Senior New Zealand politician launches plans to compensate copyright holders

Clare Curran, the New Zealand Labour Party spokesperson for Communications and Information Technology, has launched some ideas for creating a fair copyright regimen in a digital environment in this post on the Labour Party blog.

Curran notices a Mexican stand-off between ISPs, copyright owners and the general public. To break this stand-off and provide a solution that answers to the interests of all three parties, “It’s time to float a few ‘go forward’ ideas on protecting copyright in the digital age,” she writes. The real challenge is to “protect the rights and incomes of those who create content rather than trying to just contain access or punish those who illegally access that content.” In this light, Curran deems the recent revision of the country’s Copyright Act “short sighted”, failing to “take account of the wider issues”.

Curran proposes to consider charging Internet users a fee through their ISP that would be used to reimburse rights owners. An independent agency needs to supervise distribution of the proceeds, focussing primarily on New Zealand content.

This idea, however valuable as a contribution to the debate, has several flaws. Firstly, many people with an Internet subscription do not use it to download films or music. Reclaiming costs on everyone when it is hard to single out who are to pay, is not in the public’s best interest at all. New business models that operate on the basis of unlimited access to content on a subscription basis have shown to work very adequately. They target those who want content and leave others outside of the loop. The sound principle of users pay, others don’t.

Secondly, the notion of emphasising protection of domestic content is a protectionist measure that is completely out of place in a market with as global a character as the entertainment market.