back to article New NZ copyright law means ISPs could cash in

New Zealand ISPs could have a tidy new revenue stream courtesy of their illegal downloading customers as new copyright laws take effect in September. New Zealand Commerce Minister Simon Power yesterday announced that a NZ$25 fee will be charged by ISPs to rights-holders, such as movie studios, for processing each allegation of …

COMMENTS

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  1. LaeMing
    Thumb Up

    Sounds quite sensible

    If it is a genuine infringement, the holder can recover costs easily enough.

    It it is groundless speculative fishing or simple bullying, not so much.

  2. Jand4l
    Pirate

    3 warning cash cow

    "As part of the process, once a copyright breach has been found, the ISP will then send three warning letters to the alleged offender. If warning letters fail to resolve the issue, the rights-holder – such as a movie studio or record company – can takes its case to the Copyright Tribunal, which will cost $200."

    "A" copyright breach will *not* result in 3 warning letters as stated in the article. Each letter has to be for a different alleged breach, a minimum time spacing apart and not successfully challenged*. A rights holder can then invoke the tribunal after 3 infringements & letters have occurred from that *same* rights holder.

    *To challenge a letter, the user must prove to the ISP their innocence against the assumed guilt that comes with accusation.

    1. Field Marshal Von Krakenfart

      No title here, move along please

      "To challenge a letter, the user must prove to the ISP their innocence against the assumed guilt that comes with accusation"

      Isn't that impossible?? You can't prove a negative....

      It may have been your IP, you may even have been logged on at the time, but that dosen't prove it was you. It's just too easy to spoof an IP address or crack WPA (dispite what the copyright mafiaa think).

  3. Combat Wombat
    Devil

    Bah

    while some rights-holders have requested zero or $2 fees per transaction.

    If it was up to me, they would be charged 100 a request.

    That'd stop the abuse... and lighten the wallets of the leeches in the content industry

    1. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      This affects independent, DIY artists as well

      How is an indie band or a DIY unsigned act supposed to pay these fees? To call them 'leeches' and to speak of 'abuse' by artists is outrageous (yeah, it's not the pirates who are leeches and abusers, it's the people who create the work!?). You're obviously under the ridiculous impression that everyone in the industry is a millionaire, whereas the truth is that the vast majority don't even make a profit at all.

  4. Michael Duke

    Nice unbiased reporting there.... Ohhh wait....

    So an ISP should have to bear the cost of investigating if a rights holder is correct in their accusation that someone is stealing from them is your position is it?

    Should the department that builds the road also enforce the speed limit at their cost while fines go to the police department?

    What's next ISP's should be responsible for collecting on bad debts because the invoices were e-mailed via the Internet connection they provide?

    Of course there is an enforcement cost and the rights holder should pay it until the case is proved and then the guilty party will pay.

    If the media industry had a business model that was based in the 21st century then a lot of this problem would go away IMHO. But better to not react to the market but sue the people who are showing you that there is a gap to be filled.

  5. Pete 8
    Terminator

    We have the disease,

    the cure, and a nice little industry forming now.

    Thanks for providing another uncivil non-solution to a non-problem.

    Payments now scaled according to societal benefit/cost ratio = 0.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Oh really?

    "New Zealand has one of the highest rates of peer-to-peer infringement in the world". Where do you get this information? The ministry's website? 5000 per ISP? This is basically impossible. Why?

    You may not be familiar with the concept; it's called "data caps". This is where the ISP's have turned a commodity (Bandwidth) into a priceless, limited resource. It's insanely expensive to have anything more than 20GB per month (land line), and prices start at NZ$80 for 4GB mobile. This puts a severe limit on what can be downloaded. A child viewing youtube videos (especially at high resolution) can smash 20GB in a few days - I've witnessed this happen. An HD movie can be anywhere between 8 - 50GB depending on your tolerance for compression artefacts.

    The NZ$25 fee will stop movie houses issuing thousands of infringement notices at the slightest suspicion of copyright breach. This is a good idea.

    For the record, I do not download illegally. Even if I wanted to, my data cap barely covers the basics.

    - Rodney..

    1. sueme2
      Big Brother

      excepting for

      I have DSL, linespeed sits on 14Mb. I have 30G Orcon for $70 with a phone number. That gives about 15 hours of streaming HD video. You can also get naked DSL for ~ 60 + $1/G or so from Xnet. However you are on the mark with the Telecom/Vodafone monopoly duo. Want CID? that costs. What really makes me boil is how we are presumed to be guilty until proven innocent. The "cost" to the rights holders of infringement? They jest. If I cook at home does that mean I owe a royalty payment to every restaurant within 10km? Is there any significant infringing? I doubt it, given the data caps it is more like the numbers have been written in Hollywood than the real world.

  7. Don H
    FAIL

    Don't let the temptation of a snappy byline bite you in the behind.

    Profit? You have no idea. How much do you think it would cost per notice to comply with the following requirements? (Note also that the costs of setting up systems to comply with the requirements is non-recoverable.)

    48.1 Receiving a notice from a rights owner and checking that it complies with the Regulations (including whether it has been sent within the on-notice period);

    48.2 Processing notice payment and invoicing;

    48.3 Matching IP address to one of its account holders;

    48.4 Determining whether an account holder has received a previous Detection Notice or Warning Notice from the same rights owner or agent (i.e. cross checking against logged rights owners as well) and then:

    48.4.1 Checking if any on-notice period has expired; and

    48.4.2 Deciding which type of Infringement Notice to send to the account holder;

    48.5 Sending a Detection Notice (assuming this is a “first strike”);

    48.6 Receiving any challenge from an account holder;

    48.7 Forwarding the challenge to the rights owner;

    48.8 Receiving the rights owner’s response to the challenge;

    48.9 Forwarding that response to the account holder;

    48.10 Updating records in the event that a challenge is accepted (as this negates the impact of the relevant Infringement Notice and records will have to be adjusted accordingly);

    48.11 Receiving calls at the IPAP’s customer call centre (even if rights owners or The Ministry of Economic Development sets up a call centre or funds an independent one);

    48.12 Repeating all of the above actions with respect to subsequent notices from the rights owner generating Warning Notices and Enforcement Notices;

    48.13 Likely escalating calls to call centres, as the process progresses through later stages, particularly if account holder alleges innocence. At this stage, both technical and/or legal questions may be relatively complex and, despite the fact that IPAPs are not responsible for the content of allegations, inevitably, they will be called on to provide guidance;

    48.14 Editing an Enforcement Notice sent to an account holder so that it can be sent to a rights owner without any information identifying that account holder, in compliance with section 122F(5) of the Act;

    48.15 Sending the edited copy of the Enforcement Notice to the rights owner;

    48.16 Responding to a request from the Copyright Tribunal for copies of all notices, in compliance with section122J(3);

    48.17 Providing further evidence to the Tribunal. We note that the Tribunal processes are not being consulted on at this stage but we need to flag now that the per notice cost needs to cover the situation where the IPAP is called on by the Tribunal to provide further evidence. The obvious situation where this may occur is where an account holder alleges that it was not using its account at the time the infringement was alleged to have taken place. The only person who can answer that question is the IPAP and we therefore expect that this will not be an unusual circumstance;

    48.18 Storing all information in accordance with section 122T(2) of the Act; and

    48.19 Complying with the reporting obligations in section 122T(4) of the Act.

    1. veti Silver badge
      Boffin

      Depending on volumes, somewhere between $2 and $10

      There's nothing on that list that's (a) required and (b) can't be done by a common-or-garden SQL database.

      Think about it. Power companies have been doing this for decades: they send out warnings (in sequence), and eventually (if you don't do anything about it) they raise a service order to disconnect you.

      Sure it's complicated, but it's a solved problem. All you need is a decent flowchart, and any competent SQL house could put it together in a matter of weeks. And you're talking about companies that *already have* CIS databases, so it's not going to require massive restructuring or retraining either.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    give us a reason not to

    like release stuff here sooner than 6-12 months after the rest of the world and get rid of DVD regions!

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Now there's an idea…

    You listening, ACMA?

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    This pointless title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

    Good, while i am 100% against the 3 strikes law, I am glad the rights-holders will have to pay for processing each allegation, lets hope it reduces the automated printing of thousands of falsified requests like we have seen in the past.

    ISP: Here the data is sir, first i need $25

    MAFIAA: Ok heres $25

    ISP: THanks heres the paperwork

    MAFIAA: WTF the ip belongs to a photocopier

    ISP: Hahaha WIN

  11. T J
    Happy

    Stringing.

    So... the thing is to string them along till the very last moment, then completely change your details.

    Eg. churn to a different provider, use a VPN with a different exit point, turn your modem off for a day so when you get back and restart it it DHCP's a different IP address, etc, any combination of.

    Man, you could even write plug-ins to do this for you in bittorrent clients!!

    We could send the big recording labels broke in no time with this approach! Go NZ!!

    Oh, and yes I download heaps. I just don't regard it as illegal as it's information and outside of anyone's jurisdiction (it just is, so don't bother arguing). If its worthy, I'll buy the product down the track, if its not I wont, they dont have an inherant right to make money from producing rubbish and they never did, it was just the mechanics of things meant they had an artificial scarcity monopoly. Now that artificial monopoly is gone, forever.

    1. PsychicMonkey
      Facepalm

      different IP address

      of course they wouldn't have thought of that and do something like log the IP you had and when it changedwould they.

      Lucky you are far smarter than these multi-million dollar companies, you'll never get caught with that razor sharp mind....

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    About time

    It's about time that EVERYONE opens their WiFi APs - then it would become impossible to prove who really is responsible for "sharing culture"... ROFLMAO! Whoever wrote the text of this law, should be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature!

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