In a submission to the Australian government on how to deal with the online piracy problem, Google argues that the piracy problem is mainly one of pricing and availability that is best tackled by innovation, and not legislation.
Last year, as part of the newly elected conservative government of Australia's overview of regulation for the communication sector, several companies were invited to submit their recommendations, including Google.
TorrentFreak has just obtained Google's submission, and as part of the submission, Google outlined their thoughts on how to deal with the piracy problem.
Instead of viewing it as an enforcement issue, the view that is primarily taken by rights holders, Google believes piracy is very much a response to high pricing and lack of availability of legal options.
"We believe there is significant, credible evidence emerging that online piracy is primarily an availability and pricing problem," the submission read.
As for dealing with the problem, Google do not believe that regulation is the key. In fact, Google believes that more copyright laws will have little effect on piracy, and will drive up costs for businesses. Instead, Google wants the government to invest in innovation, as the best way to tackle the piracy problem.
"We would encourage the Government to promote new business models and a free market place for legal purchasing of content. We would be disappointed if the Government decided to go down the route of overly harsh regulation to combat piracy without considering the evidence from around the world that this would likely be costly for businesses to implement and with little effect," Google added.
While Google's submission will be taken seriously by the government, submissions from rights holders and pro-copyright groups appear to be having a bigger influence. Australia's Attorney-General recently called for more government action to deal with online piracy, including the use of a controversial three-strikes regime as well as domain blocking.
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