Govt rejects calls to alter internet law

Politicians showing their age, probably none of them know how to use email, let alone know what p2p, torrent or DivX mean. Yet they are making decisions on this issue.

Congratulations. The architects of this incompetent and ill-conceived law have single-handedly dismantled any vestiges of trust between ISPs and their customers. The ordinary internet user is now a criminal until proven innocent. And our gutless ISPs have stood by and allowed this absurd "Bushian" piece of legislation to happen.

It is a well documented fact that the world's largest torrent site The Pirate Bay actually reports thousands of IP addresses as using the tracker when they are not.

http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-tricks-anti-pirates-with-fake-peers-081020/

If an anti-piracy agency sees a New Zealand IP address using the tracker software it will contact the NZ ISP and send through a notice of copyright infringement. It is questionable how thoroughly these agencies test whether or not IP addresses are actually using the tracker or sharing any files (read: actually breaking the law).

http://torrentfreak.com/ip-harvesting-filesharers-guilty-until-proven-innocent/

http://torrentfreak.com/study-reveals-reckless-anti-piracy-antics-080605/

NZ ISPs will find themselves in a sticky situation if they are forced to disconnect thousands of users who do not even know what a torrent site is.

As per usual New Zealand law is so far behind technology I am ashamed to live here. The law has not taken into account the relative ease with which every person reading this article could be accused of sharing copyrighted files and has forced the power of decision upon the ISPs!

Why is Steven Joyce not listening to the experts and the public? Does he intentionally want to subject law abiding citizens to allegations of theft that have no way of being substantiated?

We can't believe this is happening in a democratic country, we would expect this from Labour, but not our newly elected Government!

Shame! Mr Joyce, your ignorance is your own but your inaction reflects on the National Party and insults the voting public of New Zealand who put you in office to make intelligent decisions .. this is not an intelligent decision!

Is this really going to work? Encrypted Downloads and a private torrent site..An ISP Watching our every download? Is this not a job for the Police? This is likely to increase the cost of Internet as well. Protest anyone?

They will never be able to fully enforce this, Telecom will be "forced" to cut off half its customers.

How do they plan to catch the smart people? If i am downloading 200gb a month on Go-Large, do i get kicked off? just for having a high downloaded amount? Or will they go as far as to intercept packets and sniff around them?

Good luck sniffing encrypted FTP packets telecom.

Best of luck.

Let me get this right ...this law which seems to block freedom in the internet has actually been passed? Where was the media story on it?

Can we accuse the government of downloading music illegally and have their internet connection disconnected?

They should not be watching what we do in the first place. Most of the methods they (record companies etc) use to track us are illegal in the first place.

This law is absurd. How is the ISP supposed to distinguish the ones and zeros belonging to infringing material from the ones and zeros belonging to non-infringing material?

What about copyrighted work which can be distributed freely - such as open source software like Linux? Is the ISP supposed to block that too? How could ISPs carry out their obligations under this law without having to review every copyright and other licence for every file on the internet?

Our lawmakers have forgotten that the original purpose of copyright was to encourage the distribution of works into the public domain for the good of the community. Big media companies have twisted this into nothing more than a money making scam for them (witness the actions of the RIAA in USA). Shame on our government for caving-in to them!