Australian Government Outlines Website-Blocking Scheme

angry tapir writes: The Australian government has revealed its (previously mooted) proposed legislation that will allow copyright holders to apply for court orders that will force ISPs to block access to pirate websites. It forms part of a broader Australian crackdown on online copyright infringement, which also includes a warning notice scheme for alleged infringers. They're not the only ones getting on board with website blocking — a judge in Spain ruled that local ISPs must block access to The Pirate Bay.

Comments

Not going to stop determined downloaders

[Kplx138]

After RTFA it's pretty obvious this legislation is only meant to stop lazy downloaders or just inconvenience them, hardcore pirates will no doubt find their work-arounds and keep going on their merry way as always.

I really see this legislation as a bit of tree shaking meant to shoo away all those people who've been downloading copyrighted material because it was so damn easy to do so and there was little to no enforcement of infringement laws. In short the straight up easiness of downloading that latest episode of "A Game of Tits... opps Thrones" isn't going to be as easy as it was.

On a side note there's plenty of free culture out there that can be consumed quite easily; music, videos or whatever. Or you could just go out and make your own damn culture and put it out there for free, screw big business!

Because so much content is made in Aus

[kaptink]

I've never understood why the Aus goverment would care given that almost all the content pirated is from overseas giving no financial benefits to the country. But I guess with the current governments relationship with media mogul Murdock who practically got them elected they must continue dance for the man (reference: image search "lets kick this mob out").

I see this only meaning the goverments popularity (24% in Feb) will continue to slide down while VPN services skyrocket. Sounds like a winning plan.

Re:Because so much content is made in Aus

[Kplx138]

It does affect Australian business in a way because an Australian distributor pays for the right to sell/distribute a tv show or movie in australia. The theory being that a distributor buys the right to distribute a TV/Movie in australia and uses that money to create local content but most of the content is either sport or cooking/renovation shows, which are cheap to make anyway that's why there are so many of them, and any aussie movie made is done so in part with tax payers money. So in the end I can't help feeling that it's all just to prop up distributors who look more like lazy middle men. It's essentially the same reason DVDs have region encoding.

In short, it affect a business which is nothing more then a lazy middle man and contributes very little to Australian culture, lets face it ABC SBS, which are mostly government funded, produce more local content... Funny how the goverment wants to slash their funding

Re:Because so much content is made in Aus

[kaptink]

"Funny how the goverment wants to slash their funding" -> Sadly Rupert gets what Rupert wants. Far too much of the current policy comes from a handfull of extemely wealthy business men/women. Gina Rinehart, a close friend to Tony, is another classic example and now the current government is kicking the indigenous (aboriginals, etc) off their own land and forcedly shutting down their communities for the mining companies. It's truely shocking. It's like Australia has gone back 200 years to when it was first colonised by the Europians. Fitting since Tony Abbott is actually English!

Re:Seems unlikely to work

[Anonymous Coward]

They really don't give a toss about piracy. They care about maintaining control of the distribution channel. They care about maintaining control over the artists.

Re:You're doing it wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Do know that these laws don't come from the governments themselves, they are just laws that have to be implemented because the sovereign multinationals want them in the law. When governments fail to implement these kinds of draconian laws, multinationals can sue governments and demand the law to be implement and ask for a big sum of money for 'lost revenue'. These sovereign multinationals don't sue governments in a normal way, with a judge and all that stuff. That was considered to be too unfair for the poor multinationals, they just appoint 3 lawyers that will 'judge' about the fine that the government has to pay, and how fast the missing laws have to be implemented.

Do you have shale gas under your nice little town, but you have decided in a democratic way that you don't want to put your little town in risk by extracting the gas? No problem, when a corporation wants that gas, they just sue your little town, and they get what they want. Do you decide in a democratic way to extract that gas for the benefit of the entire population of that little town? No problem either, when a corporation wants that gas, they just sue your little town, and they get what they want. That's how our wonderful democracy works since the nineties.

Do you live in a country that rejects this kind of free market? No problem, your country will be marked as an 'Axis of evil' and your country will be excluded from the markets and be boycotted by the countries that represent 90% of the world GDP. That's how the sovereignty of states work.

This is what the anti-globalist movements in the nineties were fighting against for example. But they have always been labelled terrorist. There is simply no opposition against the behaviour of the big business. Democracy fails against multinationals. Even free market fails against this kind of capitalism. And when people are opposing through one of the few things they have left (protests, organizing in a counter movement, passive aggression, voting for far left or far right parties, ...), they will be labelled terrorists or considered pariahs.

It's all in the same 'free market' scheme like the American or European workers that have to compete in wage against child slave labourers in south east Asia, while the companies who use slave labourers are all subsidized with the cheap oil/army protected trade routes/tax shelters/....