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Australia May Introduce Site Blocking To Prevent Copyright Infringement

Posted by Soulskill on from the lucrative-lobbying dept.

Bismillah writes: The conservative Coalition government in Australia is on the verge of introducing legislation requiring ISPs to block sites alleged of copyright infringement. Details of the bill have not yet been published, but it is expected to be sent to Parliament this week.

6 of 85 comments (clear)

  1. BitTorrent Trackers don't infringe copyright by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Isn't that the entire point? They just help people find other people who are infringing copyright.
     
    The first lawyer with a pair of balls is going to have a field day with this.

    1. Re:BitTorrent Trackers don't infringe copyright by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      From TFS... The conservative Coalition government in Australia is on the verge of introducing legislation requiring ISPs to block sites alleged of copyright infringement.

      A mere accusation appears to be enough to get a site blocked.

    2. Re:BitTorrent Trackers don't infringe copyright by gweihir · · Score: 1, Insightful

      In these situations, the law is not about reality or what works or not. What these cretins are trying to do is redefine reality. Of courser, reality could not care less.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  2. True story by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I was having breakfast at my local cafe w/ my partner last weekend, next to us a group of 4 normal aussies sit down at the table and after ordering start talking about this situation.

    They clearly weren't in IT, not overly tech literate, and in fact like most typical aussies were pretty "anti-big-brother" by the sounds of it... However while discussing this topic of 3 strikes laws and nation-wide blocking of sites, etc - one of them brought up the concept of VPNs and how they could be used to work around all of this for $5-$10 a month, seemingly a tech literate friend must have told them about it - and now it's spreading to his friends via word of mouth.

    A lot of people here are probably already using VPNs for work or to avoid surveillance, and some of you might think that this is the solution to the problem but "most people" won't know about VPNs or know how to set it up.

    But the fact of the matter, where there's a will there's a way, and word of mouth is very effective at spreading information to all types of people from all walks of life - no matter how hard the government try, every day ordinary australians - be they house wives, kids, grandparents, or the tradie down the road - they're simply going to end up using a VPN to work around this.

    Try as you might Abbott, you can't do shit. I suggest you put our money somewhere worth while, say, into science and education, this thing you don't believe in but manages to thwart everything you've been trying to shove down our throats all this time.

    1. Re:True story by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The thing I find truly infuriating about all this is the moment this passes the senate and actually gets through (which it probably will because we're a bunch of ignorant fools) it will destroy what quality we had left for consume grade internet services. Most of already have to put up with poor quality services off low bandwidth RIM nodes and the lies.

      I really wish we as a people had more say that just voting in the next bunch of dictrators and actually had a say in things that are important to us.

      If copyright infringement is such a problem:

      * go after the site operators
      * shutdown the offending sites
      * educate businesses and industries to "lower" their prices

      My last point is really common sense. If you make it cheap enough and easy enough ordinary folk won't be bothered pirating or infringing upon copyright.

  3. Re:Australian here by thegarbz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The second thing is, the Libs face a hostile senate. The Liberal party are our conservatives BTW. Whilst they can pass it in the lower house, it will fail in the upper house.

    Don't be so sure about that. The only reason Labor didn't introduce a very similar bill last time was they lacked the support of the greens. Fucking over Australia seems to be the only mission that has any kind of bipartisan support by the government.

    The only reason this would get blocked is if Labor stick to their opposition tactic of "block everything to discredit the government". I must say though I do like the situation. I hope we forever stay in a world where the government of the day can't pass bullshit bills.