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Business News Legal
Aussie ISPs publish three-strike proposals
By Chris Cooke | Published on Monday 23 February 2015
Three-strikes is coming to Australia, with proposals similar to those set out in the UK’s 2010 Digital Economy Act. Though it remains to be seen if the Aussie version includes the “never actually get round to doing anything” element.
As previously reported, the Australian government was considering new anti-piracy measures for most of last year, ultimately giving the country’s internet service providers 120 days to come up with a voluntary scheme to tackle online piracy, otherwise, ministers said, they’d force measures onto the web sector.
And so, on Friday, Australia’s Communications Alliance published its own plans to “dissuade Australian internet users from engaging in online copyright infringement” and to “educate them about what constitutes infringement, and to provide information on how to readily access lawful available content alternatives”.
Although both three-strikes (or ‘graduated response’ if you prefer) and web-blocking, where ISPs are forced to block access to piracy-enabling websites, were being considered by the Australian government, the net sector seems to have opted for the former.
So, suspected file-sharers will received warning letters from their ISP if and when they are spotted (via their IP address) by the rights owners, and if said file-sharers ignore those warnings (or ‘learning opportunities’ perhaps, letter one will be all about ‘education’), then net firms will be obliged to help copyright owners take infringement action against the file-sharer. Which means ultimately revealing the offender’s name and address so the rights owners can sue them.
Which is a step back from the three-strikes system originally proposed by the copyright industries back in the day – in which strike three would be some kind of ISP-instigated sanction such as net suspension or bandwidth throttling – though most actual graduated response systems, whether statutory like in the UK or through voluntary agreement like in the US, have been rather vague on what strike three would actually look like.
Says the Communications Alliance’s proposal: “This copyright notice scheme provides that, at the instigation of rights holders, ISPs must, where possible, issue Education, Warning or Final Notices to relevant account holders”. If an account owner receives all three notices within one year, then rights holders “will be provided with assistance [from ISPs]…to take direct copyright infringement action against an account holder”.
Although strike three is rather more involved than many rights owners would probably prefer, the music, movie and TV industries were involved in drafting this code and seem to support it, though not all of the Communications Alliance’s own membership seem so keen.
Nevertheless, the draft scheme could be launched as soon as September, which would be a whole lot quicker than the British three-strikes system, passed by Parliament in 2010 and yet to go live. Though it’s still not clear who will pay for the Australian anti-piracy programme, which could be a sticking point that delays things somewhat.
