The amendments to the Copyright Laws

April 15, 2011 Chilling_Silence How-To's / Guides / Tech info

This will be a brief but hopefully informative post aimed at people of all technical levels.

Recently the Government has pushed through some changes to certain laws in New Zealand under urgency. Disagree with their rushing / reasoning, that’s fine, I do to, but this post will hopefully help you to know where you stand.

I know quite a few people who’ve already talked to me about it, there’s a lot of people worried that somebody is going to come after them to take their firstborn child. Thankfully, that’s not the case.

Initially the law was very draconian and was doomed for failure. That’s not to say that the way things *are* is going to be perfect, far from it, but at least it’s significantly better. The theory is that it’ll be easier for them to amend further once something is in-place, but I doubt that.

So, here’s a quick run-down and a few things to tickle your noodle:

I’ll post the link to the amendments first, just for reference sake:

http://www.legislation.govt.nz/bill/government/2010/0119/latest/whole.html?search=ts_bill_Copyright+%28Infringing+File+Sharing%29+Amendment+Bill_resel&p=1#tmpn1011a

The long and short of this all is that they’re targeting bittorrent and the likes of Limewire / Emule. Whilst I use other examples like email, it’s a *lot* harder to police.

First of all, it’s not likely that you’re going to get done over on accident, but it is still theoretically possible. Under this law, you’re presumed guilty before you’re presumed innocent, and it’s up to you to later prove your innocence. For most people, that’s simply not going to be possible. Here’s an example:

I come to you and say that on the 12th of April 2011 at 8:55PM, you downloaded the latest song by Eminem, lets take “Not Afraid” for example. Now, prove to me that you haven’t done that. We’ll pretend I’m a legal entity acting on behalf of Eminem and Shady Records, and we believe that you have unlawfully downloaded copyrighted materials owned by us. Aside from you saying “Well, I didn’t, I don’t even like his music”, how can you *prove* that you didn’t?

Tell me to look at your hard drive? Well you could have simply deleted it once you found out we were onto you.
Tell me to look at your browsing history? Well that can be cleaned.
This is what a lot of people view as perhaps the main flaw of this amendment to the law.

Here’s another example (Yes, they’re a little far fetched, but still all plausible):

You have a friend or family member in the US. They share similar tastes in music to you, and download a song from both your favorite artist. They then email you a copy of that song. For the majority of people, their email program goes out and “checks” for mail, downloads it from their ISP, and keeps it on their computer as an unread email. Now, regardless of if you’ve opened that email or not, you’ve downloaded that song to your PC, and it’s a lot harder to prove you did or did not listen to it.

What about the fact it doesn’t have to be music, it could be something like a cartoon image somebody saved from the NZ Herald website? Somebody sends it to you, you receive it without knowing… It’s still plausible.

Moving right along. Now, your ISP doesn’t have to do anything. They can know you’re pirating and not do anything about it, not tell anybody, and that’s still legal. From an ISP’s perspective, and a consumers perspective, this is good. It means they don’t have the added overheads of trying to snoop, and you don’t have to worry about them perving at everything you do. The only records they have to keep is that your modem had this IP Address, at this time. They have to keep this information for at least 40 days. Not hard, it’s probably pretty easy to do, and there’s nothing wrong with that from a technical or privacy standpoint. Many do this already, anyway, so not a big deal there.

Now, you’re going to be given “three strikes”, so IF you’ve got kids and they do something they shouldn’t be doing, you’re not about to lose your left nut over it if you give them a stern word after your first infringement. Here’s what’s going to happen (If you’ve seen Team America, imagine this is America talking to Kim Jong-il):

1. You will receive a “Detection Notice”. They say “We’ve detected you’re doing, we don’t like it, please stop”
2. You will receive a “Warning Notice”. They say “Look we’ve told you once, we’ve told you a million times, stop it, or we will get angry”
3. You will receive an “Enforcement Notice”. This is where they either do you for $15,000 or cut off your internet for 6 months. (Long story short)

On the up-side, at least the total they can do you for can’t exceed $15,000, unlike the USA where they can do you for any number of millions of dollars just to make an example out of you.

Here’s a few pitfalls:

1. Cellular networks are currently exempt. While it’s not smart to download things illegally and they can still come after you, it’s a bit more hassle if you’re not covered under the new law, so downloading over 3G makes it a little bit more of a pain for them to enforce
2. Initially workplaces, universities, libraries and the likes were also vulnerable. That isn’t the case any longer, so this law really is targeting home users. If you’re going to be bad, do it at Uni or at work, or at a public library.
3. They say that if they suspend your internet, they only want to suspend the “internet” side of it, and not impede on your VoIP phone or other such things. How they’re going to do that I honestly don’t know, it’ll be damn near impossible really, and there’s always ways around it.

What you shouldn’t worry about:

TVNZ OnDemand – That’s legit and they won’t do you for that, because TVNZ have struck deals with copyright holders etc

YouTube may be a bit of a different story because it’s user submitted content, but usually they’ll simply take down the offending video rather than try and chase people who’ve watched it.

Email or direct-transfers – If somebody emails you a file, there’s a pretty damn good chance that the MPAA / RIAA and things aren’t going to be able to see your emails, so the example I gave you earlier about somebody emailing you a song or a comic, I know is a bad one. ISP’s ARE allowed to turn a blind eye if they know you’re infringing, and they get more money per-GB if you do infringe, so usually they don’t care. It’s a moral / legal grey area.

The long and the short of it:

They’re coming after the casual home user. They’re going to find you through either Bittorrent, or the likes of Bearshare / Limewire / Emule.

There’s always ways around it for the “knowledgeable” amongst us.

It *is* enforceable, so don’t think “Oh it’s OK I’ll keep downloading, they’ll never find me and never know it was me”. No, there’s more of a chance they *can* find you than they can’t find you, so don’t think they won’t. It *is* easy to police through the likes of Torrents / P2P apps, VERY easy to police.

Basically, don’t pirate music / movies and things, and you shouldn’t have anything to worry about, unless they wrongfully accuse you. Then you’re screwed coz there’s almost no way that you can technically prove that you *haven’t* infringed on their copyright materials.

This may also be of interest to people, it summarizes things well: http://pressf1.co.nz/showpost.php?p=1009733&postcount=141

An example infringement notice:

This one was from 2008, but it’s still a good example to let you know that it IS policable, and they can find you.

As always, I’m keen for comments / feedback / discussion.

From: WorldxChange Communications
Date: Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Subject: Copyright Infringement Notification

Dear Customer,

We have received notice regarding your IP address (at the time)
actively downloading the following copyright material. This activity
is against our terms of service which you agreed upon when joining
Xnet (Acceptable Use Policy
http://www.xnet.co.nz/content/terms.shtml).  If you have received this
email without speaking to a customer service representative, then
please call us on 0800 14 9638 to expedite the notification process.

What Is A Copyright Infringement Notice?

The movie, game & music industries have empowered a number of
organisations to investigate and prosecute breaches of copyright
occurring on the Internet. A copyright infringement is notice of a
copyright breach which is usually sent to the offending users Internet
service provider. You put yourself at risk of receiving a copyright
infringement by using third party sharing programs and downloading
copyright content from the Internet.

What happens if I receive a Copyright Infringement?

You will be warned and provided with a copy of the infringement in
question. We will attempt to contact you within a 24 hour period to
notify you of the Infringement. If we are unable to speak with you
your internet service will be temporarily suspended until we are able
to do so. The option is available to contact the copyright
organisation and dispute said infringement. If copies of
correspondence can be shown to clear the matter the infringement will
not be taken into account.

What happens if I receive a second Copyright Infringement?

We will attempt to contact you within a 24 hour period to notify you
of the second Infringement. If we are unable to speak with you your
internet service will be suspended until we are able to do so. The
Internet service will be closed & notice of the second infringement
will be given. The option is available to contact the copyright
organisation and dispute said infringement. If copies of
correspondence can be shown to clear the matter the account can be
re-instated.

Overview

Copyright breaches are illegal and dealt with in a serious manner. We
do not wish to lose a customer however repeated Copyright
Infringements leave us with no choice. If you receive two
infringements (un-disputed) your Internet service will be closed and
you will need to find another provider.

Best regards,
WorldxChange Communications
Ph : 0800 14 XNET (0800 14 9638)

— Infringement Follows —
Case:
       ID: 38534381
       Status: Open
Complainant:
       Entity: BayTSP, Inc. on behalf of Paramount Pictures
       Contact: Compliance Manager, Compliance Team
       Address: P.O. Box 1314, Los Gatos, California 95031 United
States of America
       Phone: (408) 341-2300,(408) 341-2399
       Email: paramount@copyright-compliance.com
Service_Provider:
       Entity: WorldxChange Communications
       Address:
       Email: abuse@wxnz.net
Source:
       TimeStamp: 2008-09-21T08:11:43.000Z
       IP_Address: 118.90.57.111
       Port:
       DNS_Name: ip-118-90-57-111.xdsl.xnet.co.nz
       Type: BitTorrent
       UserName:
       Number_Files: 1
       Deja_Vu: No
Content:
       Item:
               Title: Iron Man
               FileName: Iron.Man.720p.BluRay.x264-SEPTiC
               FileSize: 4738177846
               URL: http://vip.tracker.thepiratebay.org:80/announce

Anti-Copyright, Copyright, Copyright infringement, law, Section 92A,