Format-shifting legal - for audio anyway

The Copyright (New Technologies) Amendment Act has finally been passed but has already been slammed as outdated and insufficient to deal with the copyright issues of the current digital landscape.
InternetNZ has attacked the amendment claiming parliament "has missed an opportunity to bring its Copyright law fully into the modern age".
It has two major beefs with the Act. Most significantly, the new format-shifting provision makes it legal to rip a CD to your computer hard drive and shift the music to an MP3 player (like, who has ever even considered the legality of that anyway?) But there is no provision for format-shifting video.
Ripping videos from DVDs is slightly trickier for the average consumer than audio CDs, but plenty of people do it - I was recently in the lounge of a Wellington businessman who had ripped 400 movies to a central server and was able to collate and organise them through Windows Media Centre. And so he should be able to - he paid for the movies after all.
As internetNZ points out:
"We believe that if a consumer has legally purchased a licence to the rights to a copyrighted work, they should be able to store it any format they like, so long as it remains for their personal use."
More on the lack of video-shifting over at Aardvark.
The other problem in the eyes of internetNZ is that the Act enshrines a "notice and takedown" system to deal with alleged copyright violations. This means a copyright holder can contact an ISP and request they remove from their servers, content they believe is breaching their copyright. internetNZ favoured a "notice and notice" system where the ISP simply passes on the copyright owner's request to the alleged infringer.
Canadian law professor Michael Geist has a good article on his blog summarising the differences between "notice and take down" and "notice and notice". Canada adopted "notice and notice" when it overhauled its copyright legislation.
Most people or organisations who feel their copyright is being violated approach the website owner first and request the content be taken down. If that doesn't succeed, they're more likely to get a lawyer involved and threaten to take legal action under the Copyright Act.
Now, however, an aggrieved party in theory can immediately go to the ISP hosting the third-party content and request that they remove it. But what if there is dispute over ownership of the content? It could be pulled from the web while the mess is sorted out and the provision could potentially be used to stifle free speech.
Either way, it dumps more responsibility on ISPs who risk alienating their customers by pulling content that's under dispute.
That element of the legislation and the woefully inadequate format-shifting provision makes the copyright amendment look like a bit of a dog's breakfast. It's only going to look more so as we increasingly seek to shift video around our homes and transfer it to portable digital devices.
At least the Greens and the Maori Party had the good sense to give the thumbs down on this one.