As iTWire reported, less than a week after passing the House of Representatives, the Senate has passed the Copyright Amendment (Online Infringement) Bill 2015, which allows the blocking of web sites that may facilitate piracy. The new law allows copyright holders to demand that websites that they believe encourage illegal downloading be blocked.
The CEO of Internet Australia Laurie Patton says the risk of collateral damage from blocking of websites to “allegedly stop piracy” needs to be considered.
“Internet Australia respects the intellectual property rights of the creators of content. We just object to the use of site blocking legislation as a measure too extreme,” Patton says.
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Patton has called for content to be made available speedily, at reasonable cost, with Internet Australia arguing that the community needs to be educated about the reasons why piracy is a breach of someone else's rights.
“We support the Copyright Notice Scheme Code which is about to be introduced. This is the first step in educating people. The Copyright Notice Scheme will see ISP's sending up to three written warnings to households where downloading of pirated content is alleged to be occurring," Patton concludes.