Copyright - a big step towards sanity
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Posted Fri 18 December 2009 @ 9:56 p.m. by Ernie Newman
I'm not about to heap praise on anyone, regardless of political persuasion, for the progress announced this week over Section 92a. The cross-party support last year for an undemocratic and unworkable piece of legislation showed the whole of parliament in a poor light. About the only politician to emerge with a shred of credit was Maurice Williamson who, with the characteristic candour that has got him into so much trouble over the years, had the good grace to admit after the event that he didn’t know why he had voted for it.
Anyway, Simon Power has released the Cabinet paper with the way forward. It addresses both the underlying concerns.
The first is that to disconnect anyone will now be a decision of the courts. They already have various powers to deal with copyright infringements, and these will be supplemented with a new civil remedy to make orders suspending the copyright infringers’ Internet accounts. It is anticipated that the courts would only order such a remedy in extreme cases of wilful copyright infringement by a person using peer-to-peer file sharing technology.
And that's an excellent call - ISPs are no more equipped for such a role, than are the courts to offer competitive Internet access services to the public.
The second is that the silly all-encompassing definition of an ISP will be re-cast. The Cabinet paper is a little vague on this - it talks loosely about appropriate ISPs who have the technical capability to identify IP addresses - e.g. Telecom and TelstraClear. The paranoid part of me would prefer to see such a definition included in the Cabinet paper. Its crucial that it doesn't catch up the mainstream TUANZ private network owners who are manifestly not ISPs in the accepted sense - organisations like Air New Zealand, Fairfax, and various government agencies.
I've just read back through the latest TUANZ submission dated August – it was a nice piece of work - and most of our key issues have been addressed.
Having said all that, I'll give Simon Power and parliament a grudging acknowledgement for progress. Common sense and the power of the masses can indeed prevail when democracy goes awry.
Categories: Broadband | Education | Fixed line carriers | ISPs | TUANZ policy | Wireless carriers