United Future

Mr Dunne,

Thank you very much for taking this position. I am a voter in Ohariu, and this is definitely an issue I have and will continue to vote around.

What is disturbing to me is the impact that this will have on political speech. I recommend looking into what happened during the US election campaign, where copyright infringement notices forced the removal of several official McCain campaign advertisements from YouTube.

Under S92A, can you imagine what would happen during the next New Zealand campaign?

New Zealand copyright law still makes us all criminals, and was obsolete the instant it became law. For example, it allows copying of CDs to portable media players, but neglects to provide the same permissions for DVDs or other video.

For the record, I voted for United Future last election. Now onto the topic...

What's really terrible about S92A is it goes against four foundational principles that all western democracies highly value:

The right to privacy.
The right to being assumed innocent until proven guilty in court.
The right of not being punished for the crimes of others.
The right of freedom of speech.

This law spits in the face of these fundamental rights and creates an internet police state.

I’m honestly surprised that some MPs don't see how serious that implications of this law are.

In detail:
Privacy: The right to not having your mail read. Communist countries have had no qualms about interfering with your privacy, but generally democracies would only monitor your mail after a significant amount of evidence is mounted against you, while this law lets people be monitored before any evidence has been collected. This law ignores that precedent and has no problem monitoring your private correspondence online without first having proved that you’ve done anything.

Innocent until proven guilty in court. No clarification is needed on that one.

The right of freedom of speech & The right of not being punished because of someone else’s crime.

It’s hard to speak online, when your friends or family members downloaded a song, and you find yourself disconnected on account of them.
Many internet connections are shared amongst many users, innocent people’s connections will be disconnected because other people’s actions.

I can't say how much I appreciate you standing up against this internet police state law even when it is politically correct to support the Music Lobby Groups in parliament.

I believe that the same principles & rights that exist in the real world should also be present in the virtual internet world.

You shouldn't have the principles of a moderate government in the real world and the principles of a police state in the virtual world. They need to be consistent with each other.

Can someone explain to me where in section 92A it says an ISP *HAS* to disconnect someone on *accusation alone*?

“An Internet service provider must adopt and reasonably implement a policy that provides for termination, in appropriate circumstances, of the account with that Internet service provider of a repeat infringer.”

OK, here is a “policy” that “provides for termination, in appropriate circumstances”:

“Any user convicted in a court of law of repeat copyright infringement shall have their account terminated, if so ordered by that court.”

Can someone tell me how that DOESN’T fully and completely comply with section 92A without infringing on our rights?

It seems to me that the REAL problem is NOT section 92A which is essentially meaningless. No the REAL problem is the bullsh*t code of practice the ISP organisation is creating to “comply” with this law.

How is it that a single sentence in an act requires a 33 page policy? My policy is also one sentence, and I defy anyone to show that it does not comply with 92A.

Don’t believe the lies. This is not a law that is wrong, it is a stealth move by the ISP’s to start banning heavy data users.

Count on it. Even if section 92A is repealed tomorrow, you can bet this code of practice will remain.

ISPs don't want to have to disconnect heavy data users. If they do, they'll lose a lot of business, I mean all the ISPs have plans which accommodate heavy data users, with their 20GB plans.
This law was lobbied for by the American Film and Movie Industries local representatives as a heavy handed means of controlling free access to the internet.