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Since when are nations acting in their economic self interest subject to moral arguments? The goal is winning success for your nation and a nice life for your people, not being "moral" about intellectual property.

That's why Australia is thinking about greatly expanding the scope of fair-use. They figure, nobody is gonna stop producing English language material because sales in Australia tank, so if they ignore the morality of effectively enabling piracy, they can help to make a nicer life for their people...

http://www.pc.gov.au/inquiries...

Well there are two sides of this coin...

The recommendation lists these items for fair use...

1. research or study;
2. criticism or review;
3. parody or satire;
4. reporting news;
5. professional advice;
6. quotation;
7. non-commercial private use;
8. incidental or technical use;
9. library or archive use;
10.education; and
11.access for people with disability.

I think the fair use exemptions for "professional advice", "library or archive use", and "education" are kind of the sticking points (where the big corps are against "non-commercial private use" which basically is file sharing).

For example, if a big company (say google) were to make a library or archive (let's call it books.google.au for arguments sake) where they allow free access to copyrighted material (with side banner ads which they get money for) do they get a fair use exemption? Also a blanket educational exemption is a bit of a problem for say instructional material (or may even the Wiggles). IMO, they really need to clean it the recommendation a bit.

On the other hand, you can make a case that Australia is being simply opportunist on this and are really just after a free ride. The rationale they give is...

Overall, given that most new works consumed in Australia are sourced from overseas and their creation is unlikely to be responsive to changes in Australia’s exceptions, adoption of a fair use provision in Australia is likely to deliver net benefits to the Australian community.

Basically, they are saying expanding fair use won't hurt Australia because authors won't stop producing stuff in English just because Australians are pirating it.

Quite apart from the geoblocking issue - there's a whole tonne of interesting recommendations in the draft report.

For those who aren't familiar, the Productivity Commission is a major Australian Government advisory body/think tank that conducts public inquiries into matters of economic policy. The Government requested a broad report into the economic effectiveness of the intellectual property system.

This report is a draft - the Commission is presently taking public submissions that will be considered for the final report later this year.

Highlights from the findings and recommendations:

• 70 years after death is far too long a term for copyright - it would be more appropriate to limit copyright to 15-25 years after creation (noting that this has implications for international copyright treaties)
• Repeal Australia's "parallel import" restrictions on books
• Replace Australia's present "fair dealing" exemptions with a US-style "fair use" clause which would be much broader in scope
• Ban software patents and business method patents
• Reform pharmaceutical patents in various ways
• Government should adopt an Open Access policy for publicly funded research

All of which seems in line with what I consider sensible policy reform. Of course, whether the Government will consider any of these recommendations at all is a completely different question...

There was a report last year from the Productivity Commission which is "the Australian Government's principal review and advisory body on microeconomic policy and regulation. It is an independent statutory authority in the Treasury Portfolio and responds to references from the Treasurer. "

This specific report is for the Retail industry, but there is a very good chapter on online and price differences, which includes some parts talking about things like Apple's Price Discrimination. For those interested, the report can be found here Economic Structure and Performance of the Australian Retail Industry. The price differences part is Chapter 6.

I'll quote some relevant parts:

Box 6.4 - Apple’s international price discrimination
Costs associated with the distribution of Australian specific content and marketing could mean that higher fixed costs apply to the Australian subsidiary. But given the costs associated with the distribution of music and other media are only likely to be a relatively small share of total costs, this does not fully explain or justify the price differential.

The Commission considers that Australian consumers will buy goods where they feel they get the best deal regardless of retail format and that retailers that do not, or are unable to, respond effectively to competitive pressures will face serious challenges.

There was a report last year from the Productivity Commission which is "the Australian Government's principal review and advisory body on microeconomic policy and regulation. It is an independent statutory authority in the Treasury Portfolio and responds to references from the Treasurer. "

This specific report is for the Retail industry, but there is a very good chapter on online and price differences, which includes some parts talking about things like Apple's Price Discrimination. For those interested, the report can be found here Economic Structure and Performance of the Australian Retail Industry. The price differences part is Chapter 6.

I'll quote some relevant parts:

Box 6.4 - Apple’s international price discrimination
Costs associated with the distribution of Australian specific content and marketing could mean that higher fixed costs apply to the Australian subsidiary. But given the costs associated with the distribution of music and other media are only likely to be a relatively small share of total costs, this does not fully explain or justify the price differential.

The Commission considers that Australian consumers will buy goods where they feel they get the best deal regardless of retail format and that retailers that do not, or are unable to, respond effectively to competitive pressures will face serious challenges.

TFA speaks about an aspect of the support of patents that is often neglected by the /. commentators: the importance of the patents to the US commercial balance.

For me this is the number 1 reason for the existence of an inflated patent system in US, a country which has billions of dollars of yearly benefits from it and which desperately tries to enforce it to the rest of the world (in particular to the European Union and the WTO).

For me anyone trying the understand the behinds-the-scene of the discussion on patents should try to get a good understanding of the importance of the TRIPS to global trade and why it was a major negotiation issue in the Uruguay Round.