Throng

Target has had an interesting year when it comes to courting controversy.  After a botch up with contaminated food samples, one Ponsonby cafe was put on the brink of bankruptcy. Now, last week's episode of Target about copyright infringement has the Creative Freedom Foundation calling foul as the clearly biased story misrepresented the facts to the watching audience.

Target's episode on illegal downloads, 'Shame On You', presented one side of an ongoing debate about copyright infringement online - that of NZFACT and RIANZ. For the past few years these groups have lobbied to be able to accuse New Zealanders and have them punished without a trial.

Section 92A of the Copyright Act, which the public called the 'Guilt Upon Accusation' law, was deemed "draconian" by Prime Minister John Key and opposed by at least 20,000 New Zealanders including 10,000 kiwi musicians, film makers, and other artists of the Creative Freedom Foundation. Despite protest from NZFACT and RIANZ the law was scrapped in March and it's currently undergoing a rewrite. Top Shelf Productions , the markers of Target, showed just one side of the argument and left many unchallenged viewpoints and statistics from NZFACT or RIANZ. Target became little more than a press release for these lobby groups.

The response from the Creative Freedom Foundation follows:

IN SUMMARY
RIANZ claim the NZ music industry is shrinking. That NZ music industry under RIANZ shrinking is more a healthy sign of musicians leaving their artist-unfriendly contracts and setting up independent labels to retain more of the profits themselves. Increasingly NZFACT and RIANZ don't speak for artists, let alone represent them.

The $70 million in losses is grossly inflated and more a sign of an industry leaving unsatisfied customers than actual losses.

Music and DVD stores are distributors that are being made obsolete primarily by other legitimate music, movie, and entertainment sources.

Internet termination doesn't just affect the perpetrator as stated but rather it means that any New Zealand organisation (familes, businesses, schools, hospitals) would have their internet terminated if one person used it to break the law. Rather than sweet justice this is more about an untargeted punishment harming many people for the actions of one person.

Because of poor leadership from NZFACT and RIANZ many artists have joined the Creative Freedom Foundation and are speaking out against them and their viewpoints as raised on your show. Members of the Creative Freedom Foundation are regularly on TV to speak on issues of copyright and what artists want done in their name .

FACTS AND FIGURES
1) The assertion that the shrinking finances of RIANZ companies (from 120 to 40 million) was due to illegal downloads was left unchallenged by the show. The average musician in New Zealand earns less than 5% off a CD and supporting artists is now more about changing that by bypassing the middleman, namely the companies in RIANZ. To retain more of the profits artists are leaving major labels in favour of independent labels, or a la carte music services such as the distributors Rhythm Method. APRA, which does represent creators increased its returns to its members by 10% last year and has done the same for the last 3 years. Yes, 3 consecutive years of 'the best year ever' from APRA.

2) The movie industry figure of $70 million lost due to illegal downloads was left unchallenged in the piece. The statistic is based on an optimistic assumption that each download equates a lost sale, and this is despite the fact that movies are not even available for purchase online in NZ. Is this $70 million lost to illegal downloads or an industry that's not satisfying customer demand? As official UK Parliamentary enquiry said last month "We conclude that much of the problem with illegal sharing of copyrighted material has been caused by the rightsholders, and the music industry in particular, being far too slow in getting their act together and making popular legal alternatives available" In other words we're now fifteen years into the popular mainstream internet and we still can't buy movies online. The legal alternatives talked about at the end of the Target episode (such as TiVo, due for Christmas) lack popular titles and they're not usable on iPods or on most computers. It's very hard to pay money for online movies, but Target took these claims of losses without journalistic skepticism.

3) Internet disconnection doesn't just affect the accused or guilty individual as stated on Target, but like cutting off electricity or telephones it affects whole organisations for the actions of one person. New Zealand families, businesses, schools, hospitals, libraries could have their internet terminated if one person used it to break the law.

4) The assertion that 20 VHS/DVD rental stores and a chain of CD stores were closing due to illegal downloads is more a reflection of changing consumer demands, but the attribution of store closings due to illegal downloads was left unchallenged. Increasingly CD and DVD stores will be made obsolete by services offered via broadband internet - legitimate services like SKY TV movies, Fatso.co.nz (rental), TradeMe, or iTunes instead of physical stores. Even with physical stores the price of purchasing DVDs has fallen drastically over the past few years, encouraging purchases rather than rentals.

5) The only artist viewpoint presented on illegal downloading was left unchallenged, and was unreflective of the common viewpoints held among artists. Many New Zealand artists such as Disasteradio, Bic Runga, and Neil Finn have said publicly that they like downloading. This week's NZ Herald features a study saying that those who download more also buy more because they're enthusiasts. A majority of artists have the view that punishing fans is not the best way of making money and this view is held by musicians such as Sir Paul McCartney, Billy Bragg, Blur, Pink Floyd, Radiohead, Travis, Annie Lennox, Tom Jones, Robbie Williams and others from the UK's Featured Artist Coalition. Of course, it is up to the individual artist to decide what happens to their work, but the Target episode showed only a fringe minority of artist opinion. Artists who support the viewpoint espoused by RIANZ/NZFACT are infact a minority: Eg. "Lily Allen and James Blunt are among the few artists supporting [the UK Government plan]." (from the same NZ Herald article cited above).

6) The risks of viruses and malware through illegal downloads of movie files was left unchallenged. Music and movie files are not capable of distributing viruses in any significant way. Some software is capable but this wasn't covered in the episode. This was scaremongering by NZFACT - targeted at young children - and it's largely nonsense.

7) In context, the episode echoed the NZFACT viewpoint that trials are a burden rather than a democratic necessity, saying "first the copyright holder must find and take the pirate to court which costs even more." This might sound innocuous out of context, however in the press NZFACT have recently called for removal of trials saying that "envisaged ISPs would act on infringement notices generated automatically by copyright holders." According to NZs Judge Harvey 30% of copyright litigation is false, and in the United States it rises to 37%. In one famous case a computer's printer was mistakenly accused of copyright infringement by NZFACT's parent organisation in Hollywood - something it was technically incapable of doing. The right to trial is necessary for basic justice and more so because false or malicious accusations of copyright infringement are a common occurrence online.

They also brought up Sione's Wedding again, which was copying done by an employee of the production company and distributed primarily in markets. This had nothing directly to do with Internet downloading.

9) This is a minor point but as the show repeatedly calls copyright infringement a "crime" so it's worth correcting. Commercial industrial-scale copyright infringement is a crime, but what happens online is typically non-commercial file sharing which is a civil matter - not a crime.

Termination of internet accounts will not work and has certainly not worked in Korea which has had a 'Three Strikes' policy for some time. Blatant illegal infringers will simply switch ISPs, or hide of encrypt their traffic, starting another technical arms race doomed to failure. Conversely, educational campaigns by ISPs sending notices to advise of possible infringement are reckoned to have a 70% success rate in countries such as the UK and Canada.

Protecting artists means reasonable copyright laws, not internet termination.