Geek News and Musings

Earlier this year, there was a lot of attention paid to proposed changes to copyright law in New Zealand. After originally being struck from a proposal, some politicians simply put back in a “three strikes” proposal and then literally yelled at those who were upset by this. This kicked off a lot of controversy, with the government standing by the proposal for a long time — even in the face of musicians who stood up to against this bill that was supposedly there to help them! Eventually, with so much attention, the government agreed to dump the plan temporarily. There was a report that it would actually revisit all copyright law from scratch, but that was denied quickly.

Either way, it should probably come as little to no surprise that the proposals now being put forth really aren’t all that different than what was there before. After all, the industry needs to have its laws. The people… not so much. The major difference is that it won’t be ISPs just kicking people off. Instead, it will use a gov’t Copyright Tribunal to act as a mediator to review accusations of file sharing and deciding on what (if any) punishment should be handed out, including the potential to cut people off. This is certainly an improvement, but it’s still about the industry fighting the wrong battle. Rather than providing more value and a better business model, they’re so obsessed with stamping out file sharing that they’re totally missing the big picture. What a shame that politicians are simply going along with them.

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