But if it is, it can be simpler and less punitive than the Bill currently before a select committee in parliament.

These points are made in a submission to the Commerce Select Committee on the Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Bill. The document substantially reflects the priorities and issues raised at a series of public meetings organised by InternetNZ last month.

InternetNZ questions the need for the legislation on the basis of the continuing growth of earnings in the music and movie industries, whose lobbies often contend that the businesses are being destroyed by illicit file-sharing and downloading.

The submission cites a comment from the government's own Regulatory Impact Statement on the bill: "We are unable to accurately estimate the costs to the [entertainment] industry from illegal P2P [peer-to-peer] file-sharing since attempts to scale the problem have been fragmented or based on limited data sets." This, the submission says, echoes the view of the US General Accountability Office.

InternetNZ quotes several figures quantifying the growth of the local music and movie industries and suggests this demonstrates that the problem is not as great as surveys commissioned by "vested interests" claim. Any effect is chiefly, the organisation suggests, a matter of an industry that has failed to come up with new business models to cope with the impact of new avenues of distribution.