record labels can actually justify taking court action against you because the damages they may be able to get will be more than the court action costs.
And before eveyone responds to say that no one will be able to find the bigger downloaders - that will be the case for many but then a lot of people are less anonymous on line than they think - its same as for when the police bust other online groups - they can do it so it is a risk you take.
Re "they will only be able to do so by restrictions so severe they effectively kill the internet -" Isn't this what the "powers that be" want the situation to be?
Hi Claire, I think your post is making a different point to the article. You are arguing that the new copyright law is a morally correct law because we live in a capitalist society. Interesting perspective that.
Also your analogy should go "Just because I might consider current price of taking a picture of milk, cheese, petrol outrageous doesn't mean I get to take a picture of it off the shelves without paying."
Although I suspect a better analogy altogether is to say that there is a vender who is selling beautiful postcards and who stridently protests if you take a photograph of his postcards, to the point of making new laws fining you thousands of dollars if he catches you even taking a photograph that may include his postcard stall. He, of course is not actually losing his product. You, of course were never intending to buy one of his postcards, and the end result if you do this is that you have a very inexpensive and poor quality copy of his merchandise.
The article is merely pointing out that this news law is often unenforceable.
What's really funny is that the government passes a law to Ban or suppress downloading, then plans to spend billions of dollars on UFB network so that we can download faster, Also while I'm on here can we all agree that Steven Joyce is an idiot who should not be telecommunications minister? Seriously the guy is so dumb they should make him minister of playschool or something, cause then he'd understand the issues!
Surely if the owner of the Video/ Music/ whatever doesn't want to supply it for free or yet in New Zealand, they should have that right and the protection of the law.
Public WiFi will have to go now -- nobody will risk providing it...
If you could download a car or the daily groceries, would you? I know I would. The only reason you don't is because you can't.
Stealing a car would require you to actually take another's property, as opposed to denying them a sale. Also, the chance of getting caught is higher.
At the end of the day it's not about Piracy. The problem with the law is that you are guilty until proven innocent, all these corporations have to do is accuse you and you get a strike against your name.
Everyday all over the world our basic human rights are slipping away so massive corporations can make more money.
Hey Hollywood you want to make money? innovate instead of trying to hold onto old traditions.
Their just using New Zealand as a Guinea Pig, If the law works here they'll enforce everywhere else
HYP3R WITH A CHANCE....
Do they take into account an anonymous IP? Loads of people use these anyway, which masks your IP and replaces it so you can surf without record.
This law is made by a bunch of idiot politicians who don't understand the Internet or technology.
How the heck are they going to control this lol, Say I create my own personal video and decide to share it and call it Transformers Revenge of the Fallen and somebody downloads a copy, how can identify if this is my homemade movie or a copyrighted Production movie...... um beats me. What about legal tv viewing sites like TVNZ On Demand, maybe they can identify popular ones but I'll sure they don't have every Amercian site listed.
you buy it then see how much money you waste on one album
Demand and supply. I'm a level one economics student and it's clear as day - the graph lines aren't meeting. Through about fifty people sticking their fingers into the pie, music is overpriced on every major label, especially through iTunes.
If they lowered the price a bit, or understood sales or depreciation, I would buy off iTunes. But I look at an old Greenday album and I think, "I got that in 2005, when it was nearly new at the Warehouse for $12 and yet it's $17 now? So I won't buy it."
That's the problem with most online services - they don't get the idea of depreciation or sales, everything is one price and while I'm willing to pay $20 for a new HQ version of Tangled or something, I'm less than willing to pay the same price for a lower quality version of Thelma and Louise.
With TV shows and movies? Well, I just think we're missing something like Netflix. iSky is admirably charging out, supported by all the major telcoms (apart from Telecom) offering free bandwidth for them, but we need some sort of OnDemand that isn't just for missing a week and is decently priced. For a couple of bucks, an American could tune into an entire season of Supernatural or something to be watched at their own leisure. What's my choices? Rent a DVD at an outrageous price and get through about 22 episodes in a week, pay ~$70 (way higher than anywhere else in the world, either, otherwise I'd cough it up) or download it illegally (but freely). What is the logical choice?
Anyway, I know this is quite rambly and reiterating what people have said above me, but I'm trying to point out other ways to improve our copyright problems. I'm sure nobody will listen - they're too busy running their business plan from the 1980s - and I'm sure there'll be some fact somewhere that will be wrong that someone will delight in pointing out, but just the quick common-sense ramblings of a student. LOOK I USED THE WORD RAMBLING TWICE YAY
I think it's a terrible law, not just because it's useless but because of what it insinuates- that they will be tracking what we are doing on the internet. That's our freedom which is being restricted. You can no longer do whatever you want because they'll be watching. It's not that this law will actually stop people. Think about what the next law will be?
Besides you can still get movies for cheap without downloading- most people go to the video stores and rent dvds- it's super easy to copy them to your computer (dvd shrink) so it might cost you about $3? You can get cds from the library and do the same... And like it's been mentioned- the artist get crap all from you buying their cd... Though the truth is, I - and I know alot of others, if they like the cd enough they will buy it- I want to physically own it if it's great....
This is a very late reply but Claire's comments are really out of context and I can't help but comment when someones arguments make no sense. She is talking about tangible objects, if you take that car, or that petrol or that block of cheese no one else can buy it or use it. Whatever value it is sold for it can only be sold once for that amount of work and resources that has gone into it. Whereas things covered by copyright are generally the sort of things that after being created once take no resources to replicate.
we are all in violation of this pathetic law. Do we not all have music on our computers ripped from a CD? Then we burn CD's to play elsewhere. WTF???
CUFF ME AND LOCK ME UP B******!!
Yay.... now I'm forced to buy over priced, and not so worth it things off the app store *sarcasm*
Don't worry, someone's going to find a way to bypass, who ever made this law obviously underestimated hackers and computer wiz.
Maybe we should boycott ISP like telecom and Vodafone, i'd like to see how much money they will make after lots of people stop using their crappy services.
Thats a good one LOL - mybe we should all do this LOL...
I also feel sorry for the people whos pc's are hacked and used to download via torrents....
mybe thats what should be done.... hack the vast majority of NZ windows pc's and get them all downloading non-copyrighted material labeled with copyrighted names... just to prove a point...
to bad the people that do illegal downloading are smarter than the retards passing laws they dont no anyting about hope the s*** hits the fan :D
@PaulB: "Surely if the owner of the Video/ Music/ whatever doesn't want to supply it for free or yet in New Zealand, they should have that right and the protection of the law."
Yes, they should. They also shouldn't be advertising their products on internationally viewed websites. How should people react when they're shown an ad they're not allowed to buy the product of?
Okay seriously...Does it look like people are THAT rich to buy such overpriced bill.
Second thing, YOU ARE SCREWING UP ARE PRIVACY! GO AWAY! how about you do something useful and not be greedy buggers, knew how to actually understand this years internet and technology.
Third thing, you do know the most people around the world who is COMING to New Zealand for the Rugby World Cup or for visit, they probably be want to download things of the internet while they are here.
Also! THE WORLD IS DOWNLOADING EVERY FREAKING SECOND.
agree
i'm not from your country but as someone pointed out, your country will be testing ground of this to be implemented in the rest of the world. i can see reasonings on both end of the spectrum. its greed and selfishness on all sides but regardless, if there's a will there's a way and so we shall thank the based god when he sets us free from the interwebs tyranny.
Seriously no offense this law sounds communist. Tale away our privacy see if we Care (sarcasm)
Stupid old politicians don't understand the Internet. Downloading music was illegal already but anyone who isn't totally stupid knows how to do it.
One word, proxy,
Good luck tracing me,
FTP, just like the old days
so does that mean you cant download music from artists like america?? Or is it just for NZ music? Dang NZ man. I;m pretty sure we're the only country who got this damn law. I thought it was all for the music and fun not about the money. Most artists don't care that FANS are getting the music for free. They just wanna spread the love and share their music. Yea. I'm moving countries. lol
so does that mean you cant download music from artists like america?? Or is it just for NZ music? Dang NZ man. I;m pretty sure we're the only country who got this damn law. I thought it was all for the music and fun not about the money. Most artists don't care that FANS are getting the music for free. They just wanna spread the love and share their music. Yea. I'm moving countries. lol
Alot of businesses have open internet you can download outside peoples homes if they dont have their modem locked down, then innocent people are going to be paying for other peoples downloads. John Key doesnt know enough to be government. Not everything you down load on a p2p site is illegal u ***!!!
Our Government sucks that why he thinks he knows about the internet but obviously he knows nothing. It will never work Music and movies are already easy to download without be traced.
Government gotta find some way to pay our Nz debts, so the internet is one world wide money making machine and so are the telephone and internet companys. No internet for the pirater Phone/internet companys will lose a tonne of cash. No one will need10 plus gigs anymore may as well go back to dial up lol Kiwi Online 10 buks a month lol Its not gonna work so he can stick it in his pipe and smoke it
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