Google, Village Roadshow Weigh In On New Search Blocking Amendments To Australian Copyright Law

As we've been talking about for some time, Australia is set to amend its copyright laws to expand what were site-blocking provisions into search-blocking ones. It's an odd bit of mission creep, as the copyright industries in Australia have at once praised site-blocking as being very effective at curbing piracy while also insisting that search-blocking needs to be done to curb piracy. Despite this, the amendment appears to have broad government support, with the exception of a few detractors. The Australian government is still taking comments about the proposed changes and Google has decided to wade in. As is typical with Google, the arguments it makes are nuanced and careful, whether you agree with them or not.

While Google supports effective industry led measures to fight piracy, Google does not support the proposed amendments foreshadowed in the Extended Site Blocking Bill," Google writes.

"In particular, Google opposes Section 115(2B)(a)(ii) and (b)(ii) of the Bill, which would have the effect of removing the direct oversight of the Federal Court over the site blocking process and instead leave it to commercial entities to decide which websites Australian users may access."

Google also notes that the proposal to extend the Site Blocking Scheme to search engines has not been adopted by any other country in the world. Presumably this is because other countries have long recognized that there is no utility in extending site blocking schemes beyond ISPs to other online service providers," the company writes.

As TorrentFreak notes, that is only kinda sorta true. Russia has recently put in place a search-blocking policy as well, although it is a voluntary program and Google does not currently participate in it. It is true that codifying search-blocking in the way Australia is seeking has not really been done in the past. Given how fast the process for this amendment has and continues to be, and given its extraordinary nature, it's not unreasonable for Google to suggest that everyone pump the brakes and study whether or not any of this is actually necessary or will have an impact on the broader piracy problem.

But the real takeaway from Google's submission and public comments is the detailed, thoughtful analysis in them. Unlike, say, Village Roadshow's response to Google.

"Google say they are up for the fight against piracy. This is a sham," writes Village Roadshow CEO Graham Burke.

"There [sic] sole interest is using a treasure trove of stolen movies as part of attracting people to a business model that is strengthened by theft. [Google] auto complete and search are used to steal movies. This is no different from stealing a loaf of bread from a 7-11 store."

So, we have thoughtful analysis of the new law and the need for caution on the one hand, and accusations of convenience store bread-stealing on the other. Were this a just world, this sort of ham-fisted misstatement of the facts of copyright infringement would be enough to torpedo this law.

Instead, it looks like Google will be ordered by law to keep people from stealing internet bread.

Cool.