Australia Copyright Safe Harbour Provision Backed By Prime Minister (torrentfreak.com)

Posted by msmash on Tuesday March 14, 2017 @05:20AM from the how-about-that dept.

Moves to introduce a copyright "safe harbor" provision for platforms such as Google and Facebook have received a boost in Australia after receiving backing from Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. From a report on TorrentFreak: A report in The Australian indicates that Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has given the safe harbor amendments his support. It won't be all plain sailing from here, however. The government is to set up a Senate committee into the copyright amendments to determine whether the amendments will promote piracy as the entertainment industries are warning. The inquiry will launch after the government introduces the Copyright Amendment (Disability Access and Other Measures) Bill into Parliament after March 20. The Australian suggests that under Schedule 2 of the bill, online platforms would receive immunity for infringing user-uploaded content. However, totally immunity is an unrealistic eventuality that would almost certainly have to be tempered by rules concerning takedowns. Those details will be examined in-depth as part of the committee inquiry, which will run its course in advance of parliamentary debate and voting.

1 of 30 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Externalizing costs by Solandri · 2017-03-14 05:48 · Score: 3, Insightful

Copyright is an artificial construct. For its existence to be justified, it must at the very least be self-sustainable. i.e. If the money copyright holders collects isn't enough to pay for copyright to exist, there is no point in allowing copyright to exist.

So if we get rid of safe harbor provisions as the Copyright industry wants, then the logical thing to do is for the government to collect a fee from all copyright holders and distribute that money to ISPs and websites to pay for copyright enforcement. Doing it the way the Copyright industry wants - where enforcement costs are completely externalized and not borne by the Copyright industry - can result in a situation where the economic cost of enforcing copyright (borne by ISPs and websites) exceeds the economic benefit of having copyright (enjoyed by the Copyright industry). At that point, the economic reason for having Copyright (to promote economic progress and activity) ceases to exist.