The Attorney-General’s Department has announced it will not be looking to introduce anti-piracy legislation similar to the controversial United States’ Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

 

The announcement was made after Federal Greens communication spokesperson Scott Ludlam urged the Federal Government to speak out against the Bill.

 

The American legislation, which sparked international outrage across the internet community and inspired large service providers such as Wikipedia and Reddit to shut down services in protest, would see wide ranging powers granted to the Government and entertainment industry to counteract perceived piracy infringements and breaches of intellectual property.

 

"Has the Australian Government made any representation whatsoever to the US Government on this issue? Do they recognise that there will be little purpose in investing tens of billions of dollars in the NBN if the US copyright industry cripples the medium itself?" Ludlam said in a statement.

 

"As an example of breathtaking overreach by US copyright interests, the SOPA proposal and its cousin PIPA are hard to beat. The bills will institutionalise far-reaching, unaccountable censorship in order to protect the commercial interests of a handful of powerful media companies. The bills risk the broad-scale criminalisation of filesharing, the decimation of the open source community and tactical use of financial blockades against commercial competitors or non-commercial sites.

 

The Attorney-General’s Office responded to the concerns by announcing the Federal Government had no intention to introduce similar legislation.

 

"It is the government's preference for industry (content owners and internet services providers) to work together to develop a code to address the issue of online piracy," the statement from the attorney-general's office said.

 

The two contentious pieces of legislation, including PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act), have been altered in response to stiff resistance but are due to go before their respective houses in America in the coming weeks.