NZ's 'three strikes' regime right move: InternetNZ

Jordan Carter, InternetNZ chief executive.

New Zealand was on the right track when adopting a 'three strikes' regime to counter infringing file sharing in music and movies, an industry group says.

This comes after an Australian federal court ordered several Australian internet providers to hand over the names and home addresses of more than 4,700 internet account holders to Los Angeles movie studio Voltage Pictures, Fairfax reported.

These account holders were allegedly using their connections to share the Voltage Pictures film, the Dallas Buyers Club.

InternetNZ chief executive Jordan Carter said the furore over the Dallas Buyers Club case showed the 'three strikes' regime adopted here in New Zealand was better than what had happened in Australia.

The Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Bill colloquially known as the 'three strikes' regime meant copyright owners could send evidence of alleged infringements to internet service providers, which would then send up to three infringement notices to the internet account holder.

The copyright owner could then take a claim to the Copyright Tribunal and the tribunal could make awards of up to $15,000 against the account holder.

"The rights holders know how much it is to lodge a claim and how to do it, the internet Service Providers (ISP) know their obligations and if an infringement notice is sent to an ISP's customer, the privacy of that individual's details are kept to just the ISP."

Mr Carter said the situation Australia found itself in was the result of having no modernised legal framework to deal with emerging technologies such as downloading film and music.

"The trend away from infringing file sharing started when easy and cheap access to legal content became available.

"From the iTunes store for music & movies, to providers of streaming access to TV series and movies like NetFlix or Spotify, cheap and legal access is now a reality. Infringing file sharing is slowly becoming a thing of the past," Mr Carter said.

Voltage Pictures vice-president Michael Wickstrom told Fairfax the company was now considering taking similar action in other countries across the world.

"Voltage is actively pursuing piracy in Britain, Singapore, Canada, the US and Germany," he said. "Piracy affects all countries and all worldwide distributors.

"Piracy is theft and it is just plain wrong. When the royalties are not coming in due to piracy then the producers, actors, crew members and distributors don't get paid," he said.

He told Fairfax they were unsure how frequently their movies were pirated in New Zealand, but said they "may be working on it shortly".