The pirates are coming

Rhys Darby as a pirate radio DJ in the movie The boat that rocked (aka Pirate radio)

Local comedian and Flight of the Conchords star Rhys Darby will front a new anti-piracy campaign, distributed online and via DVD to schools... see "Top comic joins piracy fracas", Dominion Post.

This promo video comes before the new copyright law comes into effect in September, which will allow rights holders "to force internet providers to pass on infringement notices to customers who they believe they have caught accessing pirated material."

"On the third warning, rights holders will be able to make internet providers pass the customer's details to the Copyright Tribunal, which will be able to impose fines."

Chief executive of the Federation Against Copyright Theft (NZFact) Tony Eaton said NZFact had been keen for Mr Darby to front its anti-piracy campaign to promote a "softer more relevant image" and because of his personality. "He says a few quirky jokes."

"InternetNZ said in its submission that it struggled to see why rights holders should be allowed to profit in cases where people pirated works that they had chosen not to sell in New Zealand but that they did sell overseas."

This is one of the key problems with rights holders choosing to prosecute their audience, instead of giving them access to what they want, when they want. Controlling your content by territory simply makes it impossible for people to access it.

For more on this, read Paul Brislens piece "How about giving people what they want?"

Let's hope the video doesn't end up looking like this...