New Zealand today has changed its Digital copyright law to try and combat online content piracy, the kicker to this law change is that your guilty until proven inoccent. One of the ways companys have been catching people to send the infringment notices to is to seed the file and capture the IP adresses of those downloading it, as long as the IPS is given the exact IP address date and time of the infingment the IPS has to pass on the infringment notice once 2 notices have been issued to the same account holder the next incurres the wrath of the Copyright Tribunal which can fine upto $15,000 per offence and yes you read right, the account holder is responsible for any/all downloading and can be fined it dosn't matter if somone leeched your net or your a large company and an employee downloaded a song.
The reason why I think torrents are so popular here in NZ.
For those of you that dont know what its like to only have 10 Tv channels, (5 standard, 1 Music 1 Horse and Dog and 3 Misc ) Imagine you just started watching Justified a new (well for NZ) top rated US Tv show which in the US is in its 3rd Season currently 39 Episodes released, NZ TV 1 showed 2 Episodes and then moved it from a 9:30 pm slot to 11pm on the otherhand we can watch Masterchef 3 times a day on the same channel and the TV company's wonder why torrent files are so popular? This is also only the tip of the iceberg. There are many, many shows that will never see the light of day here It's also not just limited to TV shows, movies 6 months after release overseas, PC games that just dont make it to our shores for example the new mmorpg being produced by Bioware/Lucasarts and EA will not be available in NZ on release day because, well I don't know why I recently preordered this from EB games and they couldn't give me a release date yet if I torrent the client when its available (which is now illiegal) and buy a copy from the states (get them to email me the headstart key) I will be able to play on release.
thier are many ways around this law for the tech savvy Geek, use a proxy with an overseas IP or once you get 2 notices change service providers or use an IP masking tool like Bit guard. This law will only catch those people whom once in a blue moon download a song.