After the Black Out campaign gained some time for reasoned thought about the new copyright law, the new recommendations are due shortly about it\’s implementation.
The previously drafted legislation called for termination of infringer\’s internet accounts for repeated copyright violations. This created the Black Out backlash and so now we wait to see how things will be treated this time.
The Creative Freedom Foundation say that disconnection is disproportionate to the crime while interestingly internet access has been claimed an \”essential utility\” by people in the UK.
InternetNZ also think that disconnection should not be considered.
However, things point to a revised version of the original law with a level of Arbitration to decide on terminations.
I think that a series of warnings and increased fines would be sufficient to deter most people, and termination only avaialble if all other preceding actions have been ignored by the user.
This would alleviate the issue with users being scared of disconnection for unknown violations.
It would also help provide safety for those parents who are unaware of their children\’s internet activity.
Any legislation of this kind must also be delivered with some clear definitions of what is infringing content.
What do you do about Youtube? Myspace, Blogs that may have infringing information on it. It would make more sense dealing with the source of the information than the end users.
These things need clarification before any measures are taken to ban them.
Once we have an announcement I will post again on it\’s content.