Why New Zealand was dumb to let the USA write its copyright laws

Juha sez, "Christopher Wood has summarised the thirteen reasons why the punitive New Zealand copyright Act as per US orders is a bad idea."

1. Presumed guilty on accusation

Despite the revision committee trying to fudge the issue, this law does work via the presumption of guilt. If the accused party has had their 3 warnings and goes to the Copyright Tribunal, they have to give reasons why the warnings were invalid. But if the accused party is innocent, what reasons can they have, apart from "I didn't do it"?

Presumption of guilt is rife for abuse, as has happened overseas under similar laws. In the digital realm evidence is often very temporary, complex, and easily fabricated, so providing evidence of your innocence could be very difficult, depending on how much is required. Providing evidence of your guilt is almost as difficult, but why should that mean an advantage should be given to accusers? New Zealand intellectual property lawyer Rick Shera says the law is grossly unfair, out of place and unnecessary in this analysis: http://lawgeeknz.posterous.com/nzs-copyright-proposal-guilty-until-you-prove When a new law contradicts the Bill of Rights it better have an extremely good reason... and protecting the entertainment industry isn't one.

13 reasons why the Infringing File Sharing Act is bad for you by Christopher Wood (Thanks, Juha!)

• [Anonymous]

  1: Create cheap ip company music/movie and i mean real cheap and then create bad music or movie.

  2: Movie or music “ends” up on servers or computers of companies in NZ

  3: Sue

  4: Profit when they settle out of court if they dont want there net connection cut and other penities.

  Hell with the new laws here you dont even need 1 or 2 just accuse them and ask for money or they will get cut from the net.

  No penilities for false accusations.

  Stuped laws will always get abused.

• [aeon]

  While she is the titular head of state of this commonwealth realm, Queen Liz doesn’t actually have the power to dissolve New Zealand’s parliament in person. That power rests in the office of the Governor General who is a local appointee in each Commonwealth country (that remains a constitutional monarchy) and can exercise that power on her behalf. In general it doesn’t happen… Unless your name is Whitlam and that was messy enough to be memorable even though it didn’t happen our side of the Tasman. Even then the Queen was careful to distance herself from the decision.

  It is indeed New Zealand’s mess to sort out. There is a strong undercurrent of ill feeling directed at the USA’s bullying tactics out here — look how long the US Navy hasn’t been entirely welcome in our bit of the South Pacific over the nuclear power issue. I rather suspect that once the average Kiwi realises that the law was written by the US then John Key and National will pay at the ballot box later this year. They certainly lost my vote over it.

• [Anonymous]

  If i was King or Queen, i’d be flying over to NZ to dissolve the parliament of NZ and start a new election of government. This corruption is disgusting. Imagine a foreign government writing your own laws!

  • [elix]

    If i was King or Queen, i’d be flying over to NZ to dissolve the parliament of NZ and start a new election of government. This corruption is disgusting. Imagine a foreign government writing your own laws!

    I’m Canadian, and I don’t know the fine details of New Zealand’s government, but if the Queen of England came over here and tried to do that there would be riots and a constitional crisis. I imagine NZ has a similar government structure, with the Queen as a figurehead out of tradition. I could be wrong, but it’s my understanding that NZ is a sovereign nation in the Commonwealth.

    In other words, this is NZ’s mess to clean up.