Senate passes anti-piracy measures which allow rights holders to block copyright infringing sites
The Senate has tonight passed new legislation that will allow rights holders to go court to block overseas websites, like The Pirate Bay, that contain or give access to copyright infringing material.
The controversial legislation passed with the support of the Coalition and Labor 37-13. The Greens and independent Senators Lazarus, Muir and Leyonhjelm opposed the laws.
Under the new legislation a rights holder can apply to a federal court judge for a blocking request, if successful then ISPs, such as Telstra, Optus and iiNet, will need to comply with the order by disabling access to the IP address.
Greens spokesman Scott Ludlam on broadband issues tweeted during the vote, writing: “what your senate thinks of open-ended website blocking on behalf of foreign rights holder.”
ZDNet reports that sites such as The Pirate Bay and KickAssTorrents, which are among the most popular websites for allowing people to download movies and TV shows online without paying, are expected to be among the first websites targeted by copyright holders.
An investigation by Mumbrella, last year, revealed that many of these sites were being advertised on inadvertently by Australian media agencies and major brands with Nielsen reporting that the biggest of these sites were drawing up to 1.4m Australians every month.
The new laws have been welcomed by pay-TV operator and major rights holder Foxtel with its CEO Richard Freudenstein arguing the changes would help Australian jobs.
“We are pleased that the Government and Opposition have taken strong action to combat online piracy,” said Freudenstein.
“They recognise that, not only is piracy theft and therefore morally wrong, it is harmful to Australia’s creative communities and to businesses that employ hundreds of thousands of Australians.
“These offshore sites are not operated by noble spirits fighting for the freedom of the internet, they are run by criminals who profit from stealing other people’s creative endeavours.”
Government does VPN businesses a massive favour.
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I’ve just taken out a sunscription with a VPN…
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How is this legislation for the greater good? It does nothing for the masses, it only benefits those at the top. I though the decisions from politics were to help the people of the country, not the foreign barons.
Let’s just add this to the practically endless list of reasons to be cynical.
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Okay, now that we are all going legit – how about the Networks reward us by airing the programming we want at a reasonable time compared to its original US / UK air time?
The MAIN reason I find for piracy, is that the programming content is not available here within a reasonable time frame. I’m not talking subscription TV either, even regular US network programming from NBC, ABC etc. Shows like “Revenge” ended months ago, and the finale is only just airing here this week. Stop with the reality cooking and home reno rubbish and show the content that viewers want.
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Here is just one prime example of why Australians download.
Scorpion Season 1 which aired earlier this year on Ten. They purchased the series as exclusive programming. Everyone else locked out.
Ten aired 10 episodes as the first series, though there were 22 episodes in the full season 1. Currently Ten are promoting Season 2 starting in the next couple of weeks which in reality are just the remainder of the non aired versions of Season 1, 11-22.
The actual Season 2 is released September which means that Ten Australia will still be catching up with the remainder of Season 1 (promoted as Season 2) well into the actual Season 2 in all other markets.
With this sort of programming behaviour TEN is just screwing themselves by pushing their viewers to alternative ways, legally or illegally to access the content TEN Australia have already purchased. The mind boggles.
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Piracy is theft. please don’t dress it up as anything else but theft. Stop blaming networks, and the cost of cable, would you walk into a video shop and steal a DVD off the shelves? Would you support your child if they did that? That is the same as an illegal download.
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Another blatant suck up of the liberal party to the Murdochs!
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Australia Piracy Bill is yet another hard attack on Aussies Privacy and right of freedom. It’s not about the pirated content but about the accessibility of oneself. You can read a complete detail and how to avoid the bill at PureVPN/blog.
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