Hello fellow pirates,


I just registered a dotTK domain under the impression it was still under UK monarch ruling until I was informed that its now under New Zealand rule.

The main question is "is providing links to copyrighted material illegal under New Zealand laws?"

Being a member of a pirate party myself I know I'll receive a more accurate and timely answer than emailing the nz copyright authority.

for faster results - enquiries@pirateparty.org.nz.

I'm not entirely sure myself.

Do you mean linking to copyrighted material that someone else provides legally, or that someone else provides illegally?

AFAIK linking to copyrighted material that someone else provides illegally has itself been ruled illegal in Australia, on the basis that the linking constitutes 'authorisation' of an illegal act--see here (linked). New Zealand also has a clause about 'authorising' an act--see Copyright Act 1994 No 143 s 16 (linked), so I have no reason to suppose this will be any different in New Zealand. OTOH, linking to copyrighted material that someone else provides legally should be okay AFAIK.

[EDIT: And even if you were using a domain controlled by another country, if you were acting within New Zealand, you could still be prosecuted under New Zealand law, AFAIK.]

So, according to this article, watching copyrighted videos online via an embedding site is not infringing/illegal as currently defined. Nor is running a profitable embedding/advertising site.

As I understand it, said profitable embedding/advertising site, as an entity making use of an unedited copyrighted work for financial gain without a license, would *become* illegal under PPNZ policy as it currently stands.

Do people agree with this interpretation of current policy? If this *is* our policy, do people see that as a good thing?

I for one like the idea, especially the clear implication that PPNZ thinks copyright should cover money made from a work, instead of anything at all to do with making copies of a work.

I thought it was an interesting ruling. The judge seems to have missed the point that the website linked to copyright protected content, and the operator and users knew it.
"But as long as the visitor makes no copy of the copyrighted video that he is watching, he is not violating the copyright owner’s exclusive right." That is technically correct, the people hosting the streaming content are the ones infringing on the owners copyright...under current law. But come on, it's still taking the piss and will only lead to further legal pressures. The copyright holders don't care how it's done as they are only interested in protecting their content.
While Google and Facebook might contain links to copyprotected material, their entire reason, purpose, and business model is not focused on encouraging copyright infringement. The line has to be drawn so that either website and service operators are responsible for the content they promote, or the end user must be made accountable.
From the perspective of privacy for the individual, the onus must be on the service provider.

The only other policy that fits with that ruling is better, and international, enforcement for take down notices on the content hosts. It all depends on where the chain should be broken and into how many pieces.

In short, I like the current policy. Shutting down the site indexing content is easier, more effective, and less intrusive than just going after individual users or individual hosts. Chasing individual hosts would be the least effective strategy as any hosted content that is taken down can simply be hosted elsewhere and links on the index page updated. Individual users would require forcing the indexing page or individual hosts to store traffic logs and surrender them to a government department, company, or individual.

I think this looks like it refers to a USA case. I think this (linked) looks like a copy of the list of restricted acts under USA law, and it doesn't seem to contain 'authorising' a restricted act (which is the basis on which the Australian case was decided), so IMHO, from what I can see, I think this is the correct interpretation of USA law.

[EDIT: Regarding our policy, I think the intention was to allow hash codes of files, but not linking. I think under Swedish law linking was deemed illegal, but hash codes were deemed legal, however it looks like Swedish copyright law is different again from USA and Australia/NZ, so I don't know if that means anything for us.]