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Three-strike discussions continue in New Zealand
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 6 August 2010
Three-strikes is being discussed in New Zealand again. Despite being one of the first countries to seriously discuss the idea of suspending the net access of persistent file-sharers, and despite passing legislation to instigate some sort of three-strikes system in 2008, nothing has actually happened there in this regard, and the political types are discussing it all anew.
The ultimate sanction in the currently proposed New Zealand three-strikes system is the same as in the UK, that the pesky file-sharer would have their net connection suspended. But some lobbying groups down under want a tougher penalty, preferring the French system of cutting off the internet access of those who infringe copyrights online, and banning them from moving to another ISP, for a time at least.
According to TorrentFreak, the New Zealand Law Society said in a hearing on the issue this week: “The [new] bill should include a power to allow the court to order that a person cannot open an account with another ISP during the period of the suspension. This would remove uncertainty about how infringement notices are issued”.
Needless to say, not everyone concurs. Jordan Carter for lobbying group InternetNZ said: “Disconnection needs to be removed from this bill. It needs to go on pragmatic and on principled grounds. A disconnection penalty is a response way out of line with the harm caused by infringing file-sharing. People are using the internet for a huge range of important economic and social tasks. Cutting off their accounts is akin to banning someone from using the postal system because they were caught posting copied music CDs”.
