It is now 9 months since the Government introduced new legislation surrounding the illegal downloading of copyright material.

The law allows the copyright owner (typically music or movie owners) to instruct the ISP (Actrix) to communicate with its customers to cease and desist where there is evidence to highlight the illegal downloading of material. After 3 infringements, the copyright owner can bring an offender to the Copyright Tribunal where fines of up to $15,000 can be imposed.

In an article published by Fairfax on 23 July, the industry claims the incidence of downloads has halved since the introduction of the new laws.

Actrix are delighted to confirm that there has not been one Notice of Infringement directed to Actrix customers under the new Infringing File Sharing Act, indicating that Actrix customers were using the internet in a right and proper manner and were not breaching the copyright downloading laws of NZ.

In excess of 2,700 letters have been sent to customers of other NZ ISP's.

The Recording Industry Association of New Zealand (Rianz), which represents major record labels, said that between October and April 26 it ordered internet providers send 2,766 infringement notices to people it believed it had caught pirating music, including tracks from Lady Gaga and Rihanna.

The Federation Against Copyright Theft, which represents major US movie studios, said the number of times top-200 movies were viewed illegally by New Zealanders online plummeted from 110,000 in August, the month before the copyright law change took effect, to about 50,000 in September.

Regards

Howard Lewis

CEO

Actrix