the new law against file sharing - well intentioned but silly

It is estimated that half the households in the country do it, but as from 1 September a new "guilty until proven innocent" law makes ISPs compulsory policemen to try and stop it, mobile networks in 2013.  The issue and how the new law is supposed to work was quite well summarised for the non-legal fraternity in a  Fair Go episode a couple of weeks ago. Video

Back in the 1980s you often saw on LP covers a message stating "home taping is killing music".  File sharing is the current technologically advanced equivalent.  But is it a good assumption that people who can make an mp3 copy of CD tracks would have bought that CD otherwise?  It's a bit of a stretch.  It is even more of a stretch when it comes to movies copied by people with home digicams in cinemas.  Rather ironically the slow and expensive broadband that NZ has -- thanks to Telecon/m NZ -- has been much more of a disincentive than this law will ever be.  You can buy a big range of backlist movies for about $8-9 each in outlets like The Warehouse-- that are much better quality and cheaper (by the time you've paid all those broadband excess use charges).

As creators of intellectual property we have an interest in this, but we know that in practice, tracking down and dealing with most of the infringers is more costly than it's worth.  If people are too cheap to want to pay very modest dollars for one of our high quality books that will be an asset to their bookshelf or coffee table, well then, what would you think of them...

Unfortunately it will be like many laws -- we can only see lawyers benefiting from it and they're rich enough already.

Below is a comment from another site that is pretty accurate.

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"Yeah, the definition of "ownership" is being changed completely.

You pay for something, and then the government or corporation, or "somebody" gets to tell you that you cannot share it with someone, even though you "own" it.

Let's also ban car pooling, tool sharing, clothing sharing and other forms of lending, and gifts as well.

Oh yeah, banning someone's internet in the modern world is practically firing them from their job, or preventing them from getting a job if they don't have one.

There's all kinds of file sharing on the internet. I mean, the internet was INVENTED for file sharing and communication in the first place.

Most major websites, including Facebook, any Email account, Yahoo, Google, Myspace, etc, either promote or enable file sharing in some way.

You can also do file sharing through any video game which has a custom level editor, such as Starcraft 2. Just hide your file in the map archives or a replay archives, or include it as background music...