Stirling Griff (SA, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

Firstly, I would like to thank the Senate for supporting the referral of this bill, the Copyright Amendment (Online Infringement) Bill 2018, to the Environment and Communications Legislation Committee. I'm aware that some did not wish to see a delay in the passage of the bill, and I appreciate that the bill has been subject to some consultation in the past. However, my office was contacted by multiple stakeholders on this matter, and Centre Alliance felt it was inappropriate to proceed until all stakeholders had an opportunity to express their concerns as part of the short inquiry process, which has now been completed.

Copyright protection is a crucial mechanism that provides for the viability of Australia's creators and creative industries. In recent times, the increased use of the internet and access to copyright material through digital means has had a twofold effect. On the one hand, it has created more opportunities for copyright owners to get their creative content out into the public domain and it has allowed consumers to enjoy this content in new and very innovative ways. But, on the other hand, copyright infringement now poses a threat to copyright owners due to the emergence of a myriad of websites which contain infringing material and facilitate infringement of copyright.

By way of an example, in their submission to the inquiry, Village Roadshow documented the number of downloads of two Australian films which have been subsidised by the government's tax offset arrangements. In the statistics provided in their submission, the film Mad Max: Fury Road had 600,000 legal downloads and a staggering one million illegal downloads. The film Lion was downloaded some 710,000 times, with over half of that number being illegal downloads. These are staggering numbers. Both highlight the concerns and issues this bill sets out to address and exemplify the reason we need to protect copyright owners from threat of copyright infringement.

This bill proposes a number of amendments which would facilitate the protection of copyright material, such as with these two Australian films. The expansion of section 115A would allow an injunction to extend to both carriage service providers and online search engine providers to block or not provide access to locations which provide access to copyrighted material. By expanding the legislation to provide for more protection to copyright material, Australian films such as Mad Max: Fury Road and Lion will be further protected from illegal downloads.

Many submissions to the inquiry expressed concerns that the proposed changes to the legislation and the widening of section 115A to include a 'primary effect' test could result in the site blocking of online locations which are operating very much for legitimate purposes. There were also a number of submissions drawing attention to the ability of carriage service providers and search engine providers to extend the sites blocked under the bill without any further judicial oversight.

Having reviewed the submissions both in support of and in opposition to the passage of the bill, we found the arguments were evenly balanced. This is not to say that those arguments do not have some merit, as this legislation is certainly not perfect, but I believe there are adequate safeguards in this bill that would prevent section 115A being applied to locations which are operated for legitimate purposes. Centre Alliance was initially going to put forward an amendment to have the operation of these amendments reviewed after 24 months, particularly given the number of concerns which were expressed during the inquiry. We felt that this would be the best way to review the effectiveness of the measures outlined in this bill to see whether any adverse consequences had emerged as a result of the broadening of the legislation. However, we have been informed that the government is committed to a review of this legislation, and we're happy to support this and support passage of the bill in its current form on the basis that the government commits to a review in 24 months time.