Fighting digital piracy among ordinary New Zealand users is too expensive

Four years ago, New Zealand introduced a copyright protection bill that included control over the illegal distribution of files and the adoption of measures to curb piracy. This state was one of the first to pursue a punitive policy against digital pirates, but the initial enthusiasm with which the right holders met the initiative of the New Zealand government has noticeably diminished.

Monitoring and tracking of pirates is a relatively cheap event, but copyright holders are required to pay the Internet provider $ 25 to send a copyright violation warning to their customers. This means that to warn three pirates will cost $ 75, and if the right holder wants to file a formal complaint after sending a warning, he will have to pay another $ 200 .

The cost of fighting with each individual "pirate" can significantly exceed the damage caused by this same "pirate".

The rightholders complain that fighting piracy is now too expensive and, therefore, it still remains a serious problem for them. “We will not get rid of piracy, as it is, unfortunately, too expensive,” says Music NZ General Counsel, Christine Bowman.
')
Due to high costs, the music industry has reduced its activity in this area and reduced the number of notifications sent to users. In New Zealand, hundreds of thousands of people download pirated content weekly, but only a small portion of them received copyright infringement.

“Each notice costs us $ 25. We would like to send at least a thousand notifications a week, but we just cannot afford it, ”Bouman complains.

At the same time, right holders are less and less likely to bring the case to court. In 2015, only one copyright infringement lawsuit was filed in the New Zealand courts, compared with four in the past and eighteen in the year before last, 2013. If this trend continues, the criminal prosecution of ordinary users for copyright infringement in New Zealand, one of the pioneering countries in this matter, will remain only on paper.

Via torrent freak