Laws to block ’pirate’ sites passed

The Federal Government has passed a draft law which blocks ‘pirate’ sites from Australia.

The new law means rights holders, such as artists, labels or music publishers, can apply for a federal court order that will force an ISP to block its customers from accessing an infringing website. The site’s primary purpose must be to infringe copyright or facilitate copyright infringement.

As previously reported by TMN, last week the Senate's Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee released its report into the Copyright Amendment (Online Infringement) Bill 2015, AKA the anti-piracy code. The Government won bi-partisan support for the measures presented in the Bill in the lower house overnight, following a two-hour debate.

The Committees recommendation to " post a landing page at the blocked online location, specifying that the relevant online location has been blocked by a court order and outlining details of that order", will be considered by the Government.

The Government has also agreed to consider the committee’s recommendation that the ISP should not be liable for any costs of court proceedings, “unless it chose to appear and take part in the proceedings.”

The new laws won’t apply to VPNs (virtual private networks). Until last year an estimated 684,000 Australians were using VPNs to get cheaper overseas content, bypass geoblocks and access legitimate video-streaming sites like Hulu, which is blocked in Australia.

Shadow Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus voiced his concern last night for copyright holders. The Government has not responded to the Australian Law Reform Commission’s (ALRC) report on copyright in the digital economy. Dreyfus recommended the Government respond to the report and the House Standing Committee on Infrastructure and Communications’ inquiry into IT Pricing by September 17. 

The Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN) described the site blocking described as “an expensive game of whack-a-mole”.

Senator Scott Ludlam of the Australian Greens said the Bill was the “latest in a long line of misguided attempts by the government to monitor, control and censor the Internet.”

A review of the law will be conducted in 18 months time.

"If this does not work as well as we liked, we'll look at it again," said Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull last night.