Bill to extend the copyright safe harbour provisions introduced

On 6 December 2017 the Turnbull Government introduced the Copyright Amendment (Service Providers) Bill 2017 (Cth) (Bill) (available here).

The Bill proposes to extend the safe harbour provisions set out in the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) (Act) to the disability, education, library, archive and cultural sectors, and is the result of extensive consultation by the Government with interested stakeholders across the communications and technology sectors.

The amendments contained in the Bill are limited in scope and, if the Bill is passed in its current form, the safe harbour scheme protections will remain available to only a restricted class of entities when compared to similar schemes in other countries.