Upcoming legislation will allow copyright holders to request via court order that ISPs block websites providing access to illegal copies of their content. Having been approved for introduction into Parliament, it’s being reported that the Bill will be tabled shortly.
iTNews is reporting the Copyright Amendment (Online Infringement) Bill may be introduced today or tomorrow, in an effort to get it approved this week. Today’s daily program has data retention being discussed and interrupted at 2pm, so we’ll be watching tomorrow closely.
Some observers have labelled the plan’s site-blocking provisions as a spiritual return of the so-called internet filter once proposed by a previous Labor government. The anti-piracy plan comes two and a half years after Stephen Conroy’s internet filter was defeated and labelled as censorship, yet here we are again. According to the Pirate Party, the “Government appears to have declared ‘total war’ on the Internet and everyone that knows how it works.”
That war will apparently be full of lost battles, though — as iTNews points out, even Malcolm Turnbull conceded that sites could simply move, evading the block. That’s just one way among many for Australians to access blocked sites, and not even the easiest.
It appears as though the industry hasn’t been consulted on the bill that would allow content owners the ability to order ISPs to block content from their customers, and key players haven’t seen the text of the bill.
Stay tuned for more news which we expect will come to light in the next few days.
[ITNews]