After outrage in the Internet community coupled with resistance by ISPs led to a failure to reach agreement in the allocated period, Prime Minister John Key announced that the law would be have to be delayed. In the end not even a delay would be enough to reach consensus and it was announced that Section 92A of the Copyright Act 1994 would not come into force on 27 March as scheduled, but instead would be amended to address areas of concern.

Prime Minister Key set Minister of Commerce Simon Power to work on a replacement and today he put those proposals to the cabinet.

The main development is that ISPs will no longer be expected to perform the role of ‘Copyright Cops’ for the entertainment industries. Instead, that role will be performed by New Zealand’s Copyright Tribunal which at least at this early stage appears to offer those accused some kind of due process via an independent body.

The bad news is that the fraught with difficulty and disproportionate response of disconnections – aka ’3 Strikes’ – is still on the table. The new framework is proposed as follows;

Step 1: In the event that a copyright holder records an infringement of its rights by an Internet user (unauthorized uploading), they will be required to send an initial infringement notice to the corresponding ISP. Once the account holder is identified by matching the alleged infringing IP-address with customer records, the initial infringement notice will be passed to him or her, via the ISP.

Step 2: Should there be another infringement, the above process would be repeated but this time the account holder would also receive a ‘Cease and Desist’ notice. At this point an account holder would have the opportunity to respond to copyright holders.

Step 3: If after issuing a Cease and Desist notice infringements continue, the copyright holders can then apply to the Copyright Tribunal to require the corresponding ISP to hand over the personal details of the account holder. Interestingly copyright holders can already achieve something similar, simply by going directly to the courts.

Step 4: At this stage copyright holders are free to issue a complaint with the Copyright Tribunal, who will in turn notify the account holder that an additional complaint has been made against him or her. The account holder is then given the opportunity to put their side of the story and move to mediation. In this instance costs would be shared and a government-approved mediator would be provided. Should this step fail the Copyright Tribunal would decide from a range of penalties such as fines or ultimately, disconnection.

Of course, the above is not without its issues.

Right now New Zealand’s Copyright Tribunal, a body operating under the Ministry of Justice is a small concern used to dealing with smaller, more manageable copyright disputes. Indeed, currently it has only three part-time staff. It’s going to need more resources if it’s to deal with these cases effectively.

However, Matthew Holloway from The Creative Freedom Foundation believes the tribunal system could be workable;

“It’s not necessarily an unsolvable problem. It could make sense to initially restrict the number of complaints by dealing only with certain scales of infringement. The scale could be adjusted in time. This would be similar to the approach within Canada where the police have said that certain small scales of infringement won’t be investigated because they simply don’t have the resources.”

The discussion document for the amended Section 92a will be open for submissions until August 7.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

However, after much discussion between the parties and outrage in the Internet community, no agreement was reached in the time frame allocated, and Prime Minister John Key announced that the law would be delayed while a solution was found.

Today things have gone stage further. As it became clear that an agreement on a code of practice would not be reached even with a delay, the New Zealand government has scrapped the controversial Section 92A legislation.

“Cabinet today decided that section 92A of the Copyright Act 1994 will not come into force on 27 March as scheduled, but will be amended to address areas of concern,” said Minister for Commerce, Simon Power. “Allowing Section 92A to come into force in its current format would not be appropriate given the level of uncertainty around its operation,” he added.

Prime Minister John Key said that although some progress was made between the entertainment industries and ISPs, there was not enough common ground to reach agreement.

“Section 92A is not going to come into force as originally written. We have now asked the minister of commerce [Simon Power] to start work on a replacement section,” Key said.

Back in February, InternetNZ, the non-profit group responsible for protecting and promoting the Internet in New Zealand, called Section 92A “faulty” and “disproportionate and unfit for purpose” but today they are breathing a sigh of relief.

“Terminating an Internet account was always a disproportionate response to copyright infringement and to force ISPs and other organizations to be copyright judges and policemen was never an acceptable situation,” said InternetNZ executive chairman, Keith Davidson.

Meanwhile, users on Twitter expressed their delight at the news and no doubt the anti-Section 92A people over at ‘Creative Freedom‘ will be delighted that all their hard work has paid off.

The question now remains – will Section 92A be rewritten completely, or will the government stick a couple of Band-Aids on it and hope for the best? Time will tell…

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Considering that the legislation received almost universal opposition from anyone not in the music business, it came as no surprise that the parties involved couldn’t come to an agreement. Prime Minister John Key announced that the law would be delayed while a solution is found, noting that they may have to change the law in order to reach one.

But according to Campbell Smith, CEO of RIANZ (New Zealand’s answer to the RIAA) everyone complaining about the legislation is wrong and the music industry is right. Writing in The New Zealand Herald, Smith says that despite the ‘fact’ that the industry has “transformed its business models”, unlicensed music on the Internet is proving a disincentive to those looking to sell music online.

Smith says that the music industry has been working hard to find “proportionate and reasonable solutions” to tackle illicit file-sharing. Noting that in some countries labels take legal action against those uploading music, Smith says that Section 92A “is a better solution for everyone,” although don’t be surprised if that “everyone” is limited to those in the music industry.

Smith says that after looking long and hard for a solution to the ‘problem’, the industry realized that ISPs are in a “unique position to help us protect creative content online,” and feels that it’s the government’s responsibility to force these negotiations on the ISPs, despite the fact that the ISPs aren’t happy about it at all. Seems everyone has a responsibility to the music industry – like it or not.

Turning to what he describes as “sensational propaganda” surrounding Section 92A in the press recently, Smith says that if the law was half as bad as is being reported, he would vote against it himself. Now that would be a sensation.

Going on to the tracking mechanics, he explained that the process of catching an infringer is simple. The labels will log on to public file-sharing ‘sites’ and log the IP addresses of people uploading large amounts of copyright infringing material and report them to their ISP. Further details of how the entire system would operate can be found here.

From a BitTorrent perspective, it will not be as easy to track people sharing vast amounts of music as it is with applications such as LimeWire, since there is no ‘shared folder’. It’s doubtful that the labels will be as selective as they are suggesting, though. Many of the infringement notices being sent out in the UK right now are for just one track and if the labels are pinning all of their hopes on this new system, expect there to be lots and lots of them in New Zealand too.

Smith says that consumers need to be reassured that what is being done is “efficient and proportionate” but it’s difficult to see why any ‘consumer’ should appreciate the fact that privately owned businesses should have a veto over their continued Internet access, or feel that such action is “proportionate”.

Content creators do have the right to protect their work, as much is written in law, but threats and disconnections aren’t going to work. Not only are the public annoyed at the actions of the music industry, but ISPs are being dragged into this ‘war’ too. Expect things to get even more messy.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.