A New Zealand Rihanna fan has the dubious honour of being one of the first people to have an enforcement action brought against her for breach of copyright under the Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Act 2011 (NZ).

According to a King & Wood Mallesons report, the unnamed woman was ordered to pay $NZ616.57 in damages for making two songs available for download via uTorrent.

The Center for Copyright Information, an organization founded and funded by media industry organizations, their members and Internet Service Providers (ISPs), has announced that it would push back the start date and will likely begin to roll out its long anticipated “Copyright Alert System” in the early part of 2013, reports BakerHostetler.

A survey commissioned by the UK telecommunications regulator has found that only one-fifth of infringers would be put off further infringement by suspension of their Internet account.

Less drastic measures would have even less success: an ISP letter identifying infringing activity would deter only 16% of infringers, and restricting Internet access speed would deter only 14%.

Other key findings of the survey include:

• One in six (16%) UK internet users aged 12+ were estimated to have downloaded or streamed/accessed at least one item of online content illegally3 over the 3 month period May-July 2012. A quarter of these (4%) only consumed illegal content.
• Levels of infringement varied significantly by content type; our survey indicated that 8% of internet users aged 12+ consumed some music illegally over the three month period, while 6% did so for films. For video games and computer software the figure was just 2%.
• Online copyright infringers across all the content types were more likely to be male (58%), 16-34 (64%) and ABC1 (62%).

Under a revision to its copyright notice and takedown policy, when Twitter takes down an alleged infringing tweet it will now automatically post a tweet in the user’s feed stating the material has been withheld in response to a report from a copyright holder.

And, as it already does with other requests to block or remove Tweets, Twitter will send these reports to the Chilling Effects website.

Twitter will respond to reports of alleged copyright infringement, such as allegations concerning the unauthorized use of a copyrighted image as an profile photo, header photo, or background, or to Tweets containing links to allegedly infringing materials.

Information about the process is set out in Twitter’s Copyright and DMCA Policy.

Anton Vickerman, the founder of surfthechannel.com, has become the first person in Britain to be jailed for running a site containing links to illegally uploaded films and television programmes, reports Speechly Bircham.

In a private prosecution brought by the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT), Vickerman was tried under the criminal charge of conspiracy to defraud.

It was shown that Vickerman had collaborated with other parties to put the pirated material online, thereby depriving film producers and TV companies of an estimated £98m in lost revenues.

The Association of American Publishers and Google have settled a seven-year dispute over Google’s book digitisation program.

Under the terms of the settlement, US publishers can choose to make available or choose to remove their books and journals digitized by Google for its Digital Library Project.

Google will allow users to browse up to 20 percent of a book’s content, and then enable them to purchase digital copies through Google Play.

This settlement does not affect Google’s current litigation with the Authors Guild or otherwise address the underlying questions in that suit.

The Recording Industry Association of New Zealand (RIANZ) has applied for three Internet users to be brought before the Copyright Tribunal and fined for their alleged copyright infringement, reports Baldwins.

Assuming that the current applications have been made in accordance with the the Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Act 2011 (within 35 days of the relevant enforcement notices and adequately detailed) and the proceedings are allowed, these might well be the first reported proceedings under any three-strikes system for copyright infringement.

While the current maximum fine is set at $15,000, fines issued by the Copyright Tribunal could be as low as a few hundred dollars.

Regardless of quantum, it appears that New Zealand will be one of the first countries in the world to follow through with its three-strikes legislation.