Australian ISPs should be responsible for blocking pirates says Aussie artists

HIGH profile musicians like INXS, Tina Arena, Josh Pyke and The Potbelleez have slammed Australians, accusing us of potentially killing their careers.

Tina Arena Live At The State Theatre

Some of Australia’s most popular musicians and actors are sick of you pirating their work, and they’re now backing a government proposal to get ISP’s to block torrenting sites like The Pirate Bay.

Uploaded last night, over 600 submissions from individuals who had something to say about a government plan to overhaul of the Copyright Act. The submissions were originally suppressed by Attorney-General George Brandis’ department, but after Greens’ Senator Scott Ludlam and several online rights activists lodged freedom of information requests, the submissions were made available.

Proposed changes would enable rights holders to request the courts order internet service providers such as Telstra, iiNet and Optus to block access to internet sites that operate outside Australia and whose main function is to enable copyright infringements.

In a joint statement, Attorney-General George Brandis and Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull stressed everyone had a role to play stopping illegal downloads.

“Rights holders need to ensure that content can be accessed easily and at a reasonable price. Internet service providers can take reasonable steps to ensure their systems are not used to infringe copyright. Consumers can do the right thing and access content lawfully,” they said.

While most submissions were from general concerned citizens, some high-profiled musicians including Josh Pyke, INXS, Tina Arena and Birds of Tokyo all expressed their concerns.

Tina Arena wrote that she thought it was unfair that pirate websites were “so easy to access”. She also slammed arguments that touring made her enough money, claiming that it wasn’t fair for her to have to spend so much time away from her daughter.

Some artists, including David Greene from the Potbelleez went as far as saying that without proper copyright laws you might as well be “kissing the money goodbye and our career with it.”

The Head of Licensing and Synce at Ministry of Sound Australia John Ferris also made an interesting point surrounding music streaming services.

“If you look at Australian content only, music is now “freely” available on Spotify, Pandora, etc, through streaming services. For Australian artists, making music available this way has not stopped file sharing of songs — in fact it seems to have encouraged the belief that music should be free all the time”, Mr Ferris said.

While most artists were all for some kind of ISP policing, it seemed that most shared the opinion that it was up to copyright owners to pursue legal action, not the ISPs responsibility to enforce law.

“This is outside of the role of an internet service provider, an ISPs job is not to enforce copyright law. It is up to the copyright owners to issue legal action against people that violate copyright — much in the same way trademarks are disputed,” one person said.

Australia is a nation of pirates, much to the detriment of our music and film industry. Do you think blocking pirating sites will help?