Despite all the evidence to the contrary rights holders are able to convince governments around the world that piracy is a problem best faced with legislation rather than outright competition. It’s been shown time and time again that access to a reasonably priced legitimate service results in drastic reductions in the rates of piracy and, funnily enough, increased revenue for the businesses that adopt this new strategy. Australia had been somewhat immune to the rights lobby’s ploys for a while, with several high court rulings not finding in their favour. However our current government (and, unfortunately, the opposition) seems more than happy to bend to the whims of this group with their most recent bow coming in the form of a website blocking bill.
The bill itself clocks in at a mere 9 pages with the explanatory notes not going much further. Simply put it provides a legislative avenue for rights holders to compel ISPs to block access to sites that hold infringing material through the use of a court injunction. How that blocking should be done isn’t mentioned at all, nor is there any mention of recourse activities that a site can undertake to have themselves unblocked should they find themselves a target of an injunction. Probably the only diamond in this pile of horseshit of legislation is the protection that ISPs get from costs born out of this process, but only if they choose not to fight any injunction that may be placed upon them. However all of that is moot when compared to the real issue at hand here.
It’s just not going to fucking work.
As I wrote last year when Brandis and co were soliciting ideas for this exact legislation no matter what kind of blocking the ISPs employ (which, let’s be honest here, will be the lowest and most painless form of blocking they can get away with) it will be circumvented instantly by anyone and everyone. The Australian government isn’t the first government to engage in wholesale blocking of sites and so solutions to get around them are plentiful, many of them completely free to access. Hell with a very healthy amount of VPN usage in Australia already most people already have a method by which to cut the ISPs completely out of the picture, rendering any action they take completely moot.
The big problem that I, and many others, have with legislation like this is that it sets a bad precedent that could be used to justify further site blocking policies down the line. It doesn’t take much effort to take this bill, rework it to target other objectionable content and then have that pushed through parliament. Sure, we can hope that the process means that such policies won’t make it through due to the obvious chilling effects that it might have, however this legislation faced no opposition from either of the major parties so it follows that future ones could see just as slim opposition. Worst still there’s almost no chance that it will ever be repealed as no government ever wants to give up power it’s granted itself.
In the end this is just another piece of evidence to show that our current government has a fundamental lack of understanding of technology and its implications. The bill is worthless, a bit of pandering to the rights lobbyists who will wield it with reckless abandon which will fail it achieve its goals from day one. Already there are numerous sites telling users how to circumvent it and there is absolutely no amount of legislation that can be passed to stop them. All we can hope for now is that this doesn’t prove to be the first step on a slippery slope towards larger scale censorship as the Great Firewall of Australia begins to smoulder.
