Published on the 24/06/2015 | Written by Beverley Head
Rights holders which believe that their copyright is being infringed by offshore pirates will in the future be able have access to that site blocked by Australian internet service providers…
The Copyright Amendment (Online Infringement) Bill 2015 was passed by the Senate this week despite spirited objections from some Senators who claimed it was heavy handed and clumsily drafted. The passage of the legislation was however widely anticipated following approval earlier this month from the Senate Standing Committee.
According to the Minister for Communications, Malcolm Turnbull, who has championed the bill, the law will be an effective tool for rights holders to respond to commercial scale infringements on websites operated outside of Australia. Access to the websites hosting infringing material can be blocked by Internet Service Providers without the rights holder needing to establish any fault on the part of the ISP, and requires only a request for blocking to be made to, and approved by, the Federal Court.
For ISPs the legislation is not without cost – the Government has estimated that it will cost them around $130,000 a year to comply with orders.
Reaction has been mixed.
Ian Robertson, managing partner of law firm Holding Redlich, welcomed the new law saying that piracy was a major problem in Australia. “While it is easy to portray this as a David and Goliath battle, piracy impacts everyone who makes a living from copyrighted materials so the legislation is very desirable.”
Murray St Leger, CEO of the The Copyright Agency Viscopy meanwhile stressed that it was not just online movies which were being pirated, but online books, which was making it hard for authors to make a living. “It’s not just the performing arts industries, such as film and music, which are hurt by online theft. In some book genres, online theft is eliminating opportunities for emerging authors to get published in Australia,” he said, adding that the average annual income for authors in Australia has dropped from $23,000 a year in 2001 to just $11,100 in 2008.
The Australasian Performing Right Association and the Australasian Mechanical Copyright Owners Society have also welcomed the new legislation, saying that it will help block access to sites such as The Pirate Bay and Kickass Torrents.
Not everyone was so supportive however. Greens Senator Scott Ludlam who opposed the legislation described it as “lazy and dangerous” warning that the drafting of the legislation could open the way for scope creep and lead to attempts to block access to virtual private networks in the future.
Brendan Ritchie, CEO of A/NZ ISP DTS said that given the nature of the legislation which does not require fault to be found with the ISPs, he expected that there would be a “flood of applications made very quickly.” However he cautioned that the law might not always prove effective.
“What we have seen with the New Zealand experience is that the heaviest users of these sites will be the savviest and they will get around this using virtual private networks.”
