ISP Association chief Jamie Baddeley has accused Campbell Smith, CEO of the Recording Industry Association of NZ (RIANZ) of being “economical with the truth” in his statement to Computerworld that ISPs registered no objections to the copyright-breach detection procedures planned by RIANZ in pursuit of the Copyright Act’s controversial Section 92A (Computerworld, March 16).
Before publishing Smith’s comments, Computerworld specifically sought confirmation or rebuttal of that point from Baddeley, but received no response by press-time.
On reading the Computerworld question-and-answer session with Smith, Baddeley has pointed to ISPANZ’s submission on a code of practice being drafted by the Telecommunications Carriers’ Forum (TCF). In that submission, published by the TCF last week, ISPANZ requests continual audit of the integrity and effectiveness of the detection procedures, as a condition of maintaining a copyright holder’s “pre-approved” status.
That status is a shortcut so a rights-holder does not have to prove its rights and its procedures in every case; but ISPANZ has pushed for a regular audit.
“That audit should generate a metric around 'confidence level' of the audited system — or at least an estimate of the number of false positives,” says the ISPANZ submission. “A condition of a pre-approved rights holder status should include a mandatory 3rd
party audit. The confidence level of a system (at a level to be agreed) is a criterion
to being pre-approved. Should the 'confidence level' fall below a threshold, the
rights holder would be removed from the pre-approved register. The audit should
also check to see if the detection process/system breaches copyright and
licensing of 3rd parties.”
“Seems Mr Smith is being economical with the truth,” Baddeley comments.