Australia just passed its own "pirate blocking" law
Posted on June 30, 2015 @ 12:10 am
The government of Australia passed a new legislation to block certain websites, specifically sites that provide access to pirated movies, TV shows and music. The passage of the new laws means that content owners will soon be able to apply to the federal court for orders requiring ISPs to block access to websites in cases where they can prove that their "primary purpose" is to facilitate copyright infringement.
The laws target piracy promotion websites including those that provide torrent files used for peer-to-peer sharing in illegal digital copies of music and video that are hosted overseas in jurisdictions beyond the legal reach of domestic copyright law.
It's a blunt way to solve a tricky problem. The law gives the government power to block certain sites in a similar way that China uses it to block Facebook. Britain implemented a similar law in 2012.
This has come about after movie studios put pressure on the government to stop online piracy in Australia, a country that has a large number of illegal downloaders.
Illegal downloading is wrong. You can't expect to get something for free when someone has to pay for it to be produced, but using a law like this is not the right approach.
While this law will reduce the number of people accessing illegal sites, it won't solve the larger problem.
It is easily circumvented by using a VPN, a virtual private network, to access the blocked sites. A VPN helps mask and secure your internet address so you can access a network without being seen or traced.
The Australian government may end up trying to block those too but it will get itself into a world of trouble as VPNs are a legitimate tool used by universities, companies and individuals every day to protect data and privacy.