Site Blocking is Ineffective in Preventing Piracy – Labor

The recently announced renewed anti-piracy measures are creating a lot of buzz. These new measures announced by the government have two main pillars. The first pillar works by pushing the development by ISPs and industry code’s rights. Under this plan ISP customers who are accused of copyright infringement will receive notices and after an agreed number of notices, the identity of the alleged pirate will be discovered so that he/she can be taken to the court.
The second pillar allows the right holders to apply for court orders that’ll notify ISPs to block the accused pirate’s access to the sites which are owned by them (right holders). Jason Clare, Labor’s spokesperson said in a statement, that the government’s only concrete resolution is to establish legislation providing for overseas websites facilitating copyright infringement to be blocked in the country by court order. He further added that site blocking can’t really prevent online piracy.
Clare said, “Pirated content is likely to reappear as quickly as it can be taken down.” According to him the proposal announced by the government failed to tackle the piracy issues which were raised by the government earlier this year. He pointed out that the absence of the expansion of the copyright safe harbour scheme is a major flaw in the proposed reforms.
Despite of all these statements Clare didn’t indicate whether Labor is planning to oppose the move or not.