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Copyright Extension In Australia
femto writes "The Motion Picture Association and
APRA have commissioned a
report
from Allen Consulting into the
effects of extending Australian copyright from life+50 years to life+70years.
This forms the MPA and APRA's contribution to
US-Australian free trade negotiations,
currently underway. The report recommends that copyright terms should be extended.
An extension of copyright would not be in Australia's interest.
Some would argue that it is not in anyone's
interest. Projects such as Project Gutenberg of Australia
would be adversely affected by such an extension. Perhaps now is to time to write to your Member
of Parliament, asking them to oppose any extension of copyright or patents, and shore up whatever resistance there is to an extension of IP in Australia?"
Nonsense, here's a mirror: http://www.herrvinny.com/slash.pdf
Go ahead, I have 6 GB transfer, and it should hold up, or Hostway has explaining to do...
By the way, I hate to be offtopic and all, but if people could visit herrvinny.com, I'm working on an open source voting program. I already have it with the capability to do write in, check multiple choices, instead of just one, etc. Anyone from UW Madison reading this, I'd like to talk to you about field testing this thing. Server edition should be available next week!
The freight train of hysteria's due to run this topic down, but I'm gonna try anyways: The US extended its copyright laws to match those of the EU. No, we were not _compelled_ to match their IP laws, but if you want to lay the burden at someone's door, it belongs to a door in Belgium, not Washington, DC.
The FTA is nothing but bad news for Australia.
... the list goes on and on.
If nothing else, it further entagles us with the lunatic foreign policy of the US.
But of course the bad news doesn't stop there. Health care, local media content, copyright law, drug law, terrorist law, foreign ownership,
For those who are interested, the ISO is holding a social forum this weekend, and will be discussing just such issues, and many more. It starts tonight ( 7pm ) and goes until Sunday. It's at UTS. See http://www.sydneysocialforum.org for more details. Honestly, this is the best place to discuss the issues involving the FTA, and build resistance groups to lobby the government. See you there!
USA also wants Australia to drop the "economic" value argument in the PBS (pharmaceutical benefits Scheme) - ie make the drugs subsidized to sick people more expensive. An actually independent government appointed body works out what the drugs are worth in economic value and then refuses to pay anymore than that to the drug companies. Guess what the drug companies don't like it. Tese drugs are then suypplied to sick people at that cost. If you are a pensioner/unemployed it can cost as little as AUD$2.
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
Simple, prior to copyright laws, everything was public domain, the only way to have an idea what was your's and your's alone was to not tell anyone about it. The US invented copyrights to convince possible inventors/writers/artists to share their works with the rest of the people, and that the US if someone was to take their works as their own would protect it. Some of the people of the time (being that copyrights at the time did not exist) felt that an idea is a naturally free concept, so restrained the copyright/patent to being a *limited* monopoly.
:wq
It's partly about whether US video game royalties were included in the agent's contract (Pooh stories were written decades before video games were invented).
I'm not a great fan of the heriditary system anyway - why should you inherit your ancestors book characters (copyright), or wealth (death taxes help) or Presidency/PM (USA, India)? Get a job yourself! My Uncle bought my Grandad's farm off him, which is fair.