Will Ockenden reported this story on Tuesday, June 23, 2015 12:58:00

ELEANOR HALL: Providers of VPNs or Virtual Private Networks say they're expecting business to boom in coming days, after a bill to block piracy related websites passed the Senate last night.



Labor voted with the Government to pass the law, but Greens and Crossbench Senators are still worried about its reach, expressing concern that VPNs may be targeted under the legislation.



But an overseas based VPN company with millions of users says that if it's blocked in Australia, it'll easily find a way around it.



Will Ockenden explains.



WILL OCKENDEN: It took several hours of debate, but in the end the Copyright Amendment (Online Infringement) Bill passed the Senate, without any amendments, easily.



STEPHEN PARRY: There have been 37 'ayes' and 13 'nos': the question is resolved in the affirmative.



WILL OCKENDEN: The bill passed the House of Representatives last week, which means the legislation will soon officially become law.



It will give the Federal Court powers to order internet service providers to block Australians’ access to piracy-related "online locations" hosted overseas.



But despite the bill's passing, questions remain as to whether or not VPNs, or virtual private networks, could also blocked.



Senator David Leyonhjelm.



DAVID LEYONHJELM: Is there any possibility that the VPN will be injuncted along with the sites that are hosting - that are being accessed via the VPN.



STEPHEN PARRY: The Minister.



CONCETTA FIERRAVANTI-WELLS: Senator Leyonhjelm, I am advised it is the online location that has to satisfy the test.



STEPHEN PARRY: Senator Ludlam.



SCOTT LUDLAM: Minister, online location of what?



CONCETTA FIERRAVANTI-WELLS: I’m advised that it’s an online location that infringes the three provisions that I referred to earlier.



WILL OCKENDEN: Virtual private networks work by creating an encrypted tunnel between the user and the server so that no-one can see what's passing between them.



Companies which provide VPN services are concerned that they could find themselves blocked, but for many, the passage of the bill is also good news.



SHAYNE MCCULLOCH: We've been in business for five years now and it just keeps growing and growing every month.



WILL OCKENDEN: Shayne McCulloch is from a VPN privacy company called VPNSecure, which is currently based in Australia.



He says he doesn't support the passing of the website blocking bill, but anytime a government passes anti-piracy legislation, business booms.



SHAYNE MCCULLOCH: Traffic-wise, it's normally from any country that these discussions are going on and is nominally about 300 to 400 per cent in traffic, and then sign-ups will end up being around 20 to 35 per cent more from that specific country.



WILL OCKENDEN: He says he's recently seen huge spikes in traffic and sign-ups coming from Australian users.



SHAYNE MCCULLOCH: The Dallas Buyers Club, the metadata retention, and I would expect to see over the next couple of weeks the same sort of statistics in regards to this new law.



WILL OCKENDEN: It's a similar story for overseas based CyberGhost VPN, which says it has millions of VPN users.



Because the Australian legislation only targets overseas "online locations", it's companies like CyberGhost which may be targeted by rights holders.



But CyberGhost's chief executive Robert Knapp isn't worried, saying internet traffic always finds its way around a block.



ROBERT KNAPP: We see in general the same that you see in nature if somebody tries to block a river floating - the water finds his way.



WILL OCKENDEN: He says while only a very small subset of users use the service for piracy, if the company does end up being blocked in Australia, it'll find users a way to work around it.



ROBERT KNAPP: They should also then realise with whom they play in the same league. Maybe they do it, maybe they don’t do it, it’s kind of a technical race. So it’s our daily business. They might do it, we will find a way to keep our servers running.



ELEANOR HALL: Robert Knapp, co-founder and CEO of CyberGhost VPN, ending Will Ockenden's report.