Australian Internet users may now have at least until 2017 not to worry about the well-known "three-strikes" regime being introduced in the country. Copyright owners and Internet service providers decided to give the new website blocking system a chance to get established before revisiting the warning procedure.

Poor legitimate content availability and unfair pricing forced millions of Australians to turn to illegal channels to get the content they want – usually through torrent and streaming websites. To fight this infringing behavior, two anti-piracy strategies were developed – site blockade and graduated response system. The latter was a “three-strikes”-style warning regime, where all Internet users are being monitored by anti-piracy agencies and receive escalating warning notices by their broadband providers. The expectations are that after receiving several such warnings, people will eventually turn to legitimate alternatives.

The first anti-piracy strategy is being actively used, with TPB and 4 other major trackers being targeted in Federal Court. At the same time, negotiations over the graduated response system have labored for years without any results. So far, it was decided that the “three-strikes” system would not be immediately launched, because the copyright owners and Internet service providers simply couldn’t agree who would pay for its implementation. Apparently, both sides are now working on a joint approach to the government to ask it to put the system on hold for at least another year. This means that the Australians have at least another year of trouble-free downloading.

Thanks to TorrentFreak for providing the source of the article.