Dust settles on copyright team
If you want an undemanding role with a little prestige – and don’t mind not getting paid – getting called up to serve on New Zealand’s Copyright Tribunal is shaping up as a good option.
Copyright remains a hot topic, with a long-awaited review of the Copyright Act under way, but dust has settled on the tribunal with this Tuesday marking three years to the day since it last had a case to deal with.
The tribunal is one of 20 specialist tribunals and authorities supported by the Justice Ministry. Its six members are typically appointed by the Government for terms of between two and five years, and some members are now half-way through their terms without ever being called on to rule on a dispute.
The ministry confirmed in an Official Information Act request the tribunal’s members, chaired by Victoria University law professor Susy Frankel, had not been paid any fees or reimbursements during the past three financial years when it had no work.
The tribunal had a spell in the limelight between 2012 and 2015, when Recorded Music NZ took action against 21 internet users for music piracy under a three-strikes regime colloquially dubbed ‘‘Skynet’’.
However, the cases were all dealt with on their paperwork, without its members having to convene.
The use of Skynet petered out after Recorded Music NZ expressed frustration about the high cost of bringing cases to the tribunal and ‘‘insufficient’ penalties – usually of hundreds of dollars – handed down to pirates.
However, piracy has also become less of an issue for the music industry as studios and consumers have got in behind legal ‘‘all-you-can eat’’ streamed music services such as Spotify and Apple Music.
A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment said it expected to release an issues paper on the review of the Copyright Act for public consultation ‘‘around midyear’’.
One of the biggest issues is expected to be the ‘‘fair use’’ of copyright material.
InternetNZ chief executive Jordan Carter said it would soon publish a policy paper that would include support for a fair-use provision in New Zealand’s Copyright Act.
‘‘The whole point of ‘fair use’ is that it doesn’t have a single test,’’ he said.
WeCreate, which represents the creative industries in New Zealand, estimated in 2014 that they directly contributed $1.6 billion to GDP and employed 15,000 people.
Chief executive Paula Browning said New Zealand had a lot of opportunity to make money from producing content, and a fair use clause would mean more legal uncertainty and court cases.
Although consumers tended to favour more freedoms, Browning suggested the biggest beneficiaries of a fair-use clause would not be New Zealanders, but rather ‘‘large tech companies whose business models can be underpinned by having free access to other people’s content’’.
A Cabinet paper produced by the previous Government warned copyright was a complex area and policy makers would ‘‘not be able to resolve all issues to everybody’s satisfaction’’.