A new bill could put a serious dampener on the viewing habits of Australians who are using overseas websites and services to pirate shows and movies.

If it passes parliament, the Copyright Amendment (Online Infringement) Bill — more popularly known as the site-blocking bill — will make Australian Internet service providers (ISPs) block overseas websites that facilitate copyright infringement. The legislation has been the subject of a public hearing in Sydney on Friday.

The bill would allow film, television and music rights holders to apply to the Federal Court for an injunction requiring an ISP to block overseas websites whose "primary purpose" is piracy. An ISP would then take "reasonable steps" to disable access to the website for Australian Internet users.

At the hearing, most present representatives of the telecommunication and Internet industries tacitly supported a website blocking bill, but they also raised concerns about serious deficiencies in the legislation. Their main criticisms centred on the vagueness of terms used by the bill, the cost of implementation and the law's potentially negative impact on Australia's Internet.

"We're concerned that ad hoc legislative changes to address specific issues such as site blocking are at odds with good policy making," Laurie Patton, CEO of Internet Society of Australia, told the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee. "They risk unintended consequences that can impact on the trust and efficiency that underpin the Internet."

The costs are too high

Concerns have been raised that the cost of implementing and enforcing the bill would unfairly fall on ISPs and there is a high chance of costs being passed on to consumers. Patton told the committee the cost of the bill to ISPs would be significant, disproportionate and unjustifiable.

The government has estimated the cost of compliance to ISPs would be A$130,825 per year. "We would like to see the bill make it clear that rights holders are to bear an ISP's legal costs when an injunction is sought," John Stanton, CEO of the Communications Alliance, said.

When the government first raised the bill's proposition in 2014, he pointed out, it explicitly said rights holders would have to meet the costs of enforcing an injunction. "Along the way, somehow, that commitment has disappeared from the legislation," Stanton said. "We'd like to see it reinstated."

A blunt instrument

Many industry representatives expressed concerns on Friday about the bill's possible unintended consequences. They were particularly concerned a site-blocking order under the legislation could inadvertently take legitimate websites offline.

"There's a clear need to make sure appropriate checks are undertaken before an order is made, to make sure the site being blocked is that which was intended to be blocked," Stanton said. As a result of the targeting of an infringing website, he suggested, websites that are legitimate but housed under the same domain name could be blocked for Australians.

As an example, Stanton and others referred to a 2013 incident, when the Australian Securities and Investments Commission's attempt to take one site offline accidentally blocked 250,000 legitimate sites.

The Communications Alliance also called for the method of blocking a site to be left to the discretion of the ISP. "There are several different methods of blocking sites," Stanton said. "They range as to the granularity and the cost to the ISP in putting them in place."

"This bill in its current form doesn't have enough specificity or protections," Carolyn Dalton said, representing the Digital Industry Association of Australia (AIMIA). "If we're going to implement such a serious remedy as site blocking, we need to make it as targeted and appropriate as possible."

Overly-vague language

There are serious concerns key terms in the bill are undefined or vague, industry groups told the committee, which makes it difficult to assess the potential impact of the bill on Australia's Internet.

Most importantly, the term "online location" — which is at the heart of the legislation — remains undefined, Stanton pointed out. Nor is "online location" a commonly used term in Internet parlance, with possible definitions including the location of a website, cloud storage, or virtual private networks (VPNs). Given there is serious confusion about whether digital services like VPNs ought to be captured by the bill, he suggested, the lack of clarity is apparent.

It was also suggested the legislation's use of "overseas websites," to describe the source of the pirated content, is not sufficiently specific.

"It should be made explicit that these are websites that are located and operated by persons outside Australia," Stanton said. Many Australian websites are hosted overseas, but as the bill currently stands, there's ambiguity over whether or not that makes them an overseas website for the purposes of the bill, and thus able to be blocked.

More consultation required

The telecommunication and Internet industry advocates called for the government to undertake further expert consultation on the bill.

"This is an extraordinarily blunt instrument that won't work in the way the government hopes it will work," Stanton said. "But it could cause all sorts of strife."