Australian Government Considers File-Sharing Notifications

The Aussie government is going to consider some measures aimed at pursuing online file-sharers. Aside from sending out notification messages to alleged file-sharers, the new law can allow for “notorious” websites like TPB to be blocked by local ISPs.

Australia has long been known as the “second class consumers”, because its citizens in many cases had to wait months if not years for new video content from the US. Of course, this fact could only fuel the uptake of unauthorized file-sharing. Although it seems that plans for improved availability of video material are developing, the entertainment industry still calls to action, and negotiations with Internet service providers showed no progress.

Now it looks like the government is ready to act. A few days ago, the federal cabinet was going to consider a couple proposals to crack down on unauthorized file-sharing. The practice of sending out notifications to copyright infringers is already familiar to users from the US, France, New Zealand, Taiwan and South Korea. All these countries send subsequent and increasingly threatening letters to persistent infringers, trying to deter future offending. However, it is not clear whether such mechanisms are effective.

Taking this into account, nobody will be surprised that another option will be blocking or censoring of infringing websites by local broadband providers. Some insiders admit that the legislative changes could be brought in very soon. The entertainment industry hopes that there will be consequences for users who continue downloading and sharing copyrighted content.

The problem is that the entertainment industry and Aussie ISPs can’t agree on the issue of who should pay for such a program. Thus far, the parties still haven’t reached consensus on this matter.

Regarding the website blocking, the movie or music companies will be able to go to court and obtain injunctions against pirate portals, which will compel local broadband providers to block the websites. That’s what is currently being used in Europe, notably the United Kingdom – although not in the US, home to many entertainment companies.

The only difference is that Aussie users are familiar with VPN and proxy services, as they are largely used to access such legal services as Netflix. They can also be used to access a blocked torrent tracker.