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Changes to the Copyright Act
Tue 9 Aug 2011
Some important changes have been made the Copyright Act that could affect you from this week (August 11).
The law is called the Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Act 2011. It amends the Copyright Act 1994 to provide owners of copyrighted works such as movies, TV shows and music a quicker and easier way to penalise people infringing their copyright via online file sharing. The intention of the law changes is to crack down on peer-to-peer file sharing of copyrighted material.
You get two warning notices (which will be sent from your ISP) if you are accused of wrongly accessing copyrighted material and then a third notice after which the copyright owner can take you to the Copyright Tribunal. The maximum penalty is $15,000, payable to the copyright owner.
The person who owns the internet account (account holder) is liable, even if he or she wasn’t the person who broke the law. Allegations of copyright infringement made against you (the account holder) by the copyright owner are presumed to be correct unless you give evidence or reasons why you aren’t guilty.
InternetNZ has put together a fantastic resource to answer all your questions. It’s online at:
An important thing to note: While the new law comes into force 1 September 2011, notices can be sent for alleged infringements occurring in the 21 days before the notice. Therefore, allegations of infringements from 11 August 2011 onwards count under the new law.
