Australian Parliament approves site-blocking law despite criticisms
The Australian Parliament today voted to expand the country’s website-blocking laws despite fierce opposition from industry associations.
According to the government’s statement, the newly-passed amendments to the Copyright Act strengthen “the capacity of Australia’s creative industries to fight copyright infringement”.
It follows the Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee the proposals after an investigation.
Mitch Fifield, minister for communications and the arts, today said: “The government has zero tolerance for online piracy. It is theft, and damaging to our creative economy and local creators. We are committed to protecting Australia’s creative industries and the world-class content we produce every year.”
Earlier this month, Google declared that it does not support the proposals in a seven-page submission to the Senate, and the Digital Industry Group (DIGI)—which represents organisations such as Twitter, Facebook, and Yahoo— called the amendments “unprecedented and unnecessary” in its own submission.
The changes mean that copyright owners can now seek injunctions against online search engines and require them to block search results which refer users to these blocked online locations.
Previously, copyright owners could apply for an injunction to force internet service providers to block infringing sites.
Under the amended law, sites that “have started to provide access to the blocked site after the injunction is made” can be added to the injunction (‘adaptive injunctions’) without the Federal Court of Australia needing to review the addition.
Google had said that this provision, which has “the effect of removing the direct oversight of the Federal Court over the site-blocking process and instead leave it to commercial entities to decide which websites Australian users may access”, is of particular concern.
Google claimed that the Federal Court always grants injunctions when appropriate and that stopping follow-ons is not slow or expensive for right owners seeking to pursue this avenue.
But, on Monday, the Senate committee recognised that ‘adaptive injunctions’ may be open to abuse, but that the court would “maintain ultimate oversight” of them to safeguard against this.
Another amendment allows copyright owners to obtain injunctions against not only the infringing sites, but also the appearance of the sites in searches. This means that providers, such as Google, might have to censor the search results they provide.
DIGI had claimed that this expansion of site-blocking laws would “expand the scheme far beyond what is reasonable” and target legitimate businesses.
The group suggested that the reform should be accompanied by a corresponding expansion to the safe harbour scheme which would stretch to include online service providers such as search engines.
On Monday, the Senate committee had found that there are adequate safeguards to prevent the amended law targeting legitimate businesses.
The government today confirmed that the new law will allow the Federal Court to make injunctions that target a broader range of infringing websites by providing a way of blocking proxy and mirror pirate sites more quickly.
It also confirmed that the amendments allow the Federal Court to order search engines to demote or remove search results for infringing sites.
Fifield said: “The passage of our legislation today sends a strong message to online pirates that Australia does not tolerate online theft.”
The government will review the effectiveness of the changes in two years.
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