Australia’s
media and arts union has recently endorsed a web-filtering proposal
which would force ISPs to block websites making pirated materials
available. The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) proposed to
allow entities to seek injunctions directly against ISPs to block
infringing websites.
In addition, the union called for penalizing ISPs for failure to take “reasonable steps” to delete information after being notified of copyright violation. According to the submission, “reasonable steps” involve slowing down a user’s access to the Internet (though not termination of the latter). The MEAA also suggested to challenge such infringement notices if broadband providers choose to take action.
The proposal also addresses the impact of a landmark 2012 court decision between iiNet and a movie studio, which found the ISP hadn’t authorized the infringement of copyrighted content downloaded by its subscribers via BitTorrent.
The MEAA said that it rejected the idea of the piracy being a “David and Goliath battle” between ordinary citizens and multinational corporations, and this characterization ignored the fact that a lot of creative professionals’ livelihoods were at stake.
The union claimed that piracy, according to the government paper, is growing at a commercial scale via predominantly overseas-based websites. In other words, foreign pirate websites and the ISPs (albeit passively) are stealing from Australia’s creative workers.
The union has previously resisted changes to copyright that they believe could harm the content industry. The MEAA made an earlier submission this past February, arguing against the recommendation to introduce a “fair use” exception to copyright bill just like the United States did.
In addition, the union called for penalizing ISPs for failure to take “reasonable steps” to delete information after being notified of copyright violation. According to the submission, “reasonable steps” involve slowing down a user’s access to the Internet (though not termination of the latter). The MEAA also suggested to challenge such infringement notices if broadband providers choose to take action.
The proposal also addresses the impact of a landmark 2012 court decision between iiNet and a movie studio, which found the ISP hadn’t authorized the infringement of copyrighted content downloaded by its subscribers via BitTorrent.
The MEAA said that it rejected the idea of the piracy being a “David and Goliath battle” between ordinary citizens and multinational corporations, and this characterization ignored the fact that a lot of creative professionals’ livelihoods were at stake.
The union claimed that piracy, according to the government paper, is growing at a commercial scale via predominantly overseas-based websites. In other words, foreign pirate websites and the ISPs (albeit passively) are stealing from Australia’s creative workers.
The union has previously resisted changes to copyright that they believe could harm the content industry. The MEAA made an earlier submission this past February, arguing against the recommendation to introduce a “fair use” exception to copyright bill just like the United States did.
No comments:
Post a Comment