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Laws to block piracy websites pass in Lower House

Coalition & Labor both support legislation to ban piracy websites hosted overseas.

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Laws banning piracy sites such as The Pirate Bay moved one step closer today after draft legislation was passed in the lower house.

The Coalition and Labor have both supported legislation that would enable rights holders to seek a court injunction forcing ISPs to block access to piracy websites, with a landing page to be pasted on blocked sites. It will only apply to overseas-based websites.

Bi-partisan support means it will pass the Senate, scheduled to be introduced in the upper house tomorrow.

Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the laws will not apply to virtual private networks.

While Labor offered its support for the bill Shadow Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said that the government still wasn’t doing enough to help copyright holders while Greens Co-Deputy Leader Scott Ludlam has said the bill “is the latest in a long line of misguided attempts by the government to monitor, control and censor the Internet” and recommended that the laws not be passed.

Some IP lawyers have also argued that the laws will be effectively unworkable for content owners as pirate site operators could easily move to an alternative location. Content owners would then have to reapply for fresh court orders to block the new location.

But the laws have enjoyed industry support as part of a wider push against copyright piracy.

The laws be reviewed after 18 months.

Source: AAP, CNet, CSO

13 Responses

  1. This is what happens when people make laws about something they don’t understand. I’m still recovering from watching Brandis trying to explain metadata to David Speers on Sky News.

    This legislation will be completely ineffective and is a waste of taxpayer’s money.

  2. Watch out for an explosion in VPNs.

    Maybe they need to get rights holders to air programs and bring movies to local screens and DVD sooner along with more affordable online options for content. Yes I know NetFlix is like 30c a day but the issue is to get the most out of content you need all 3 along with Foxtel so it adds up quickly.

  3. I thought the politicians were supposed to be our representatives. I haven’t noticed any particular uprising by the voting public demanding stricter controls. If they truly represent us it would be open slather. I guess they are called the rights holders because they have all the rights and we have none. The rights holders are not the same people as the content producers. United Artists was originally formed because the “rights holders” treated the actors like they treat us now.

    1. This government only represents the Almighty Dollar – which is controlled by Murdoch and Reinhart et al.

      I can only think of one politician who represents the people. I wish there was more of him

    2. My argument exactly, middledog. It made sense to have territorial rights holders when local distributers had to pay for manufacture and/or shipping of a physical product. It’s a joke now. I also find it crazy for studios to cry poor on one hand but then Jurassic World has generated $574 million in box office receipts. That’s just one film!

      1. Maybe it’s time we got back to distributing locally-made DVDs or Blu-Ray discs of top movies and did away with the restrictive “region-encoding”, and for audio, the CD or the vinyl single or LP. You’d be surprised at how vinyl is still mass-produced in Britain, America and Europe, even today, singles and albums! And they should be sold through the traditional outlets, the good old record shop in the city’s or town’s main shopping street. Having the “physical product” sold in such a way would go some way toward thwarting the pirate websites. The internet has proved, in its way, to be the greatest enemy the music marketers or the movie marketers have ever, or are ever likely to have encountered. The internet needs to be reined in. The only thing relating to a video(DVD or Blu-ray) disc or a music album one should see on the “net” is the image of the album cover or the movie…

  4. This is the most ineffective way to deal with piracy. The UK government tried this years ago, when the ban was implemented the pirate bay was up and running via a proxy site within minutes. The whole idea is a complete waste of time and money and won’t make a lick of difference.

  5. Why not focus their efforts on more productive practices. My suggestions would be forcing rights holders to use or lose their content, having global release dates for TV shows and movies, and making all of this content readily available to purchase online. This kind of behaviour will just drive people to illegal practices.

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