luddite censorship comes to Australia

Well, the politicians have done it again. Officially, its called “The Copyright Amendment (Online Infringement) Bill 2015” - which passed through the senate 37-13. Unofficially, its a flawed document that breaks on just about every technical level.

In a nutshell, what it allows is that the “Rights Holders” can go to the courts and say “ZOMG, THIS SITE PIRATES OUR SHIZNIT!”. If the judge is able to check all the tickboxes required, the order will come out to ALL Australian ISPs to block access to the IP address hosting the site(s) in question. The ISPs comply and black-hole that specific IP address.

Now, the problem here is that a single IP address is normally used to host multiple web sites - so if you happen to use the same service provider as the judge orders to be dropped, then sorry, your site disappears as well. This has happened before when ASIC ordered the blocking of a small address range and killed around 250,000 web sites.

When laws like this pass, it shows that the people making these decisions have no basic understanding on how the itnernet works - nor have they been given the correct advice on the drastic consequences that can occur from what seem to be simple changes.

So what do we do about it? Bring this up with your local Members of Parliament and make your views known.