Kate Lundy (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Sport and Recreation) Share this | Hansard source

On the earlier issue about fines, I have some more information that might help the minister resolve my question. For every commercial copy of a CD that is made—again, working on the scenario that it was not done for commercial profit—each song has three copyright protections on it and each CD has, say, 10 songs on it. So that could be technically 33 individual copyright infringements for one CD copied and sold. The act currently talks about a fine for a copyright infringement of $6,600. Extrapolating that, 33 times $6,600 is $217,800 for that one technical sale of one CD. That really goes to the heart of the point I was making earlier. It also goes to the heart of the issue that Senator Ludwig raised about the fact that we do not know how these fines are going to be applied, we do not know whether there is a limit on how a fine could be applied to one individual in what circumstances and we do not know whether the on-the-spot fine has any potential restrictions on it. You can appreciate that even in the sale of 10 CDs inadvertently to mates you could be looking at, quite absurdly, fines of over a million dollars. I do not think that would be the intention of the bill, but I am looking forward to the clarification from the minister in that regard.

I would also like to follow up some questions about ISPs. In particular, further to Senator Ludwig’s questions, I would like to follow up whether there is any potential for ancillary liability—for an ISP to be pulled into having some liability for distribution. Could the minister outline the interrelationship between the new strict liability criminal offences created by this bill and the safe harbour provisions that could limit the liability of ISPs in certain circumstances and whether or not that safe harbour regime provides any shield to criminal liabilities under this bill.