On Fri, 2011-09-02 at 10:53 +1200, Gerard Creamer wrote:
Rights notices we've received and passed on in the past have resulted in
'no, no, not here' statements followed by significant drops in bandwidth
usage, or the customer initiated closure of the account. Fear, it's a
powerful thing.
Gerard's observation here rings true with me, as to some degree Neil Gardners post.
I don't think there's much doubt that the law as-written and as-passed is a crock.
Paul Brislen was pretty clear in the Herald.
"[Interviewee is among] the 31 per cent of 15 to 30-year-olds in this country who admit they regularly watch movies online without paying for them."
There are two clear positions.
1) The Law in itself has problems:
- Guilt upon Accusation isn't reasonable
- The punishments are disproportionate
- The technical concerns with actually pinning an offense on an individual have not been (well) considered.
2) The industry is attempting to preserve it's goldmine - industry is failing the populace in its efforts not to move into the 21st Century.
- There is a massive demand for current media content that is not served by legal means.
- In general folks who have a legal option that is reasonable to pursue, will use it. Piracy is a byproduct of this not really being feasible. iTunes is the most obvious example of this, isn't it? Onceuponatime it was MP3's that people were exchanging. I never really hear of this anymore.
- The Rights Holders and the NZ Media Industry could stomp out a significant amount of illegal downloads by providing legal means that are reasonably priced. Netflix anyone?
The law as it stands will have some level of effect on the volume of copyright infringement out there, entirely driven by fear of an unreasonable law being unreasonably enforced. (Saw a tweet today about a Cafe nixing its free WiFi due to their perceived liability risk.)
It's also entirely possible to argue point 1 without actually being a habitual copyright offender... so the people complaining shouldn't necessarily be seen as protecting their own media-consuming interests (though this is probably also true of others) - at a holistic level, the law is indeed unreasonable, even the innocent can see it.
On the other hands the folks who are concerned that they'll themselves receive an infringement notice - because they are indeed downloading content - are probably just frustrated at the lack of legal alternatives short of simply going without. So folks are going to wait until the last minute (strike 2?), and then they'll be forced to stop. Or change ISP and start again.
In my view there's two major things that need to happen:
1) The law needs to be killed off and reworked into something that's actually reasonable, with the rights of the public placed evenly, not behind, that of the rights holder (innocent until proven guilty should stand).
2) Content needs to be made more available to consumers. Doing this will actually remove the demand for much of the illegaly copied material.
The combination of the two is the only way that everyone wins, near as I can tell. And it's a shame that the latter point has not been picked up by Government, etc - surely if TV or online services were able to stream current content within hours or days of it's initial screening in it's home countries, we'd be able to more easily participate in the global fan communities, etc, without constantly being behind and exposed to spoilers? Where's our local Netflix, Hulu type services? TVNZ and TV3 have tried with plenty of their content but in many circumstances the rights holders in the US are forbidding them streaming the media. Does this not force folks to download the content instead?