Singapore Plans to Get Rid of Illegal Websites with New Law

Singapore is said to have its Law Ministry cooking up a law since April, similar to what is currently in effect in the UK, which will amend the Copyright Act and force ISPs to block infringing websites.

Indranee Rajah, Singapore’s Senior Minister of State for Law, has said that the law will give copyright owners “greater ability to protect their rights in the online space”. In doing so, all websites presenting copyright infringing content will be blocked.

“The prevalence of online piracy in Singapore turns customers away from legitimate content and adversely affects Singapore’s creative sector,” Rajah said.

The new law is said to take effect starting this August, having copyright owners apply to the court in Singapore without needing to establish the liability of the network service provider. THis means that the copyright owners do not need to issue a previously mandatory take-down notice, having the court itself dealing with such actions now.

However, though ISPs can block the websites, it cannot stop users from taking advantage of a VPN software and accessing the restricted websites. For example, the popular torrent website, The Pirate Bay, even has their own proxy redirect website, which grants users access to their so-called ‘restricted’ website. The ban in question seems to apply, as in the UK, for people attempting to type in just the website address and not the bypass techniques, rendering the actual link restriction almost obsolete.

Thank you CNet for providing us with this information