It goes on to make suggestions for information to be included on the notices and asks for reaction to these suggestions and an estimate of the cost to the ISP of issuing notices. Some ISPs (or "internet protocol address providers" as they are called in the amendments) provided estimates of costs, of between $14 and $56 per notice, assuming full cost recovery. The MED has discounted setup costs and arrived at a marginal cost over the long term of between $2 and $28 per notice.

When considering penalties, the MED recommends a "compensation" amount, reflecting the market value of the work whose copyright was infringed, reimbursement to the rights owner for the fees it will have been charged to process the complaint, and a deterrent element, scaled according to the "flagrancy" of the offence and whether uploading as well as downloading was involved. One upload on a peer-to-peer network facilitates many downloads, so it is likely that this will be more damaging to a rights-holder, says MED.

Flagrancy otherwise could depend on the volume of material transferred and whether the offender was aware they were offending, the discussion document suggests.

The fee payable by rights-holders and the procedures of the Copyright Tribunal in hearing the cases will be decided by the Ministry of Justice and comment is not requested on these points.

Closing date for submissions on the discussion document is May 27.