Lotu-Iiga Peseta Sam: Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Lotu-Iiga Peseta Sam: Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
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PESETA SAM LOTU-IIGA (National—Maungakiekie) 
: 
 Thank you Mr Chairman. While you are in the chair Mr Robertson I congratulate you on your promotion to Assistant Speaker. 
It is a real privilege to speak on the Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Bill. I acknowledge like my colleagues have done the officials and the work they put in on the bill. The bill has been difficult in terms of balancing the competing interests. The stakeholders were quite passionate shall we say about their respective views and opinions. 
The bill is about balancing the rights of property rights holders—and they are intellectual property rights—with as many speakers have already pointed out this evening the developing and changing technologies that are inherent in this technological age particularly around the use of the Internet. The bill is about protection of property rights. Although intellectual property rights are not tangible and cannot be held in one’s hands some submitters compared them with those of owners of private property of landowners of people who have private property rights that we clearly understand. 
In trying to protect these property rights we must understand that investment research and development resources time and energy have been put into developing them. In particular the creative industries put in a lot of time and resources and a huge amount of risk is involved. There is a risk in terms of putting moneys up front developing a product a service or a technology then seeing how that product is taken up by the market. If that product cannot be fully capitalised on in terms of its return then questions arise. That was the original intent of the legislation in 1994: to protect intellectual property rights holders particularly those in the creative industries and to balance that against the developing technology. If we are going to have thriving creative industries we must have laws that not only protect those rights but make them enforceable in a court of law or certainly in a tribunal situation. 
The argument put forward by the creative industries was that suspension is vital as the ultimate sanction. One of the submissions talked about a number of high-volume online infringements by individuals. In such cases a three-strikes graduated response would in effect be useless superfluous and redundant. That submission was put forward in terms of why suspension should be the final sanction. In many reported cases infringements have been made by not just individuals but groups of individuals who have abused the file-sharing technologies that are out there. 
So that is on the one hand; on the other hand we heard from a number of Internet service providers. This point has not been raised this evening but they talked about the costs that would be imposed on Internet service providers in implementing this regime. It would involve millions of dollars. We heard from a number of Internet service providers and when questioned they went back to their respective organisations and made an attempt to quantify the cost of implementation. They came back and the figures were quite startling. The figures were in the millions. That put us as a committee on notice that the compliance costs of this regime which no one has mentioned as yet tonight are serious. A critical part of the consideration is that we do not over-regulate or the regime may be counter-productive to certainly our economy. 
One of the other reasons that suspension was advocated was that the option of termination would penalise not just a single user the transgressor of the copyright but also other users who are part of the network. For example where a teenager was the transgressor and the account was terminated that might affect not only that teenager but that person’s mother father siblings and other whanau or family members who are reliant on that account. Also the issue of suspension was seen as not just one of deterrence; that regime would educate those who were transgressing against the legislation. A notice regime was important in order to send a message a deliberate message if you like to those who had infringed to educate them that they were in fact breaking the law. I think that was an important part of the consideration of the Commerce Committee. 
I think the majority of us came to recommend the new section 122PA in clause 7 which in effect brings together a workable compromise on this issue. The bill’s provisions allowing for Internet suspension are retained and would come about only if evidence indicated that notices alone were not having the desired effect. In this instance the suspension provisions would be brought about by an Order in Council. I think that is a fair and reasonable compromise in terms of the dilemma we found ourselves in because the competing interests which were laid out by the various stakeholders in quite a passionate way were quite compelling—on both sides. 
I think we need more evidence to make a more informed and more reliable decision as to whether suspension is in fact to be implemented. I think my colleagues feel and certainly I hear from members opposite that that is a fair and reasonable solution. Certainly stakeholders of the industry will need to monitor it and cooperate with the officials at the ministry. I am sure that when the review date comes in the future we will have the evidence to suggest whether such a policy should be implemented. Thank you.