Friday 8:03am (16th January 2009)
New Zealand Libraries say Section 92a Presumes Guilt Upon Accusation..LIANZA have written to the minister Steven Joyce saying that Section 92a has the "implication that ISPs will be required to act on accusations of illegal access of copyright materials by users (thereby reversing the legal principle that a person or organisation is deemed innocent until proved guilty)" with the recommendation that be Section 92a be repealed. This is big news, more inside...
Here's a public summary of the letter (thanks to McGovern Online).
A letter was sent yesterday on behalf of LIANZA to the Minister for
Communications and Information Technology, expressing LIANZA's concerns
about:
(1) the extremely broad definition of internet service provider (it includes any person or organisation which has a website)
(2) the implication that ISPs will be required to act on accusations of illegal access of copyright materials by users (thereby reversing the legal principle that a person or organisation is deemed innocent until proved guilty)
(3) the provisions of section 92A, requiring ISPs to terminate the account of a repeat infringer (which, if the repeat infringer is a user illegally accessing or downloading in-copyright materials on a library public-access computer, may result in the library, and possibly also the organisation (e.g. council, university, school, etc) to which the
library is attached, to lose all Internet access).
The letter strongly recommends that:
(1) the definition of internet service provider be amended
(2) section 92A be repealed prior to the date of its implementation (28
February 2009).
See also Auckland City Librarian Sue Scoopers comments and, of course, McGovern Online.
