The Weatherston case is likely to be one of such cases. There is clearly a logical fallacy here, Weatherston used, or abused the availability of  provocation as a defense, doesn't necessarily mean provocation defence  is flawed - in fact, I could argue this in the exactly opposite way, it has  proved that the defense is very reasonable and not accessible to people who want to get away with what they have done - therefore Weatherston failed.

There is no doubt to me that provocation is a geniune defence, I consider myself a pretty quiet and calm person all the time, but just like everyone else, I sometimes can lose my mind too.  Current law requires jury to assess whether the evidence could prove a "reasonable man" could be provoked, I think that's pretty much about right - no person at his/her right mind yell to others "come and kill me", however, imagine if one constantly abuses both physically and verbally, overpowered you,  and protection order does not work, are you still feeling confident that you won't lose your mind?

The defence in the Weatherston case, did not only argue the provocation, but also by paint Weatherston as a person with mental problems. This could be a even stronger arguement, however, 200+ cuts clearly do not qualify as a man who  temporarily lost self control, and that did not pass the jury.

In the interview, Mr Xue, now resides in Mt Eden Prison waiting for the sentencing, still insists his innocence and  believes someone else killed his wife, Anan Liu. During the interview he described the NZ police as "stupid" and "inefficient" for the obvious reason, which I kind of agree.

There was a lengthy conversation on His life with Anan Liu.  Xue  insists that he loved Anan Liu, and thinks she is still alive and dreamt her a lot even after he was arrested.

However, one specific part caught my attention - Xue mentioned an incident where he "accidentally"  threw a cellphone at her caused her nose to bleed. Liu immediately fled and reported to the police from her neighbour's house.  Xue "hated" what she did because he thinks that was "nothing big", and she lied to the police saying Xue abused her frequently. Mr Xue says "it happens in Chinese families everyday", and New Zealand "over-protected" women's rights.

What do you think? I know what I think, now I really don't have any sympathy left for him.

The rest of the conversation included details of his life in U.S. and in the cell, check the Chinese script if you are interested. I cannot translate the whole article due to copyright restrictions.

Yes, they are copyright terrorists,  I have no doubt about that, let's  just see what they want:

RIANZ instead wants users to be required to provide sufficient evidence as to why they believe the alleged infringement didn’t occur via the internet account in question and/or why there is no copyright infringement of the file being downloaded.

Who's accusing who? Why should users prove they are innocent when they are accused by others?

RIANZ opposes having to pay for processing copyright infringement notices and indemnifying ISPs for any costs and liabilities.

So it's not all right when others download musics for free, but it's all right to have others to work for you for free?

Third, RIANZ does not want the notices sent out to users accused of infringement to include evidence that would be admissible in court.

You know this is simply amazing. This is not just guilt upon accusation, it's guilt upon accusation with absolutely with no evidence to back it up. Even the murders have a chance to see the evidence used to against them, but Internet users don't get this right.

Furthermore, RIANZ says its evidence is “highly reliable, well-tested and accepted worldwide”.

This is not the point. The point is, download activities don't mean that download is an infringement of copyright, in many cases, it's legal to download materials, like using downloaded materials as a backup of a disc I already own.

Yes they are right holders, and I do respect their copyright, but if they just want to keep abusing people like this, I'll have no sympathy for them at all.

protest against s92a, how sites looked like this morning(click for full image, coypright:cc-by Creative Freedom Foundation).

UPDATE: It worked. About 4pm today the government has announced that it will delay the implementation of s92a til end of march. If there's still no agreement at that time then the act will be suspended.

Today many New Zealand sites, mostly blogs, but also some well known NZ sites like throng and scoop, have voluntarily blacked out their sites, cut access to all content on their sites to protest the to be effective Section 92A of the copyright act.

This kind of Internet protest is quite rare in NZ, especially when you consider the fact that political blogs from across the political specturm, from Act supporter to Green supporter have all joined this protest. Those people usually disagree with each other on everything, but in this instance, they had come together. It just shows you how deeply unpopular this S92A thing is among the people who really understand the Internet.

And no, those people are not youngsters who are just protesting because they will soon unable to illegally download pirated materials.  I think it's bit sad that in some people's mind Internet is merely a place for email and news. Internet in my opinion, it is fast becoming another life necessity, part of people's basic right. It's like road, we, including criminals, all have the right to use public road, but you don't expect Ministry of Transport to police road users to see who's using the road network for illegal activities?

And National cannot get away with this. Yes it was passed under the previous government back in 2008, however, both Labour and National supported this law, and I quote from parliamentary record, Christopher Finlayson(National):

The Minister [Judith Tizard] knows, and I certainly know, that we have all had approaches from various commercial entities ...

I didn't  fake anything nor took it out of context, this is not kidding. See what our politicians have become.

Well, one week to go, try to enjoy the freedom while it lasts.

Yes; I respond by saying that I am mindful of the concerns that have been expressed by the public in relation to this provision coming into force. As the member will be aware, industry representatives are currently working on a code of practice to help implement this law, which was passed by the previous Labour Government.

For me, this means that the government is not going to delay the implementation or abolish 92A, but rather leave the job of fixing problems to the "Code of Practice".

I talked about that "Code of  Practice" before, I was quite happy on the draft version but that code is not in concrete yet. It is still open to public submission so to copyright holder submissions as well. This submission is now far more important than blackout your facebook page or write a letter to your local MP. I'm preparing my own submission.

I also checked responses from ISPs, here are the  extracts:

Orcon:

There will be a fee for rights holders lodging infringement notices to offset the work that we will have to undertake in order to process the alleged infringement.  There will be no additional fees or charges for customers.

I hope Orcon charges them a good price. ISPs shouldn't get abused by copyright terrorists as well. I also think ISPs should cut the internet of any copyright holder who have made 3 false accusations  - it's more than fair.

Telecom New Zealand (via twitter):

We recognise the importance of protecting individuals' copyright. However we don't believe #s92 in its current form is the best solution.

I certainly agree, I'm not endorsing piracy, but this society should not giving up its liberty and undermining its justice system to protect the profits of some.

Vodafone didn't got a lot to say, but they already finished the work on the format of infringement notice(PDF).

I'll keep you updated. I can't tell the full effect of s92a at the moment, but believe me, this thing is not going to work -for real and serious infringer, there are plenty of ways to get around this law  -  I removed the way to get around the S92A here as I realise that I'm attracting real infringers here.

I'm not an expert on copyright issues, but thanks to Wikipedia, anyone who regularly contributes to it should understand a fair amount of copyright laws.

Despite of being a "teen", I'm not anti-copyright, instead, I respected copyright whenever I can. I think copyright protection is very important for our society today to progress as it encourages originality and creativity. Therefore every time I want to use external materials for blog, I  make sure that I only use free materials (public domain, Creative Commons) or apply the fair use policy.

But the problem is, although I did my best and tried to respect copyright, I feel that no copyright owners, especially the big ones, respected me for being a good citizen. In fact, in my eyes copyright organisations like MPAA and RIAA  are more like "copyright terrorists" now. They abuse their powers as a copyright owner, pointlessly terrorise people so they can earn just that extra bit of income.

There's a classic case on copyright terrorists in action in UK, I cannot find the exact source at the moment but I have no problem to recall the details . A copyright group accuses workers in a vehicle workshop of infringing their copyright, because workers listened to radio stations while they work, and that, in a sense, is a "public display".

Copyright terrorists worldwide also tried to demonise legitimate tools and file shares. P2P is a classic example, as a tool, it is not illegal, it is the share of copyright materials that is illegal(not under all circumstances).

Copyright terrorists won't tell you that sometimes it is legal to download copyrighted materials. In many countries, if you own a music disc, it is actually legal to download a second copy from the internet as your back up. And there's also no problem to download a TV series if it is also available to you via your local TV stations - it's no different than recording the programme from your TV, it only becomes illegal when you distribute the materials for commercial purposes.

Back to the topic then, what section 92A is about?Here's that piece of meat（just 92A, but 92a - c are all relevant, see pdf here.)

92A Internet service provider must have policy for terminating accounts of repeat infringers

“(1) An Internet service provider must adopt and reasonably implement a policy that provides for termination, in appropriate circumstances, of the account with that Internet service provider of a repeat infringer.

“(2) In subsection (1), repeat infringer means a person who repeatedly infringes the copyright in a work by using 1 or more of the Internet services of the Internet service provider to do restricted act without the consent of the copyright owner.

So how do the copyright terrorists get to know who's downloading their copyrighted material? I don't expect ISPs to monitor internet traffic because that would be too costly to any ISP. Copyright terrorists will depend on themselves to find out what you are doing.

In a P2P network you need to disclose your IP address in order to get others share what they've downloaded to you, so there should be no problem for anyone to see what your IP address is downloading or uploading. However, as I said, just being a part of a P2P network doesn't necessarily mean you are bad. So will the copyright terrorists make sure your download is illegal before they send the request to cut your Internet? Yeah right.

Not to mention that quite a lot of people's computers are infected with trojans, viruses and malwares. Sometimes these nasties download stuffs without your knowledge.

The law provides a mechanism that allows copyright terrorists to cut your internet connection without the need  to prove you guilty, in fact, you have to clear yourself in order to get your internet restored - where's the principle of innocent till proven guilty?

In that sense, I regard this new section of the copyright law as a great threat to the funding principle of our justice system. Copyright terrorists will abuse this new law for sure.

As an Internet user, I think every one should start to worry about this section 92A thing and do something right now.Yes there are piracies, but most pirates are ordinary people like you and me who cannot do much harm to our society, and big film makers and Microsoft survived with them;  now what we are facing is copyright terrorists trying to abuse their power as copyright owners, they use lawyers, political powers to invade our privacy, punish us without any kind of trial.

Who is the lesser of two evils? Simple.

Xue Nai Yin's Lawyer, is seeking a bail for his client. It's not because Xue paid him enough money so the lawyer worked hard to try to get him out, it's exactly the opposite   - Xue's run out of money, his lawyer needs to get him out so he can work and pay for the fees.

See.

However, I was expecting the name of the kidnapper being released today, but instead, the name suppression of the accused was extended to 4th August. It's a subject of huge public interest, well, at least most Chinese people I know are eager to find out the name of that guy.

Compare with other countries like America or Canada, Chinese in New Zealand is a small community, so if that real estate agent did his job well, it is likely that quite a lot of us may meet him before or knew him pretty well.

I hope the court got a good reason for the name suppression. At least now it seems that the rumours will keep flying around for another week or two. before we know the kidnapper's name.

----------------

IUPDATE: I just obtained the personal details of the accused, including the name. However, as the suppression is still in place, I'm unable to publish all details here.

All I can say is, this case is not as simple as it may looks like.

However, the court also granted him name supression so we still don't know much about him.

But as New Zealand Herald reported today, this man was a real estate agent. If that's true then it's not that difficult to figure out his motive to kidnap Xin Xin. Keep in mind that Cina's both parents work in the property development business.

Quite a lot of us regard real estate agents as "some kind of evil". I think this case may just another splendid example which could be used to illustrates this point.

Asians were targeted in South Auckland, but now this really starts to worry me.

The abductor was masked and there was no other known witness apart from the girl's 8 years old cousin.

However, it doesn't look like the usual "gangsters" who just want some quick cash - no ransom demand, or any other kind of news regarding the girl have been made by the abductor  at all.

Ma's home is located off the main street in a new subdivision, where there is very little traffic normally; so it is quite unlikely that the abduction/kidnap is a random action. The family must been targeted for a long time.

I'll be closely monitoring the media (and the Chinese ones) in the following days.

I did not go to protest. I do not like any protest, political group and other stuffs that is racially divided, especially on crime, which is an issue that concerns every single person of the community regardless of their ethnicity, so limit the range to just "Asians" will likely to make other people feel "it's non of our business."

Also I'm quite interested about the organiser Peter Low - my gut feeling tells me he's more than just a boat building businessman from Singapore. I'll run my own sort of background check and see if there is anything interesting pop up.

It's just a gut feeling, though.

I personally support tougher sentencing(except capital punishment), but the trend of setting up vigilante groups really worries me that the movement against crime has just gone out of course.

The suggestion of using triads to combat crime gathered considerable amount of support from Chinese community, although it's very likely a misinterpretation of what Mr Low said.

I hope this will never happen in New Zealand.

However, it is in my opinion that any vigilante groups not controlled by the government will eventually become another style of mobs and gangs.

I believe citizens has the right to take the law into their own hands - when they are personally in danger, which we call this "self defence".

But not anything beyond that.

A vigilante group without proper control is to undermining the authority of the police. This will encourage use of  excessive violence to criminals, but most importantly, to residents of the area - well unless the group runs their own jail, which is quite unlikely.

Police and Law  may not be right all the time and lock up a wrong guy, so does the vigilante group. What if the group has beaten up a wrong guy?

Vigilante action itself is not a bad thing, especially when the crime is out of control it might be the last resort to combat the crime. However, it has to be properly controlled and regulated by law, otherwise it's a huge risk to allow citizens take the law into their own hands.

If residents feel the urgent need to have such a group, it's better to found the group in the form of a security company.

I think it is still better to put a stop on this. However, the government just cannot say "stop" to stop vigilante actions - the best way to prevent citizens take the law into their own hands, is to reduce the crime level in South Auckland - there's no point to have a vigilante group if South Auckland is a  peaceful, crime free area.

However, I have no reason to panic.

If my memory serves me right, the crime rate have been gradually decreasing since the abolishment of capital punishment.

A report by New Zealand Police [PDF]showed that the homicide case number decreased in last few years, despite the population increasing.

So, please don't panic when bad things happened together. South Auckland is more like a localised problem, it should not be a nationwide panic.

Tough laws can solve crime problems in short term, but has little effect for reducing the crime in long term.

I'm very glad that people yelling on the Internet won't have a chance to actually run the country - New Zealand already has one of the world's highest incarceration rate, keep throwing people in the jail is not expected to be effective.

Jail is used to keep bad eggs away so make the rest of us safe, not the place to dump and punish the so-so ones.

Most serious offenders started his life with very little thing: wag schools, tag, car theft, burglar ... then leads on to the "bigger" job.

The problem about our system is that, the punishment for those small things can hardly be called a punishment. People won't learn if they can get away with their small offences, and then leads to the bigger ones.

What I suggest is to make those people really hurt, not just physically. Charged with a small offence like stealing is a very shameful thing back in China, those people usually hide his "shameful" past.

But here, people can tell me that he "had problems" with the police with very little hesitation.Our attitude, especially those related or close to the offenders, are too soft to make them realise that they have done anything wrong.

Huge amount of effort and time is required to change educate those with below average income and poorly educated and change their mind, but things don't just happen overnight.

For the shorter term result, tough law is still the best way to go. However, this is quite unlikely to happen as long as the Jail still looks more like the Hilton Hotel.

Taxpayers pay at least $40,000(should be much higher than this, I cannot remember) to keep an criminal stay in jail.

I have heard a very creative idea from someone, suggests that we can export those people to serve jail sentences elsewhere like Indonesia, Thailand, or China. It will cost much less and the jails there are more closer to the hell rather than the Hilton Hotel.

However, this is unlikely to happen because of the human rights issues.

What people should really realise is that, when a criminal committed an offence to someone else, he/she automatically gives up some of his/her own human rights.

Sure the jailed still have the right to food and warmth, but using floor heating system rather than an extra layer of quilt is just sending the wrong message to those people.

At least that's what a Taupo man who assaulted an Asian teenager gets for his home detention.

Another thing this man enjoyed at home is to post racist messages online, and arrange meetings with other scums of his kind.

I don't know much about this kind soft sentencing. However, one thing I'm sure is, court sentence is about punishment for the offenders so they would learn not to do the same thing again by live with the consequences. However, I just cannot see how this man is punished for what he did? He can enjoy nearly every freemen, good citizens like you and me can enjoy at home, and you call that a punishment?

Soft sentencing is only for non-violent crimes and first time offender, not the method of save money on building more prisons. Hope Mr Key would have a better plan on those scums.