Monday, March 23, 2009

Back to drawing board for New Zealand's proposed ISP-as-enforcer copyright amendment

New Zealand's proposed copyright bill, controversial Section 92A of the Copyright Amendment (New Technologies) Act, has been scrapped, it was announced by Prime Minister John Key. The proposed law, which would have turned ISP's into copyright enforcers for Big Music and the film industry, will now be rewritten. Commerce and justice minister Simon Power will now meet with officials and rewrite Section 92A (S92) of the Act from the ground up. 'Section 92a is not going to come into force as originally written. We have now asked the minister of commerce to start work on a replacement section,' the prime minister said. No timeframe has been set for amending S92. The controversial measure had been met with a firestorm of controversy.

Commentary & discussion:

p2pnet.net (3/25/09)







Keywords: lawyer digital copyright law online internet law legal download upload peer to peer p2p file sharing filesharing music movies indie independent label freeculture creative commons pop/rock artists riaa independent mp3 cd favorite songs intellectual property portable music player

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Considering that you were considered Guilty simply on the record industry say-so, and that the industry group
(RIANZ) is as certain of the infalibility of there methods as the RIAA is in America that the CEO Campbell Smith, when asked if he would "eat his hat" if music industry copyright notifications turned out to contain numerous errors replied: "Yes. I will fall on my sword and eat my hat. Hat first," it's a really good thing that this isn't going forward in its present form.

In addition the ISPs were provided NO indemnity against lawsuits from either their customers OR the RIANZ when they mishandled this, giving them NO reason to want to support it at all.

This, of course, has been typical of the RIAA/RIANZ who accept NO liability for their mistakes - and don't feel they ever should!

{The Common Man Speaking}

Anonymous said...

This is probably the reason why RIAA won't open up the deals it is trying to make with the ISP's here in the U.S.

Because if they did, there would be protests just like there were in NZ, the politicians couldn't approve that law without looking like the media patsies some of them are.

Justin Olbrantz (Quantam) said...

Anonymous: No doubt. And that's why they're doing everything they can to keep the public of the entire world from knowing anything about the ACTA, as well.

Macros said...

As an NZer, I for one am ecstatic that this abomination has been scrapped.

In saying that, I'm wary of what the rewrite will produce. It took some heavy lobbying (I'm sure) to get it as far as it has, and I'm sure the copyright cartels are keen not to lose that investment.

I thought the claim by Campbell Smith that their evidence would stand up in court & had never been tested was pretty cunning, even if false. I'm sure it'd be susceptible to the same weaknesses that the RIAA evidence is, primarily indicating who the infringer is as an individual. But they did have one thing on their side... they didn't have to find the perpetrator, they would've been able to pass that along to the ISP, who would pass it along to the account holder.

Hopefully the rewrite will produce a more sensible law that doesn't put the power into a non-govt organisation's hands.

Macros.