NZ's anti-piracy plan: warnings, fines, suspension

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 16 December 2009 09:17

IT Policy - Government Tech Policy

The New Zealand Government has unveiled its plans for dealing with illegal copying of material over the Internet - primarily via peer-to-peer file sharing - saying it favours a three-notice procedure that would culminate in offenders paying a penalty up to $15,000 and losing their Internet access for six months.

Commerce minister, Simon Power, has released a cabinet paper that outlines the basis of new legislation, which will be introduced to Parliament early next year. It represents the Government's second attempt to review section 92A of the Copyright Act. Its initial proposals generated such a storm of protest that it was forced to withdraw them, in March this year, and start again.

Under the new proposals rights holders will be able to request that ISPs give alleged infringers notice to stop infringing activity. The first notice will inform the account holder that infringing has occurred and is illegal. Two further notices may be sent.

It will be incumbent upon rights holders to provide 'reasonable evidence' of an infringement. The 'reasonable evidence' required by the rights holder will be prescribed by regulation but it will include, the IP address, type of work illegally downloaded through P2P file sharing and date the P2Pcopyright infringement occurred. Legal tracking software is currently used by right holders to provide this evidence.

Rights holders will only be able to provide evidence to the ISP pertaining to activity occurring within 20 working days of the alleged copyright infringement. This is to prevent a rights holder from accumulating infringements and to avoid ISPs receiving thousands of notifications from right holders that are not recent and and likely to be costly to process.

If infringing continues after three notices, the rights holder may seek a penalty of up to $NZ15,000 at the Copyright Tribunal, with the amount be based on the damage to the copyright owner. Where serious and continued breaches occur, rights holders will be able to go to court to seek a range of remedies, including the suspension of accounts for up to six months. Account holders will be able to issue counter notices, and can request a hearing if they feel they should not be penalised.

The proposal has received a cautious initial approval from InternetNZ. Policy director, Jordan Carter, said: "The Government has taken on board many of the concerns we raised, concerns that were widely felt across the sector...Mr Power has recognised that this approach should lead to a large fall in illegal peer-to-peer file sharing. InternetNZ agrees. [We] will consider the detail in today's cabinet paper in more depth and offer further comment."

Power said: "The procedure will both educate and warn file-sharers that unauthorised sharing of copyright works is illegal, and in turn stop a large proportion of illegal file sharing." He claimed that "A great deal of work has gone into finding a fair, effective, and credible process for the enforcement of copyright against illegal peer-to-peer file-sharers."

He added: "This was a complex issue to work through, and industry groups, intellectual property experts, and officials worked hard to ensure the issues raised in the submissions were addressed." The public will be able to make further submissions at the select committee stage.