The Deepfake Digital Harm and Exploitation Bill is one of the more sensible pieces of legislation to come before Parliament in some time. It does one thing, and it does it well. It should pass. What should not pass — and what should not be smuggled in on its back — is the far larger regulatory apparatus that InternetNZ has used its submission to promote.
The Bill gets it right
Laura McClure’s member’s bill is narrow by design. It amends the Crimes Act 1961 and the Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015 to extend the definition of an “intimate visual recording” so that it captures images that have been created, synthesised, or altered without consent — not only the genuine recordings the law was written for in an earlier technological age. That is the whole of it. The bill does not reach into satire, art, or the many legitimate uses of generative tools. It targets a specific, identifiable behaviour: taking a real person’s likeness and fabricating sexually explicit material of them without their consent.
The case for that change is overwhelming, and InternetNZ sets it out fairly. Non-consensual sexual deepfakes are being produced at industrial scale, they overwhelmingly target women and girls, and the existing law contains a gap that lets offenders argue the material isn’t “real.”
Closing that gap is a clean, proportionate, conduct-focused fix. It is worth noting that the bill comes from ACT — a party with no appetite for content regulation — precisely because it regulates behaviour, not speech. You can be a thoroughgoing sceptic of internet regulation and still support this bill without contradiction. I do, and so, sensibly, does InternetNZ.
InternetNZ’s narrower suggestion — that the definition also capture audio deepfakes, in line with recent New South Wales law — is reasonable and within the spirit of the bill.
Voice cloning can be just as intimate and just as damaging, and adding it keeps the reform technology-neutral. If the select committee adopts one of InternetNZ’s recommendations, it should be that one.
Then the submission changes the subject
Having supported a tightly drawn criminal-law amendment, InternetNZ then asks for something of an entirely different order. Recommendations three and four call for the establishment of “an independent digital regulator responsible for mitigating online harm,” mandated to run a comprehensive national digital-education programme.
The submission wants this regulator armed with “real-time audit powers,” the ability to “enforce dynamic compliance,” to drive “safety by design,” and to impose industry standards when industry “cannot or will not” produce satisfactory codes itself.
This is not a refinement of the deepfake bill. It is a different policy, of vastly greater scope, attached to a bill that has nothing to say about it.
It is vague. The submission never defines what “online harm” the regulator would actually police, beyond gesturing at a sprawling catalogue — violent extremism, child sexual abuse material, “mis- and disinformation,” “dangerous and discriminatory speech (including hate speech),” encouragement of self-harm, cyberbullying.
Some of these are already serious crimes. Others — “misinformation,” “discriminatory speech” — are contested categories with no settled legal meaning, precisely the kind of lawful-but-disliked content that any liberal democracy should be nervous about handing to a state body to adjudicate.
The submission supplies no thresholds, no scope, no description of the regulator’s coercive powers, no appeal rights, no boundary between the harmful and the merely offensive.
What it supplies instead is a string of consultant’s phrases — “dynamic,” “technologically precise,” “future-proofing,” “safety by design” — that sound like governance and commit to nothing. A regulator whose remit cannot be stated in a sentence is a regulator whose remit is whatever its officials later decide it is.
It is the wrong venue. A select committee considering a definitional amendment to two existing Acts is not the place to design a national content regulator. T
hat is a generational decision about the relationship between the state and online speech, and it deserves its own legislation, its own regulatory impact analysis, its own consultation, and its own democratic mandate.
Bolting it onto a deepfake bill is an attempt to win by adjacency what could not be won on the merits.
We have been here twice already
The most striking thing about InternetNZ’s proposal is how familiar it is. New Zealand has now twice contemplated exactly this kind of architecture, and twice arrived at the opposite conclusion.
The Department of Internal Affairs’ Safer Online Services and Media Platforms review, released in 2023, proposed precisely what InternetNZ is asking for again: a new independent regulator and enforceable codes of practice covering online and traditional media alike.
It was shelved in 2024 after the government of the day judged it not a priority, and after a wave of submissions raised exactly the concern InternetNZ’s proposal invites — that a powerful, loosely bounded regulator would chill lawful expression and let the state reach into content that is upsetting but not illegal.
Then came the Ministry for Culture and Heritage’s Media Reform discussion document of February 2025, which floated platform-neutral, “system-level” regulation of professional media and a revised standards regulator.
And the direction of travel since has been unmistakable: in 2026 the government is dismantling the Broadcasting Standards Authority in favour of industry self-regulation, with the responsible minister stating plainly that going “further and further into social media regulation” is something the government is “just not in favour of.”
In other words, InternetNZ is reaching back for a model that officials have examined closely, consulted on at length, and set down — not once, but repeatedly. Re-litigating that settled debate through a deepfake submission does not make the case any stronger. It simply hopes nobody will notice it is the same case.
What happened to the free and open internet?
InternetNZ describes itself as an organisation that campaigns for “a free and open internet.”
It is worth dwelling on how far the submission has drifted from that founding commitment. When the Safer Online Services regulator was on the table, InternetNZ did not warn of the risks to open expression — it endorsed the scheme, calling it a “once-in-a-generation opportunity to make a safer internet.”
Now, presented with a modest criminal-law fix, it has again seized the chance to advocate for a standing regulator with audit powers and the authority to dictate standards to industry.
There is a real tension here, and InternetNZ no longer seems to feel it. “Free and open” and “regulated and restricted” are not the same internet, and you cannot champion both at once simply by attaching the word “safety” to the second.
Safety is the justification offered for almost every expansion of state control over speech; it is exactly the word that should make the open internet’s defenders most alert, not most compliant.
An organisation that holds the .nz domain and speaks with real authority on internet matters ought to be the most reliable voice in the room for proportion, for narrow tailoring, and for keeping the state’s hands off lawful content.
Instead it has become a reliable advocate for the regulator — any regulator — provided the branding is right.
The bill in front of the committee is good law: targeted, proportionate, and aimed squarely at genuine harm. Pass it, add the audio amendment if the drafting allows, and send the digital regulator back where it has twice already been sent.
If InternetNZ wants to argue for a sweeping new content regulator, let it do so openly, in its own forum, on its own merits — and let it first explain how that ambition can be reconciled with the free and open internet it was created to defend.
David Harvey is a former District Court Judge and Mastermind champion, as well as an award winning writer who blogs at the substack site A Halflings View - Where this article was sourced
The case for that change is overwhelming, and InternetNZ sets it out fairly. Non-consensual sexual deepfakes are being produced at industrial scale, they overwhelmingly target women and girls, and the existing law contains a gap that lets offenders argue the material isn’t “real.”
Closing that gap is a clean, proportionate, conduct-focused fix. It is worth noting that the bill comes from ACT — a party with no appetite for content regulation — precisely because it regulates behaviour, not speech. You can be a thoroughgoing sceptic of internet regulation and still support this bill without contradiction. I do, and so, sensibly, does InternetNZ.
InternetNZ’s narrower suggestion — that the definition also capture audio deepfakes, in line with recent New South Wales law — is reasonable and within the spirit of the bill.
Voice cloning can be just as intimate and just as damaging, and adding it keeps the reform technology-neutral. If the select committee adopts one of InternetNZ’s recommendations, it should be that one.
Then the submission changes the subject
Having supported a tightly drawn criminal-law amendment, InternetNZ then asks for something of an entirely different order. Recommendations three and four call for the establishment of “an independent digital regulator responsible for mitigating online harm,” mandated to run a comprehensive national digital-education programme.
The submission wants this regulator armed with “real-time audit powers,” the ability to “enforce dynamic compliance,” to drive “safety by design,” and to impose industry standards when industry “cannot or will not” produce satisfactory codes itself.
This is not a refinement of the deepfake bill. It is a different policy, of vastly greater scope, attached to a bill that has nothing to say about it.
It is vague. The submission never defines what “online harm” the regulator would actually police, beyond gesturing at a sprawling catalogue — violent extremism, child sexual abuse material, “mis- and disinformation,” “dangerous and discriminatory speech (including hate speech),” encouragement of self-harm, cyberbullying.
Some of these are already serious crimes. Others — “misinformation,” “discriminatory speech” — are contested categories with no settled legal meaning, precisely the kind of lawful-but-disliked content that any liberal democracy should be nervous about handing to a state body to adjudicate.
The submission supplies no thresholds, no scope, no description of the regulator’s coercive powers, no appeal rights, no boundary between the harmful and the merely offensive.
What it supplies instead is a string of consultant’s phrases — “dynamic,” “technologically precise,” “future-proofing,” “safety by design” — that sound like governance and commit to nothing. A regulator whose remit cannot be stated in a sentence is a regulator whose remit is whatever its officials later decide it is.
It is the wrong venue. A select committee considering a definitional amendment to two existing Acts is not the place to design a national content regulator. T
hat is a generational decision about the relationship between the state and online speech, and it deserves its own legislation, its own regulatory impact analysis, its own consultation, and its own democratic mandate.
Bolting it onto a deepfake bill is an attempt to win by adjacency what could not be won on the merits.
We have been here twice already
The most striking thing about InternetNZ’s proposal is how familiar it is. New Zealand has now twice contemplated exactly this kind of architecture, and twice arrived at the opposite conclusion.
The Department of Internal Affairs’ Safer Online Services and Media Platforms review, released in 2023, proposed precisely what InternetNZ is asking for again: a new independent regulator and enforceable codes of practice covering online and traditional media alike.
It was shelved in 2024 after the government of the day judged it not a priority, and after a wave of submissions raised exactly the concern InternetNZ’s proposal invites — that a powerful, loosely bounded regulator would chill lawful expression and let the state reach into content that is upsetting but not illegal.
Then came the Ministry for Culture and Heritage’s Media Reform discussion document of February 2025, which floated platform-neutral, “system-level” regulation of professional media and a revised standards regulator.
And the direction of travel since has been unmistakable: in 2026 the government is dismantling the Broadcasting Standards Authority in favour of industry self-regulation, with the responsible minister stating plainly that going “further and further into social media regulation” is something the government is “just not in favour of.”
In other words, InternetNZ is reaching back for a model that officials have examined closely, consulted on at length, and set down — not once, but repeatedly. Re-litigating that settled debate through a deepfake submission does not make the case any stronger. It simply hopes nobody will notice it is the same case.
What happened to the free and open internet?
InternetNZ describes itself as an organisation that campaigns for “a free and open internet.”
It is worth dwelling on how far the submission has drifted from that founding commitment. When the Safer Online Services regulator was on the table, InternetNZ did not warn of the risks to open expression — it endorsed the scheme, calling it a “once-in-a-generation opportunity to make a safer internet.”
Now, presented with a modest criminal-law fix, it has again seized the chance to advocate for a standing regulator with audit powers and the authority to dictate standards to industry.
There is a real tension here, and InternetNZ no longer seems to feel it. “Free and open” and “regulated and restricted” are not the same internet, and you cannot champion both at once simply by attaching the word “safety” to the second.
Safety is the justification offered for almost every expansion of state control over speech; it is exactly the word that should make the open internet’s defenders most alert, not most compliant.
An organisation that holds the .nz domain and speaks with real authority on internet matters ought to be the most reliable voice in the room for proportion, for narrow tailoring, and for keeping the state’s hands off lawful content.
Instead it has become a reliable advocate for the regulator — any regulator — provided the branding is right.
The bill in front of the committee is good law: targeted, proportionate, and aimed squarely at genuine harm. Pass it, add the audio amendment if the drafting allows, and send the digital regulator back where it has twice already been sent.
If InternetNZ wants to argue for a sweeping new content regulator, let it do so openly, in its own forum, on its own merits — and let it first explain how that ambition can be reconciled with the free and open internet it was created to defend.
David Harvey is a former District Court Judge and Mastermind champion, as well as an award winning writer who blogs at the substack site A Halflings View - Where this article was sourced
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