NZ File-Sharers, Remixers Guilty Upon Accusation 449
An anonymous reader writes "Next month, New Zealand is scheduled to implement Section 92 of the Copyright Amendment Act. The controversial act provides 'Guilt Upon Accusation,' which means that if a file-sharer is simply accused of copyright infringement he/she will be punished with summary Internet disconnection. Unlike most laws, this one has no appeal process and no punishment for false accusation, because they were removed after public consultation. The ISPs are up in arms and now artists are taking a stand for fair copyright."
Incredible (Score:4, Insightful)
Also an economic rescue pacage for isps with no customers should be prepered now
The solution (Score:5, Insightful)
I am repeating this ad nauseum but it's really the best, most effective solution.
1. Stop buying new music
2. Stop going to shows of new acts
3. Don't "pirate"[sic] music, just KILL the demand. P2P only lends credence, however tenuous, that they are "losing" money due to "theft"[sic].
4. Don't listen to top 40 radio
5. Did I mention stop uploading/downloading music on P2P networks? Boycott the big labels.
Bankrupt the RIAA(or whatever it's called in your respective country) members. Then, sanity will be restored to copyright.
Oh, in case you think your favorite label is an indie, remember this family tree - it's a little out of date but you'll see that a lot of "indie" labels you like, aren't! Check it out:
http://www.arancidamoeba.com/mrr/whoownswho2.html [arancidamoeba.com]
Re:The solution (Score:5, Insightful)
6. And get everyone you know to play along.
I agree with you wholeheartedly, but I'm really hard pressed to believe that the readership of Slashdot is what's driving the demand for the Big 4.
Re:Incompetence By Design (Score:3, Insightful)
How is it that the other Anglo-Saxon countries are all WORSE than the US when it comes to digital rights and freedoms?
And lots of other Big Brother and Nanny State idiocy, all from countries that think they are superior to the US.
Summary internet disconnection? (Score:5, Insightful)
So if you commit a burglary at night and use a flashlight, are you banned for life from ever using electricity? If you get caught dealing drugs and taking orders by cell phone, are you banned from ever having a telephone again?
Cutting someone off from access to communications technology for an indefinite term in modern society is a *very* harsh punishment. It's like these things all get written by some geriatric lawyer who's thinking "Those damn whippersnappers aren't doing anything important on that intarthingy anyway".
Cluedo .. or is that Clueless? (Score:1, Insightful)
I accuse the members of the NZ Government, in the House of Representatives, with the fluffy Kiwi bird.
No seriously, for a moment think about this. All it would take would be for one person who has a copyrighted item, to accuse every single member of the NZ Governement of copyright infraction.
Suddenly they find out how painful a badly written and enacted law can be.
"With but a prick I damn him" (Score:5, Insightful)
They can shut down independent musicians simply by saying so (like Shakespeare said "With but a prick, I damn him"). Furthermore, they can shut down anyone who legally downloads any independent work through Bittorrent (it's filesharing) just by claiming it violates their copyright.
None of these laws were ever about protecting artists. They are all about giving the established monopolies a method of protecting their predatory business practices.
Re:The solution (Score:3, Insightful)
They just make up the figures for pirated copies anyway. They count copies that aren't *bought* in the numbers they expect as pirated. Not pirating is better than pirating, but not by much
Re:The solution is easy (Score:5, Insightful)
Presumably they'll only let "qualified" people make accusations, ie. they'll ignore the likes of you and me.
Re:flippant American answer (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The solution (Score:5, Insightful)
I've heard this nonsense a few times. Haven't you heard? They're already going out of business and it has nothing to do with P2P file sharing. The "problem" is simply that musicians don't need them anymore. Was a time when they controlled the distribution and the means of production. Now they control neither. Any idiot with a Mac and a copy of Garage Band can cut an album now. More people buy from iTunes than buy CDs. So where are the labels going to make their money? Promotion? Ha! There's marketing companies out there that are a hundred times better and, importantly, cheaper.
The music industry is beat.. but they have a war chest and they intend to spend every dime before they give up and go home.
Re:The solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Then this decrease in demand will be blamed upon priacy, probably resulting in a blanket tax on internet connections, or blank media to make up for lost revenues.
Re:flippant American answer (Score:3, Insightful)
Because people in the US have guns and use them. There's a long history of US politicians having been killed/shot at by US citizens.
(Lincoln, a couple of Kennedys, Reagan come to mind)
And they can't get the laws changed because, well, people have guns.
I personally think that's a good thing (The gun ownership part, not the (shooting at|killing) politicians part).
Re:The solution is easy (Score:5, Insightful)
Rather than justice and due process this is a free market of ISPs deciding whose lawyers will cause them more problems. Governments won't be disconnected, nor will important people, but the public now have no protection. Disgusting!
Re:The solution (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Stop buying new music
RIAA: "Hey, our sales are down! It must be piracy!"
2. Stop going to shows of new acts
For the record, this is one place that isn't affected by piracy. If I were a legitimate artist wanting to stay out of the whole debate, I'd give away MP3s, sell physical copies for those who want them, and make the real money from touring.
3. Don't "pirate"[sic] music, just KILL the demand. P2P only lends credence, however tenuous, that they are "losing" money due to "theft"[sic].
This solves nothing. They obviously have no need for real proof, anyway, or why would they have sued dead people, and people who have never used computers? Filesharing could stop, overnight, and they wouldn't notice.
Because it was never about piracy. Piracy is just a nice scapegoat that they use as an excuse to do whatever they want. Right now, that's laws (which give them the right to hit up random people for cash), more DRM (to make it that much more difficult for third parties to compete, while opening the door for selling the same crap to you many more times), and whatever else they feel like doing.
As long as piracy exists, life is good -- they can do pretty much whatever they want, and get away with it.
So, if piracy no longer existed, they would need to create it. I have little doubt that employees of major record labels would be distributing their own files, just so they could pretend that it's still a threat.
4. Don't listen to top 40 radio
Then the question becomes, what should you listen to? Where should you get your music from, if you're to stop buying new music?
All you're doing is sending them a message that you personally no longer care about music, or movies -- and, very likely, they will assume you're a pirate. What you should be doing is sending them a message that also tells them how you want it to look. Show them demand, but on your terms.
Re:The solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Any idiot with a Mac and a copy of Garage Band can cut an album now.
Just like any idiot with a toolbox can make you a sofa and everyone with a camera can shoot a wedding - but that doesn't mean its going to be any good.
Personally, I like companies investing in artists, allowing them to not have to have a day job and focus on writing and recording an album. Working with people - producers, engineers, session musicians - that really know their craft and inspire the artist to do their best work. A nice studio environment with top equipment and great acoustics doesn't hurt either.
Not everything that the major labels put out is 13-a-dozen Top 40 R&B crap, there are some really talented people in the system. Yes, some of the established ones could finance their own recordings, but there are some wonderful debut albums by people who can't. Not to mention those that need a couple of albums to hone their craft before finally breaking and recouping costs. If they financed it from their own savings, that first flop would have been all they ever put out.
No, you don't always need them, but if we lose the investment major labels make, the music world will be lesser for it.
Re:The actual legalese (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:flippant American answer (Score:5, Insightful)
and the sad thing is you really believe this.
If what you said held any weight then bush would have been gunned down years ago.
But he wasn't. despite the vast numbers of people who hated him.
Not one of them got a shot off.
You know how much difference it makes that you have guns? Sweet Fuck All.
Your senator isn't scared by your penis extension. He has a security team who can use theirs much better than you can.
Re:The solution (Score:4, Insightful)
Know their craft, do they?
Due to the loudness war, I've been basically unable to listen to anything released over the last fifteen-twenty years. Fortunately we have a large cache of older records.
If the labels died, there'd be an increase in dud records, but right now almost *all* of them are duds to me. There'd also be an increase in records I can actually listen to.
Re:The solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Businesses other than the big 4 are capable of loaning money to a startup small business, which is effectively what a self-producing artist is. There are also smaller truly indie labels that perform the same function.
Artists see such tiny percentages of the gross from a big 4 album, they can even end up owing the label money.
The main reason to go with a big label is the marketing effects from the big 4 being embedded so deep in other media channels such as TV and radio, thus giving you exposure that it's very hard to get even now on an indie. This is changing though, and were the big 4 to go away, it would open up the door to lots of artists having moderate success, instead of a tiny handful getting mega success and everybody else going nowhere.
Nothing the big 4 does now can't be replicated by a host of other smaller, more artist and listener focused businesses, instead of the profit-at-any-cost current ones that try to control the market and the artists rather than supply what they want and need. For example, people wanted easy to download non-DRM music on-demand. It's taken 15 YEARS for the music industry to finally deliver. I remember my mate introducing me to MP3/BIT files downloaded off the internet in 1994. Here we are in 2009, and amazon has finally just launched its non-DRM MP3 download service in the UK, with major label backing. Speedy response to the market there guys.
Re:The solution (Score:3, Insightful)
It is, however, an essential part of my enjoyment of music.
Re:The solution (Score:2, Insightful)
Feel free to go back to 1850 any time you like.
In fact, you'll have to go back much further than that, because musicians were making money of printed music even before they were doing it off recorded music.
Unless you were planning on commissioning a piece? Or maybe become a patron?
Don't fool yourself that playing pubs ever put food on a musician's table and paid for his instruments.
Re:The solution is easy (Score:3, Insightful)
Presumably, they'll only let copyright holders make the accusations (which makes a lot of sense). I could also imagine that there'll be some clause regarding basic plausibility, e.g. whether or not you have a copyrighted work on the market (which would also make a lot of sense).
Still, the system would be laughably easy to corrupt.
Put Internet Rights into the Constitution (Score:4, Insightful)
The citizens of NZ should ask for a constitutional amendment to include internet rights as a basic human right, just as Greece did in its 2001 constitution [parliament.gr]:
1. All persons have the right to information [...] 2. All persons have the right to participate in the Information Society. Facilitation of access to electronically transmitted information, as well as of the production, exchange and diffusion thereof, constitutes an obligation of the State [...]
Of course even if something is codified into the constitution it could be limited by law (as it does in the case above if you read the PDF) or not implemented at all, but it is in general a good idea even just for the sake of the symbolism itself to have internet rights codified into the constitution.
Re:Incompetence By Design (Score:5, Insightful)
Canada isn't worse than the U.S. on this matter. Not even as bad yet as we have so far managed to fight off attempts by the U.S. to pressure our government into making a Canadian form of the DMCA
Re:Incompetence By Design (Score:2, Insightful)
Canada isn't worse than the U.S. on this matter.
At least in the U.S. I can buy CD-Rs without paying a tax to copyright holders whose copyrights I've never violated......
Re:flippant American answer (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly. The ones who get shot are the good presidents. Lincoln, Kennedy... and I hope not, but it would not surprise me: Obama. :(
You can guess by whom. (Hint: Not the normal people!)
Re:flippant American answer (Score:3, Insightful)
Why do you feel that one individual with a gun should have so much power as to decide whether he wants to remove a single politician person of his choosing permanently from society?
Didn't he say that he disagrees with the shooting at politicians part? I think you can be pro-gun without being pro-assassination.....
Re:We're the great fudgers (Score:3, Insightful)
ecent study showed that if New Zealand was offered a benevolent dictator and ran things better than now - most would ok it.
The only problem with that is that for every Augustus or Marcus Aurelius you also you have a Nero or Commodus.
I'll take my checks, balances and inalienable rights over a "benevolent" dictator any day of the week.
Re:The solution is easy (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't actually have to follow a process to copyright it... if you write it, it's your copyright. It's a safe bet that everybody on the planet who's ever held a pen has some copyrights to their name. The question, really, is whether you've produced anything that people actually want to copy.
Re:flippant American answer (Score:3, Insightful)
So you're saying there wasn't a vast number of people who hated him anyway? If the grandparent were correct then one really pissed person would be enough. In 8 years out of hundreds of millions of people, not one of the pissed assholes amongst them managed it.
Authority does tend to be based on the threat of violence but in the case of your handgun vs the US government it's basicly spitting at a thunderstorm. Even if you and everyone you know stands spitting at the storm you still achieve nothing.
Re:Incompetence By Design (Score:3, Insightful)
That recordable media levy is the main reason that Canada doesn't have a DMCA. And the price is virtually non-existent. I can still buy a 50-pack of blank CD's for $20 at the local Staples, less if I go to somebody who actually specializes in computer gear.
It's also worth pointing out that any Canadian version of the DMCA is unlikley to gain footing... it's only supported by the Conservatives, and they have a minority. One that's so stable, actually, that they had to have the Governor General suspend parliament before Christmas to avoid a confidence vote. Parliament resumes next week, and the vote is likely to happen then.
Smart move by them, really... it gave the Liberals time to remove Stephane Dion, whose wishy-washy leadership is the main reason the Liberals didn't win the last election... had they allowed the Liberals to topple the government, they would have been able to fight another election against Dion. Now they're going up against Michael Ignatieff, who appears significantly more competent, and has a *much* higher approval rating. :)
Re:flippant American answer (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Incompetence By Design (Score:5, Insightful)
That recordable media levy is the main reason that Canada doesn't have a DMCA. And the price is virtually non-existent.
That still doesn't justify it any better to my way of thinking. I have to help fund RIAA if I want to burn a copy of memtest86 [memtest86.com] or my favorite Linux distro? What's wrong with that picture?
Re:Incompetence By Design (Score:3, Insightful)
Bad as that may be it is still better than the DMCA
And being raped is better than being murdered but that still doesn't make it a good thing. In the ideal world we would have neither a DMCA nor a RIAA tax.
Also my country is not trying to force others to create harsher copyright laws
Your country would be doing it if it had a large and powerful industry that regarded copyrights as an important part of their business model. Canada has it's share of tariffs and other policies designed to protect domestic industries regarded as important. Note that I'm not saying that this makes it right -- just saying that the United States isn't the only country that looks out for the (perceived) best interests of domestic industries.
Re:The solution is easy (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:flippant American answer (Score:1, Insightful)
*Checks the list of past president's names* Nope, no Obamas, the one getting sworn in this month is the first one.
Re:The solution is easy (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes. We have an alternative system called voting. I recommend that you use it.
That's swell, if you want to wait until the next election to (hopefully) resolve the problem. Until then, what? Should the Kiwis just grab their ankles and smile?
No, you generate a lot of media fury. Do this by spoofing the IP's of newspapers, public officials, celebrities, etc. Get them kicked off the internet. If enough people get pissed, the politicians will know they won't get re-elected unless they fix it NOW.
You don't have to wait until the next election to bring pressure on politicians.
Re:flippant American answer (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you view Lincoln and Kennedy as good presidents who got shot, or good presidents BECAUSE they got shot?
Lincoln is the one who's responsible for the modern view that the president is allowed to issue edicts which have the full force of law, without consent from Congress. With Johnson following in his footsteps, he was impeached for his actions.
Kennedy was responsible for getting us involved in that fuckwit war in Vietnam, and he's responsible for the embargo that's STILL in place on Cuba to this day. You'd think that after half a century we could get over it, and revitalize their economy.
Now, Kennedy might have signed a couple of laws with regard to segregation, and that's nice, but Lincoln didn't free any slaves. The Emancipation freed the slaves in territories that didn't recognize the President or Congress as their leadership. Would be similar to Obama outlawing child prostitution in Indonesia or something, it just has absolutely no legal merit.
And why does nobody talk about Garfield?
He should have been your first pick for assassinated presidents. He died after only about a year in office, which isn't enough time to do much good or much bad. However, his death DID lead to the invention of the metal detector, or at least the first use of a device to find a bullet.
Define infringer? (Score:2, Insightful)
What defines somebody as an infringer?
What's the difference? (Score:1, Insightful)
Why is it a copyright infringement to download and listen to an mp3 you don't own, but not a copyright infringement to download and read a website you don't own?
Re:Incredible (Score:3, Insightful)
That's what Canada's doing (kind-of) through its recordable media levy. If you buy a recordable CD, it's assumed that you'll use a portion of it for copying music - some you pay something like $0.25 per cd to compensate the artists of that music.
In some ways its nice not to have to worry about the CRIA suing you, and since we're already paying for it, it's perfectly legal to make private copies of music in Canada. It does seem ridiculous, though, that to buy cds to back up your computer, over half the cost of the media is the levy.
Re:flippant American answer (Score:3, Insightful)
There was American support on the ground before that, and after that. To pick the guy in the middle that escalated it when every president involved before and after escalated it as well is a little absurd.
and he's responsible for the embargo that's STILL in place on Cuba to this day.
Then I blame Bush for not ending it, since he was the most recent able to do so. We'll see if Obama does. He probably will and will use the excuse of Fidel Castro's death as the reason to end it.
You'd think that after half a century we could get over it, and revitalize their economy.
I agree. Why didn't Bush end it (just picking on him because he's the most recent)? He's the most directly to blame for it being in place because he's the one that can end it now. Yet, it's there, and you are blaming some dead person for us continuing an embargo? That seems absurd. Though you do point out one problem I have with our form of goverment. It's too consistent. It's consistent to the point of absurdity. "Case Law" is an abomination which lets judges legislate from the bench. It's been a part of common law longer than the US has existed, but it is something we should have not inherited. I'd be for changing it so that rather than remanding it to a lower court after making findings of law, remanding it to the legislature. If the law isn't clear enough that judges can figure it out, how can the people? Yet, the confusing law is the only law available to the people, and "case law" is something that is made up on the fly so that no law is consistent.
Lincoln didn't free any slaves. The Emancipation freed the slaves in territories that didn't recognize the President or Congress as their leadership. Would be similar to Obama outlawing child prostitution in Indonesia or something, it just has absolutely no legal merit.
I didn't realize the US had claim on Indonesia. At the time, the USA claimed legal standing over the Confederacy. As such, he freed every slave there, but was unable to enforce it. That's a minor distinction like the minor distinction between being alive and dead.
Re:The solution is easy (Score:4, Insightful)
If the law wasn't a publicized issue during the election, then there wasn't any attention to be paid. From what I can tell, most of the candidates in question don't even know about it, and most (all?) of their parties don't have a stance on this act.
At what point were the people not paying attention? Perhaps they could have made a fuss about it when it became a problem - OH WAIT! That's what's happening right now.
Re:The solution is easy (Score:3, Insightful)