Hard News: The file-sharing bill
340 Responses
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Russell Brown, in reply to
4. The Labour party is missing in action
I think that's unfair. Even if you think they should have voted simply against the bill -- which would have passed anyway -- rather than doing the deal to require specific enactment before termination is available, Clare Curran has been highly engaged with all this.
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Matthew Poole, in reply to
Is this presumption of guilt really allowed under NZ’s constitutional law? Is the presumption of innocence and the onus of proof being placed on the prosecution embedded deeply enough in our constitution for this law to be thrown out by the courts? Is that even possible in the NZ system?
Starting in reverse:
No, the Bill of Rights Act is not superior law so the courts cannot overturn legislation that fails to abide by its provisions. It is, in fact, explicitly inferior to all other legislation - if there is a conflict, the other legislation takes precedence.The presumption of innocence is not absolute. You're presumed guilty if you get a speed camera fine, or a parking ticket. So-called "strict liability" offences. Because this is not criminal law (yet), the niceties of presumption of innocence are considered to be somewhat more flexible, since you're at no risk of being incarcerated and the opposing party is not the state (though given the relative resources, I suspect I might rather prefer the state to a rapacious recording company).
It's whiffy, and dubious, but it's not as clear-cut as if this was criminal law that presumed guilt. If they changed this from a lawsuit by the rights-holder to a prosecution by the state, but didn't change the presumed guilt, that would be very odoriferous indeed. -
Jason Kemp, in reply to
I stand corrected. Clare Curran has done well but I was talking about the bigger picture.
hmmm
and the
"111-11 vote against Gareth Hughes’ amendment to the bill removing disconnection as a penalty?"
how does Labour explain that one?
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Sometimes I idly wonder if the end goal of certain groups is just to get P2P and similar activity banned altogether,
That would be a wet dream for a lot of companies that have been hurt by file sharing. Can’t see it ever happening, though.
I think so. Apart from anything else, that is plenty of legitimately-shared content on P2P networks, Blizzard and other game companies use the same protocols to legitimately serve their updates, etc. OTOH, the ignorant blatherings of Lee,Shanks and Young are hardly cause for confidence.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
However, unless there’s a surveillance camera in every home, it’ll be impossible to tell who actually clicks and d/loads stuff. Even if you live alone you could probably just say it was a friend mucking around on the computer while they were visiting.
I’d be a bit pissed off if my friend was running down my data cap by launching a bunch of torrents and letting them seed while he visited, so that I got a warning letter. And then doing it again. And then a third time inside three months without me twigging what was going on despite the warnings. That’s just rude.
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Bart Janssen, in reply to
That’s just rude.
Yeah he could at least share them with you
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Ms Lee said last night the compilation was made of songs that were legally downloaded and paid for.
And so are all those songs on those illegal file sharing sites, they were legally paid for somewhere too.
I was thinking today about this idea that all file sharing was by default illegal - someone needs to ask the question "Does the honorable member understand that the downloading of files containing the text of NZ laws from legislation.govt.nz is file sharing but is not illegal?"
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Given how long it will take to actually send letters out, is there a provision that the "three months" has to be elapsed between receipt of the letters?
I mean, if they *start* sending a letter and take ages to print and mail it, so you end up getting three letters in one go...
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Matthew Poole, in reply to
The implication might be that if you don’t lodge a complaint yourself, you don’t care, but I do not believe that of you.
No, I certainly wasn't trying to imply that. More that if you want to be certain that justice is done, don't rely on others doing something that, as you have seen, is not actually terribly difficult. Especially since now, unlike then, there's a properly independent body that has unlimited power to investigate past behaviours.
Good on you for sending the complaint, too. The IPCA is not omnipotent, so being made aware of historic transgressions that may not have been dealt with adequately is important. -
I also think it's likely to be ineffective.
Whole conversation right there.
_connection drops_
_picks up netbook and walks to nearest Starbucks_
Right there.
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Heather Gaye, in reply to
The use of urgency is pretty disgraceful. Has any party or person proposed any sort of policy that would tighten rules on this matter?
Apparently so. It’s being pushed by Grant Robertson and David Farrar, curiously enough.
Melissa Lee explains herself:
I just had one of those “…you don’t know anything about anything!" moments.
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Sacha, in reply to
Think of it instead as a piece of theatre, much like the TSA "war on travelers" in the US. They want to be seen to be doing something. Some of them may even believe their own propaganda that 70% of people will stop downloading if they get a warning notice. Of course, in order to reach that level, they're going to have to send out an awful lot of notices. Expect anguished media execs in 6 months time complaining about the costs of getting ISPs to obey the law and that's why they need the termination button.
They have another propaganda line that the ISPs are making huge profits from the downloaders and so have no interest in shutting the practice down. They have obviously never looked at ISP profit margins but it was their rationale for wanting ISPs to pay all the costs of policing.
Also, expect them to take a number of cases through the Tribunal and the District Court, calling for maximum penalties - they have to, to justify having pushed this legislation through 2 separate governments. Some of them may even believe in it.
And, if they can persuade Power to flip the switch, expect them to get someone terminated as soon as possible pour encourager les autres .
Damn good summary. Bravo, Mark.
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Lucy Stewart, in reply to
I think so. Apart from anything else, that is plenty of legitimately-shared content on P2P networks, Blizzard and other game companies use the same protocols to legitimately serve their updates, etc. OTOH, the ignorant blatherings of Lee,Shanks and Young are hardly cause for confidence.
Even if they did push that through, it wouldn't stop file-sharing - it'd just stop really easy file-sharing. At seventh and last, any digital media can and will be (eventually) copied by someone, and then it can and will be distributed. Torrenting is just the most efficient way to share stuff, currently.
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Sacha, in reply to
wonder if the end goal of certain groups is just to get P2P and similar activity banned altogether, and make it illegal for ISPs to allow such traffic.
That might be an unconscious goal, sort of an immune system response from a beast that doesn't want to change to match its environment. Worth keeping an eye on net neutrality too, for instance. This is all lobbying fodder as Mark has so astutely observed.
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Grant Stone, in reply to
Skype's built on P2P as well. How about utilities like Dropbox?
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Sacha, in reply to
Clare Curran has been highly engaged with all this.
Yet I'd have to say her speeches during the session were rambling and overly engaged in the pettiness of the House. Jacinda Ardern and David Parker were far better and clearly understood what they were talking about.
I understand Labour may have made compromise deals over the substantive Bill, but does that including voting against Gareth Hughes's sensible amendment to remove one of the worst features, which Curran now tells us we should trust the current government not to enact?
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Sacha, in reply to
as Oscar Wilde observed, “socialism will never work – it takes up too many evenings”
Brilliant - had never heard that one.
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For the record I sometimes use torrents as part of business to get around NZ's crappy internet connectivity - to send a gig or two of (my!) data offshore to more than one destination - say a client in the US and their Chinese manufacturing facility - it's faster to push a torrent and have the other destinations copy between themselves than to make 2 or 3 uploads out of NZ
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Ben Austin, in reply to
Thanks Heather. Good to see Farrar injecting some form of bipartisanship
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Skype's built on P2P as well. How about utilities like Dropbox?
Even conversations around P2P are becoming irrelevant.
Streaming content isn't P2P, and is advanced as a method of content control.
It's one the primary method of illegal sharing of content we have.
Careful disclaimers on Youtube's part shift liability to the end user, but at the end of the day I can search for any video on google, use a stream capture plugin and create a .flv on my machine of that video, should I want to do that.
I've done so not through a shadowy underground network, but by simply clicking on a page that has not yet been subject to a takedown notice and using a legal tool for an illegal purpose.
Not advocating illegal activity, just explaining that chasing the models doesn't prevent that activity any more than attempts to prevent connection.
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Matthew Poole, in reply to
Good to see Farrar injecting some form of bipartisanship
I consider it very, very telling that Farrar is objecting publicly to National's abuse of urgency.
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Grant McDougall, in reply to
However, unless there’s a surveillance camera in every home, it’ll be impossible to tell who actually clicks and d/loads stuff. Even if you live alone you could probably just say it was a friend mucking around on the computer while they were visiting.
I’d be a bit pissed off if my friend was running down my data cap by launching a bunch of torrents and letting them seed while he visited, so that I got a warning letter. And then doing it again. And then a third time inside three months without me twigging what was going on despite the warnings. That’s just rude.
I agree, but my point was to do with the impossibility of the authorities identifying the actual individual culprit.
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giovanni tiso, in reply to
I agree, but my point was to do with the impossibility of the authorities identifying the actual individual culprit.
And so they can't lay criminal charges, but only fine the account holder/impound the account. Much like they do with vehicular offences. You do get fined if somebody else parks your car where it's proihibited. But if somebody borrows or steals your car and hurts somebody with it, the culprit is the driver.
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BenWilson, in reply to
Yes, if you were torrenting kiddy-porn, then the authorities would really want to know who exactly was responsible. But that's not going to be of interest to copyright enforcers - they're not interested in real crimes.
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nzlemming, in reply to
Even if they did push that through, it wouldn’t stop file-sharing
Can't stop the signal.
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