New Zealand Government Rushes Through Controversial Anti-Piracy Law | Hacker News Reader

New Zealand Government Rushes Through Controversial Anti-Piracy Law

torrentfreak.com

80 pointsUncle_Sam16 comments

Why do we call laws like these "anti-XXX"? The laws do not prevent piracy; it's already arguably illegal. All these laws do is excessively punish the offenders. We should call these laws "severe arbitrary punishment laws" instead, as that's what they actually are.

I'm fine with making sharing movies illegal, but the punishment should be something like a $50 fine, similar to riding public transportation without a valid ticket. The damage to society is similar (i.e., near zero), so the reparations to society should be similarly minimal.

Let's be honest. The world will not descend into chaos if people share movies and jaywalk. Let's not write laws that imagine otherwise.

> but the punishment should be something like a $50 fine

Yes. And alleged offenders should be given a fair trial with the presumption of innocence. And there should be no collective punishment, i.e. punishing whole families for moe person's misdeeds.

The reason the fines are so high is that risk of getting caught is infinitesimal. This is the same reason they had to raise fines for honking in NY in non-emergencies to $500 to get people to stop. The appropriate fine should be something like

(damage to society) <= (fine) * (risk of getting caught)

This is nuts. If say a kid spray paints a tiny bit on an abandoned building at night, and then gets caught, by your logic we should ruin his life. We must treat something like that like murder because the chances of getting caught are so low.

You can also work on risk part of the equation, of course.

Risk of getting caught is so vastly different online that it's a difference not just of degree, but of kind. The old formula makes no sense in this context. The purpose of a single person's fine in this context should never be full restitution of all the damage done by all the people.

They surely can't call them "freedom reduction" or "anti civil liberties" laws.

$50 ? Here in Australia it's a $200 fine for trains.. regardless of distance. 200 for a 2 min trip ? seems fair ...

A direct link to the proposed bill if anyones interested:

http://www.legislation.govt.nz/bill/government/2010/0119/lat...

I used to work for one of the countries leading ISP's and they have historically been massively against this proposal. They have always been vocal proponents of Net Neutrality and I can't see them simply accepting the conditions of this bill without a fight.

This tweet sums up the situation best "Having parliament talk about filesharing is like having gay guys talk about vagina. They don't really get it, and they don't want to."

I watched the debate on parliament tv tonight and the lack of understanding of many of the ministers was very disheartening, It's technically not going to be possible to prove guilt or innocence for downloading pirated content via torrents. The decision to push it through in urgency is equally outrageous.

There was one lone MP opposed who certainly seemed to "get it" and he gave a very good speech http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLHJYWa9iDM

Well, the entire Green party opposed it. It was just Hughes that spoke.

The sad part is that he proposed an amendment to remove the disconnection provision, and it was voted down by Labour and National. What happened to having an opposition?

These bills/laws/what-have-you always seem to get "rushed" through. Something un-democratic happens on each and every one of them. UK's Digital Millenium act gets passed without debate in the last minutes of a session. France's Hadopi law gets mysteriously passed after being rejected. ACTA gets negotiated in secret.

Why?

Why? Campaign contributions/lobbying/bribery. Whatever it's called in your particular jurisdiction.

That's the mechanics of the "why", thank you for that. Let me clarify:

Rushing or backdooring these things through has a cost, and a price. Both have to be higher than a normal legislative process, I believe. I guess I should say "what motivates people to rush or backdoor these things through at the higher cost?" rather than just say "Why?".

I believe that the National party in NZ believe that by implementing ACTA (that's essentially what this is) that they will curry favor in terms of a potential US free trade agreement. It's basically the US dictating intellectual property law to the world.

The reason to do it under urgency is that it's so incredibly flawed and unpopular, it probably wouldn't stand up to a normal democratic process. So by sidestepping the democratic process, it makes it much easier to get things done.

Here's the letter I wrote to my local MP. People are welcome to appropriate any bits of it to form their own indignant letters to elected representatives, if they like:

http://www.plsadventures.com/2011/04/i-dont-usually-post-non...

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