Think about the countries you think are harsh on file sharers, and then consider New Zealand. The country closest to Australia is scheduled to implement Section 92 of the Copyright Amendment Act, which would mean anyone suspected of copyright infringement is immediately presumed guilty.

Most (nearly all) ISP's typically send out a warning to suspected file sharers which would give them a second chance to get their act together (translated as download behind a VPN next time instead). The other reason is presumably because there is always the chance they may be wrong. But the upcoming Copyright Amendment Act in New Zealand would simply bypass any process that might allow the accused the right to defend themselves or show the accusers they fingered the wrong person.

As we've seen many times in the past, people have been incorrectly accused of illegal file sharing and have usually ended up financially ruined trying to clear their names. That doesn't sound too bad in comparison to being charged guilty right off the bat, but 'luckily' in this case the punishment isn't as severe.

So what does being accused actually mean? For starters, if your lucky, it's only permanent disconnection from the Internet. In a worst case scenario, and I can just see this happening, it will be some irresponsible idiot sharing movies on his work computer who gets the entire organisation kicked off-line, and I don't need to explain the consequences of that.

Is this a dumb proposition? Of course it is. I can't for the life of me think of one single legitimate motive for a law that is not too dissimilar to those of the dark ages.

There is an online petition aimed to stop this act from coming into play. Sign it, for what good an online petition can do.

Source.