IPPro The Internet Issue 143

Lead News Story
Australia commits to safe harbour expansion
The Australian Government has committed
to expanding the country’s safe harbour
provisions to the educational, cultural and
disability sectors.
In its response to the Senate Environment and
Communications Legislation Committee, the
government said it supported the committee’s
recommendation to expand the safe harbour
rules, “in light of the ongoing entrenched
and polarised views of stakeholders on safe
harbour reform”.
It added: “Submissions to the committee
demonstrate that there is strong support from
a wide variety of stakeholders to extend the
scheme, at least, to these sectors.”
The committee held consultations in mid-
2017 and received responses from more
than 60 stakeholders, including Google,
Twitter, Facebook, and the UK Intellectual
Property Office.
The Australian Greens filed a dissenting
report, recommending the implementation
of a definition of “service provider as
a provider of transmission, routing
or connections for digital online
communications without modification of
their content between or among points
specified by the user of material of the
user’s choosing”.
This would, in essence, be a full extension
of the safe harbour scheme to all carriage
and service providers.
The government said that this extension was
highly contested.
This view was “made clear in the 2017
public consultation process on safe
harbour conducted by the Department of
Communications and the Arts, and was
reflected in the submissions to the committee”,
according to the government.
Proposals for a fair use and safe harbour
system that surpass the country’s current fair
dealing laws were initially met with criticism
when they were proposed by the commission
in December 2016.
In response, the government said that, during
the department’s consultations, stakeholders
agreed to only extend the scheme to
educational, cultural and disability sectors
was an appropriate reform.
“The bill provides some momentum to a
long-standing and contentious issue, which
has seen no movement, despite numerous
reviews over the last 10 years.”
It said: “The government’s intention by
progressing this bill is to ensure those
sectors that are recognised as providing
highly beneficial community services to the
Australian community are afforded protection
sooner rather than later.”
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