/ Cory Doctorow / 12:50 am Mon Apr 25, 2011

New Zealand's rammed-through copyright law includes mass warrantless surveillance and publication of accused's browsing habits

Juha sez, "It looks like the 'watered-down' new New Zealand copyright law will lead to Internet users' browsing habits being covertly monitored for infringement. Ignorance that a work was copyright is no defence according to the story and accidental infringers may find their web surfing habits exposed for all to see as the copyright tribunal rulings will be made public."
Mr [Vikram Kumar, chief executive of lobby group InternetNZ] says people who view copyright material on YouTube and other websites that don't distribute content between members might be harder to trace. But he says copyright owners can seek IP addresses from website owners.

He says they also have access to "more covert methods" for getting those now all-important IP addresses. "

Copyright change about more than idle threats

8

  1. IP spoofing is going to get so popular in the next decade.

    Guess I might as well start learning up on it myself, get ahead of the curve.

  3. I’m in NZ, and now put all my traffic through a vpn… these people http://perfect-privacy.com/ – worth every penny to stick it to the man.

    Not that I’m interesting enough to do anything terribly illegal – but I see no reason why some dweeb who lives up the street, and who works in some dysfunctional govt department with other terminally bored office-fauna should get to go through my mail.

  4. Just what we need to fix worldwide unemployment – full-employment legislation for lawyers.

    Too damn many people on the internet these days and WAY too many mouth-breathers. Lazarus Long knew what that meant for a world – time to move on. So what now?

  5. We humble citizens really need to start using judo to defend ourselves against Big Media and all the corporate lapdogs in government. They steamroll the public with brute force. Instead of getting crushed, we must step aside and redirect their own energy against them.

    As soon as this sort of legislation passes anywhere, make it a civic duty to hound every politician and corporate exec with infringement claims. Get their households BANNED FROM TEH INTERWEBS from mere accusation, have their personal browsing histories exposed due to nebulous claims against them, let them reap what they have sown.

    I almost look forward to the mock-outrage from lawmakers taking a 180 on the issue, suddenly campaigning hard against over-reaching copyright laws.

  6. “Ignorance that a work was copyright is no defence”

    Well, that gives you a perfect strategy then:
    1) Have somebody create a poem or a song or something. Don’t publish it, just silently “leak” it to some site.
    2) Make some snazzy flyer advertising some fancy new game, lottery or gaming website. Include a URL to said copyrighted work.
    3) Distribute flyers where various officials can be found.
    4) Wait a day, then get the IPs and sue those damn pirates who illegally downloaded copyrighted works!

    Repeat this every couple of weeks and watch which politicians suddenly try to fight this law. ;)

  7. I keep wondering what the fuck is so important about copyright that governments around the world is bending over backwards to introduce harsher and harsher anti-piracy measures.

  8. New Zealand already has an excellent deterrent to internet piracy in place. Massively overpriced plans with tiny monthly caps topped off with 3rd world quality internet speeds.

    When I moved to Australia I was amazed at how much better the internet was, and then when I moved to Japan.. it was like traveling 20 years into the future. NZ internet is trash, maybe they should fix that first.

Comments are closed.