A welcome u-turn from Labour

Labour have announced:

Labour today announced it would support the Government’s Copyright Infringement File Sharing Amendment Bill but remains strongly opposed to some aspects of the Bill.

Labour’s Communications and IT spokesperson Clare Curran said the bill includes some sensible provisions, so Labour will be supporting it to select committee to make sure people have a chance to have their say.

However, Labour is strongly opposed to the provision for suspension of an Internet Service Provider (ISP) account.

This is excellent to see – both that Labour are supporting the bill to select committee (as it is a huge improvement on status quo), but especially that they have now declared their official policy to be against any provision for suspension of Internet access.

As the original S92A was introduced by Labour’s Judith Tizard, it has been a remarkable change in position to go from supporting the original S92A, to now opposing any suspension of Internet access as a response to copyright infringing.

Kudos is due to primarily Clare Curran for getting this policy change though. Also been impressed generally with Labour’s outreach on this issue – the meetings they hosted with stakeholders were a good example of genuine engagement.

What will be interesting is to see if the Internet suspension clause survives select committee hearings. The Commerce Select Committee has ten members on it – four Nats, three Labour, one ACT, one Green and one Maori Party.