The entire universe has better things to do then blog about this ridiculous new law that comes into effect on the 28th of February. Never the less it's a reality so we must all take a moment, pause the useful things we are doing with our lives and speak up. In brief, an amendment to New Zealand's copyright law will effect these changes:
The proposed Section 92 of the Copyright Amendment Act assumes Guilt Upon Accusation and forces the termination of internet connections and websites without evidence, without a fair trial, and without punishment for any false accusations of copyright infringement. We should speak out against injustices like Guilt Upon Accusation being done in the name of artists and protecting creativity.
The reasons that this is a bad idea have already been widely discussed by people more knowledgeable then myself.
The one thing that I haven't seen mentioned is that this provides an additional reason why businesses won't (and shouldn't) host their data in New Zealand. Even if there was an appeal process you could use to get your internet reconnected after a false accusation, the time taken and financial loss to a business which depends on the internet would be devastating. Passing any sort of law which allows people to be found guilty without some form of trial is a giant step backwards.
With the unbundling finally showing fruit and signs of peering sanity, I was starting to have hope that New Zealand would crawl out of its internet dark age. It would be wonderful if we could think about things and not just plunge back in.
<sarcasm>I suppose if it gets too serious we can always pay a spammer to repeatedly lodge complaints for every valid IP address in New Zealand.</sarcasm>
What you can do:
- Talk to friends, family and colleagues about it, let them know what's going on.
- Sign the petition
- Join the Facebook group "Fair Copyright for New Zealand - No Section 92a"
- Put the Creative Freedom banner ad on your website
- Write to your government representative expressing your concerns
Update 26 January 2009: One of our lovely vendors pointed me this paper written by Tadayoshi Kohno (and others) showing how easy it is to spoof BitTorrent traffic and generate fraudulent take down messages.