New Zealand First to Adopt 3-Strikes Law for Pirates
Written by Ben Jones on October 17, 2008New Zealand is known for sheep, rugby, and dramatic filming locations. However, it will also be known for being the first place in the world with a 3-strikes law for copyright infringement. The Copyright Amendment Act 2008 gained royal assent earlier this year, and goes into effect at the end of February 2009. Opposition to this bill, despite being signed into law, is still growing though.
Previously we’ve discussed how certain countries have been pushing for laws requiring ISPs to disconnect filesharers, if they receive multiple notices alleging copyright infringement. This proposal has been struck down by the EU, and no-one but lobby groups seems to want it.
However, over in New Zealand a law requiring ISPs to disconnect repeat copyright infringers has been proposed, passed and signed into law. The law, Copyright (New Technologies) Amendment Act 2008 adds a new section to deal with Internet Service Providers and copyright infringement. Yet, opposition from ISPs, and Internet user groups may see it being struck down or modified before it goes into force.
The section in question, 92A reads
Internet service provider must have policy for terminating accounts of repeat infringers
(1) An Internet service provider must adopt and reasonably implement a policy that provides for termination, in appropriate circumstances, of the account with that Internet service provider of a repeat infringer.
(2) In subsection (1), repeat infringer means a person who repeatedly infringes the copyright in a work by using 1 or more of the Internet services of the Internet service provider to do a restricted act without the consent of the copyright owner.
Opposition to this section of law has been steady, with six industry bodies that have opposed the law meeting with government ministers. Indications from Communications Minister David Cunliffe and Associate Commerce Minister Judith Tizard, are that if the opposing groups and rights holders can come to an agreement by developing a workable code of practice, the law can be reworded. Tizard also reiterated strongly that the law was going ahead, and it would do so because of ‘Internet piracy’, according to one of the meeting’s participants
The issue at the heart of the debate is that of proof. InternetNZ head Keith Davidson told New Zealand’s Stuff, that he wanted to see an element of proof being required before people are cut off. A position understandable with the recent bad press given to copyright infringement allegations in the US, both in studies, and the courtroom. Countering him was the CEO of the NZ Recording Industry Association, telling Stuff that proving the guilt of infringers in a court of law, before any penalty is dealt out would be “impractical and ridiculous”, a sentiment also shared by his American counterparts.
A provision to penalize false or inaccurate accusations was in the bill at one point, after dealings by the group of six with a select committee. However, Tizard stated that it was inappropriate, as the Cabinet had already decided the law was to go ahead as was, and that people shouldn’t be surprised.
New Zealand is also in the middle of an election (voting day is November 8th) so there may be a change of ministers soon. These may be more amenable to changing the wording of the law, to be based on proof, not simple accusations. As always though, nothing is certain for the 3.3 million kiwi’s (around 80% of the population) on the net, except they are considered less important than the greed of lobby groups.
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93 Responses
Damn, I live in New Zealand. I don’t want them to do this! I want to pirate forever!
#2, obvious troll.
A dark day indeed, evil has won this round, in NZ anyway.
Gov’t of NZ, bought and paid for just like all the rest. Does that country even have a constitution and/or civil rights?
NZ and all it’s people are USA’s bitch apparently. It would turn into a bullet-fest if they tried this shit around here…
Oops, #1 must have been deleted and i moved into 2 :), I was talking about “Logan” of course
AHAHAHA FAIL
It won’t be long until NZ is no longer connected to the internet
What do you mean ‘obvious troll’?
I live in NZ.
It is a sad day — but there’s no doubt, that if it works, other countries will deploy the law. We’re just the starting point. Look at giving women the right to vote for example.
ISPs here have been arguing the law saying it’s completely unfeasible to police the internet without government funding.
@John - Your naivety amazes me. As I said before, if it shows promise here, it’ll be deployed elsewhere.
@Josh - Lol, if National win the election, 1.5B will be put towards FTTH (Fibre to the home). We’ll be ahead by world’s standards.
New Zealand is a third world country. They don’t even have computers there or television.
So no biggie.
Im happy to hear this, so they can catch the pirates and execute them on the street with a shotgun!
Hahahaha at the noob above.
We do have TV
We do have computers.
Dumbass
Hip hip hooray for riposte gradué!
#11: (that was sarcasm)
blah. they always want to sign bills that everyone opposes. fascist bastards.
Time to organize. Start spoofing notices and get thousands disconnected. How long do you think that law will last if that happens?
If its not based off proof, isnt it possible to accuse a office holder of it and get them dissconnected? Just a thought, not sure if its possible or anything…
I will never move to NZ!!!
“Opposition to this bill, despite being signed into law, is still growing though.”
Yet is it growing fast enough or forcefully enough? I think that there is quite a potential for people to take some action, although this potential seems so far unrealized.
Roze
http://www.28chan.org/fs/
DEATH TO Tizard!!!!
DEATH TO Tizard!!!!
DEATH TO Tizard!!!!
DEATH TO Tizard!!!!
They must be all killed now.
Let not a single one of them remain alive.
so by 3 strikes.. is that one strike equals one song/app/movie. Or one strike equals multiple songs/apps/movies in one accusation??
This is like taking away someone’s drivers license because three people “say” that you were speeding.
Like someone mentioned before, start spoofing it and target government-related computers, schools, politicians homes, lobbyists, etc. Then see how long they think this was a good idea.
iam from new zealand and this law is just another bullshit one this government passes
If the ISP’s followed the 3-strike law, then they wouldnt have any business
The current government has turned NZ into a nanny state full of Political Correctness
When I read the lawtext it seems to me it only says that ISPs need to have a policy to disconnect repeated infringers…
But to officially be an infringer it has to be proven in court, right?
I read nowhere that an accusation is enough.
New Zealand?
Just another shithole to add to my “Dont migrate to”-list
Hey Awesome-O, where are you from? Probably some smog filled industrial city where the sun doesn’t shine.
Or maybe you’re from America: http://www.majorlycool.com/media/1/worldAccordingToAmericans.gif
Man i told torrent freak about this, I would love to make a protest outside the beehive and get the media to cover it.
This Law if it goes ahead and falsely accuses the people of pirating even though the might not have will leave hundreds or thousands of people offline. People will get extremely pissed off and then what do you know Bye Bye Labour.No votes for you.
Labour are dumbasses as they are trying to get there votes up and then they shoot themselves in the foot…..good work for political suicide!
Its a good thing I visit torrentfreak regularly, or I wouldnt have known of this.
Guess its time to start turning up on my local MPs door step weekly.
Once it come into effect basically all internet cafes and open wireless spots are going to go offline within two months.
Ontop of that many new zealand isps can/do monitor p2p activities for either prioritisation or throttling, and I can guarantee a few are going to take a ‘hard line’ and disconnect people over it while they run off with both a ‘early disconnection fee’ (100-200) plus a months worth of connection fees (50-150+).
So many new zealanders are going to receive essentially a instant fine of 150-400 dollars depending on a isps policies.
1. Find IPs of govermt officials / corporations / schools / law enforcement.
2. Send complaints to ISPs.
3. Watch law being overturned.
REVOLT!
most likely this law will be ignore. ofcourse they will disconnect 1 or 2 as example but not 50% of subscriber.
http://it.gen.nz/2008/10/07/ministers-why-we-changed-the-copyright-act/#comment-1090
Solution: Start a NZ only torrent site that disguise all files as all flavors of Linux, and distribute files with all sorts of fake MD5s such as:
Ubuntu 8.04 Win32 [0A3E0FAC]
Ubuntu 8.04 Win32 [F76515CC]
And then have a secret lookup chart somewhere for people to look up…
I might be stupid and this might not work… forget it…
isps cant afford to do this kind of stuff and live…
New Zealand, the new Comcast of the Planet Earth. Leading the charge in pissing off your denizens!
Hooray!
Wow
Just when we were starting to see some real promising development to push NZ into one of the leading countries for Fiber they go and screw it up.
One of the Parties just needs to vote against this and then they will win by default. if thats how it works
(BTW its election time in NZ incase you didn’t know)
This is horrible news, The most annoying part is all this happened and there is nothing that i heard about it, and now nothing I can do…
A dark day.
I was seriously considering accepting a job in Auckland until I read this
Melbourne it is then
I wonder if the hay the technology to apply the law. My guess is no.
You can allways use encripted connections and they wont catch anything.
We are the customers of the entertaiment industry. So if the try to screw us, we decide not to buy any product more…
he did it
he did it
he did it
now know one has internet
yaaaaaa
and they still odnt increase reveunes
OH my oh me. What we do next?
Ahh yes now we must have cameras in your hous and following you to that bathroom, we must make sure….
Yet another good reason for New Zealanders to move to Australia.
Come on guys, New Zealand isn’t that bad.
I’m on a 6mbit up and down connection with unlimited data and no throttling or anything and that sets me back $60 a month. And I’ve ditched telecom landline (it’s wireless Broadband) and now I just run a VOIP connection for about $12 a month.
So that’s not too bad compared to Australia I reckon.
uhm @ #39
Wait..are you crazy?? move to aussie?? lol..ye, and live behind the new Great Firewall of Australia you wont be able to opt out from..maybe not. This 3 strikes law will be removed or made useless as soon as it get’s put to practice as the isp’s cant’ afford to disconnect people here lol..
How long before they sent all of us into labor camp then death camp? this is the beginning of the end of freedom in the world, JUST DON’T VOTE, REBEL!
ANARCHY NOW!
To #23, I agree keep away from all these shit holes such as NZ and the USA.
Ben Jones,
You should reference this link of your earlier report in the article:
http://torrentfreak.com/study-reveals-reckless-anti-piracy-antics-080605/
As it’s been proven that many of those infringement notices are frauds, this can’t be repeated enough.
just how is this supposed to work? instead of beeing sued your 4ss up they simply send you a letter telling you not to do that anymore? and if you fuk up once again your still safe from fines?
Money should be abolished. Then greed will have no reward. A new system is definitely required. And people have to wake up to that fact. As long as money exists, someone is going to feel amply motivated to get more than they deserve. I mean, how else will a money world play out?
Two free strikes! Let’s pirate! The odds of getting caught are close to zero in the first place, and now you have guaranteed immunity for the first two times. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me — who comes up with this stuff?
I’m pretty sure the law wont exempt copyright holders taking you to court and getting a settlement out of you.
It just means if/when you lose you’ll get to keep your internet connection so they can take you back to court a few times and get some more cash out of you.
sin thr33 times and you’re out. Yeah!
how incredibly unfortunate + stupid can someone be to be caught 3 times pirating. maybe 1 of 10,000 pirates ever gets caught but the same person three times oO
Will most likely be the first crucible for this law to be seen for it’s stupidity.
It always amuses me on the remarks about how people fickle are about their opinions of countries change based on legislation passed. Everyones an expert but no one has actually any real experience to make decisions on. Unless you take you web news as gospel
The proper term is not “pirate”, but “copyright infringer”.
The word “pirate” conjures of thoughts of viscous people who capture ships and kill their crews on the high seas. Copyright infringement is certainly unlawful, but it is nowhere near as wrong as murder and the other crimes committed by pirates (despite what media companies may say!)
We already have the highest rate ever of people moving overseas, looking like they’re trying to empty the country or something. Stupid piece of shit government
“Gov’t of NZ, bought and paid for just like all the rest. Does that country even have a constitution and/or civil rights?”
Actually, no. No we don’t. No constitution per se, and our bill of rights is not entrenched, so it could be voted down by a simple 50%+1 majority…
Trying to legislate copyright 3-strike laws is pure evidence of goverment people who have sold out to business interests. There simply is no other explanation of how so similar suggestions of 3-strike laws are popping up everywhere around this planet.
Plain disgusting. Voting yes to such obviously bought laws should be treated as treason and be punishble by public beheading. OK, maybe exaggerating a little, but not very much. Goverment people really need to get back some fear for the people.
Also, using the word pirating for private copyright infringement is incorrect. Pirating is basically selling goods that you don’t have the right to sell. If you aren’t selling anything, you can’t be pirating.
maybe anonymous should contact those idiots David Cunliffe and Judith Tizard and let them know what they think.
Or perhaps we could accuse them of piracy first.
If I was an ISP I would first start monitoring all ministers home accounts, and all media celebrities home accounts and take them down as soon as their kids used limewire, or downlaoded copyright porn. then we will see how long it lasts. Most accounts are shared between 5 or so people. This is a ridiculous law.
All this anti-New Zealand rhetoric probably by people who have never come here. This is one law that is coming to effect here and not a good one. As a Kiwi I am going to do as much as I can to change this law by voting Green at the coming election. Just shouting abuses at the politicans won’t do anything, you actually need to talk to them. If you want to see what the other parties think about the policy for the upcoming election go to TVNZondemand.co.nz and go to elections. There is a debate that was on TVNZ 7 and webcast with the IT spokespeople of Labour, National, Green and ACT. Oh and I would more worried with the filtering that is happening in Australia that is even scarier.
I live in New Zealand, and honestly I doubt everyone is going to follow this bullshit rule.
New Zealand doesn’t have a communist government.
Yeah right.
There’s an easy way to counter this. Simply make three accusations against anyone who was involved in passing this law.
Agreed Mak. Awesome-O’s probably from America. They even think that we’re a state of Australia =P
The NZ Government is run by a bunch of ministers most of whom couldn’t find their bum with both hands on a sunny day. Some Government departments here are corrupt, run by liars and lean towards secrecy and favoritism.
New Zealand is steeped in political correctness. Is the 3-strikes BS any surprise to those who live in NZ?
I plan to accuse Tizard of download copyrighted porn the day the law comes into effect. pwn.
Dont judge NZ on this silly cow.
Sadly ISP’s in New Zealand have been conforming to the DRAFT (it wasn’t even law) of this bill as far back as 2005.
The ISP’s that were following the draft of this bill back in 2005 were:
WorldxChange, Orcon, SlingShot and TelstraClear.
Xtra started following it back in 2007.
Oh and I remember mentioning this in a previous comment on TorrentFreak.
fricken bastards, the whole point of piracy is illegitimacy, illegality, the pirates who prevail will be the ones to find their way around this. Impossible as it may seem. Perhaps connect yourself to the internet and cut out the middle man, ISPs? LOL Sucks to live here. Now it just got even worse.
WTF!
Bloody Sir Helen Clark!
You Lady man lady.
god. this world is so PC.
“god. this world is so PC.”
nice pun, very nice
REBEL, DOWNLOAD NOW
“You can’t stop the signal.”
– Mr. Universe, from the film “Serenity”
if i received a single accussation from my ISP that i had infringed copyright i would sue their fickin ass off
make them prove it in court
Court? Judge? Innocent until proven otherwise? Didnt you hear how ridiculous that sounds? Theres surely no place for such medieval practices in our modern world!
all i can say is shit, time to move to Australia
Poor NZers! I can sympathize.
Here in Canada Bittorrent is limited (for high bandwidth users) between the hours of 4pm and 2am every day. I get limited to 30 Kbps due to DPI for those hours. Bell isn’t my ISP but all(?) ISPs here use Bell’s telephone lines across the country. Bell Canada has a nice monopoly going for themselves. Our government is doing nothing about it.
So NZers it could be worse, you could live in Canada - where you get the full internet experience for only 14 hours per day.
jeez and i always thought canada was the holy land of filesharing ( beside sweden ) in the world … Well finally beginning to appreciate my own country again :) real competition on the internet market seems to be worth something after all.
What a bummer. Must suck to live there.
Jiff
http://www.online-privacy.se.tc
fail
That figures. New Zealand is one of the worst “nanny state” type countries out there. They even make the US seem libertarian.
I seriously hope this doesn’t happen in Australia…
Anyways guys move away from torrents. They are crap. Move onto webhosting sites i.e. rapidshare etc…they pwn torrents.
Use Rapget you can use other file hosting sites too..
@79, that’s spot on. I myself find Rapidshare far more productive than torrents. Slingshot (a NZ ISP) has been throttling torrents for some time anyway.
Our politicians live in the world of fuckwits. Oddly enough, it’s where THEY come from.
In new zealand we have something called parliamentary supremacy which means that means an act of parliament can’t be taken to court and must be carried out no matter what it says.
Soon on these screens… the Sarkozy doctrine in Italy, too….
http://kingofgng.com/eng/2008/10/19/the-minister-downloader-repudiates-the-anti-piracy-committee/
Stop supporting them by calling it “3 strikes and you’re out” - its really “3 accusations and you’re out”. Remember the new thinking - guilty until proven innocent.
Feel for you, NZ’ers, but it’s gonna be a whole lot worse here in Aus. BTW: these laws are not inspired by the communist left, but by the neo-fascist far right. M’kay?
http://www.facebook.com/groups.php?ref=sb#/group.php?gid=29834002818
facebook group against it.
I live in New Zealand and I can’t beleive this is happening.
This is a useless law which will just put ISP’s into bankruptcy.
This is all because of a boring NZ made film called “Sione’s Wedding” which was such a boring and crappy movie.
Just because it got DVDRip’d and posted on torrent sites they got less revenue.
Welcome to the real world NZ Government, how do America handle Piracy.
New Zealand should just stop making boring NZ films and let the US make them.
OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. I sitll can’t believe this. I hope ISP’s fight to reject this law.
This is also disgusting as it interfere’s with the Human Right’s.
Sneaking up on customers history and looking at what they look at. That is so uncomfortable just like China’s Internet but instead with Tibet stuff.
I have recently returned to NZ after 20 years overseas and I am sorry to say that what I find is a cuntry run by control freaks and busybodies. They talk about de-regulation but that is only for businesses. The people are monitored with Orwellian efficiency. It’s no surprise the multinations felt NZ would be the easiest touch when it came to persuading the government to further monitor its people.
soooo… if you have an old fashion VCR and you record 3 tv shows… they take away your tv?
I live in New Zealand.
If it wasn't for this site I wouldn't have known about this new law.
I'd rather live in China.
evil has won all over the world. i thought that 2009 will be a great year. but this new law is proving to be a real downer, to everyone. this same law is being passed in Sweden, which is where the hugely popular torrent downloading site thepiratebay is hosted. this means that as of april 09 (that's when the law comes into affect in sweden), there will be over 5 million criminals in sweden, because of this new law. thats more than 50% of their population. it is a dark day indeed.
not to mention if they executed all of the pirates that would be over 50% of the population
hahaha holy crap that is a good idea
LONG LIVE THE BAY
I live in NZ and have already been suspended, even beofre the law came in! ISP is xnet 2 strikes and your out, so it would apear that I can't torrent any more.
Sucks…..
IF I were them right now, I would be up in arms about this. No organzation like the RIAA or the austurailian equvilant of that has the right to use any leagal system or an internet provider to jusify their own existance.
Im Sorry aussies are so lax with lett laws pass like this..
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