The Australian Government has introduced a bill that allows copyright holders, via a court order, to force ISPs to block access to ‘pirate’ web sites.

Communications Minister Malcom Turnbull today introduced the Copyright Amendment (Online Infringement) Bill 2015. It is the first reading in the lower house – expect more to come.

"Existing copyright law is not adequate to deter a specific type of infringing activity, which is the facilitation of the online infringement of copyright owners' content... by online operators. There are a number of foreign-based online locations that disseminate large amounts of infringing content to Australian Internet users,” Minister Turnbull said.

The new measure applies only to sites hosted outside of Australia. An injunction will be granted where the "online location infringes, or facilitates an infringement of" a party's copyright.

ISPs will not be liable for any costs unless they challenge the block. However, the bill's explanatory memorandum says implementing the law's requirements will incur an annual estimated cost of $130,825 for each ISP.

Simon Bush, head of the Australian Home Entertainment Distributors Association, which represents the $1 billion Australian film and TV home entertainment industry, confirmed the bill had been delayed because of a number of unintended consequences in the drafting.

UK and International positions

UK ISPs must now blocks sites – over 110 to date. Because the ISPs have given up on defending their position in court, it is now a mere formality for copyright holders to have a pirate site banned. However, the blocking efforts are not without cost. Leaked information previously revealed that even an unopposed application for a blocking order costs copyright holders around £14,000 per website. This brings the total costs of the requesting parties well over a million pounds.

If you are interested in which sites are blocked in the UK go here.

Having no cap allows copyright holders carte blanch – as happened in India where one judge agreed to block 472 sites alone. Yes that has been addressed but not before Google was blocked too.

Sites like The Pirate Bay have been blocked yet it is successfully circumventing the site blocking techniques UK ISPs are required to implement. It ingrtedly ntersted in which sites are blocked in teh h UK go to mendment s using Cloudflare, a site which offers distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack protection. Following a deployment on The Pirate Bay’s default and secure https domain, UK ISP customers are reportedly getting through with no problems.

And back to Australia (opinion)



iTWire does not condone or support piracy – it too creates original work and must pay journalists for their work. But like many - in the know - it feels that the issue should be more around fixing fair and reasonable distribution instead of the geoblocking and price gouging allowed now.



What I find interesting is three things.

First, there are no limits to the number of sites a copyright holder can request to be blocked. Frankly, it will be thousands – not hundreds of sites. It appears that the ISP’s wear the cost – ‘estimated to be $130,825 per ISP.'

Second, it does not get around the legal use of virtual private networks (VPN) to access international sites. Typically, a VPN provider will have worldwide points of presence and those countries are not subject to Australian law. A judge could block VPN providers too!

And finally, IP address blocking can have major consequences for others that happen to use a blocked server.

There will be much more to come on this issue.

