Okay, seriously, is it something in the water in that corner of the world? First Australia’s communications minister wants to censor the net, and now anyone in New Zealand simply accused of file sharing is guilty without due process.
TorrentFreak writes about the Copyright Amendment Act’s “Section 92” set to take effect at the end of February:
However draconian these proposals might appear, they are nothing compared to the proposed ‘Section 92? of the Copyright Amendment Act in New Zealand. Scheduled for introduction at the end of February 2009, the act assumes that any individual simply accused of sharing copyright works on the Internet, is guilty. The punishment for ‘guilty’ is summary disconnection from the Internet. Understandably, this proposal hasn’t been well received by many outside of the entertainment industries. Indeed, RIANZ, New Zealand’s answer to the RIAA, has been a vocal supporter.
As the bill was being drafted, public commentary and submissions to change the contents of the bill inspired the offensive Section 92 to be dropped. However, once the bill entered committee for the entire New Zealand house, section 92 was authoritatively reinstated in contrast of public will.
New Zealand political blog TheyWorkForYou writes about this absurdity:
There were 125 public submissions on the Copyright (New Technologies) Amendment Bill when it was before select committee.
As has been pointed out elsewhere, several submissions were against the termination of a person’s Internet connection based on the accusation that they might have infringed copyright.
Based on these submissions, following their deliberations the select committee removed the offending clause from the bill.
However during the committee of the whole house stage, Section 92A was reinstated.
Guilty until proven innocent. Really? Damn, New Zealand. I mean damn.
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