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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?"
Slightly offtopic, but one bizarre thing a free trade agreement with the US would mean for Australia, is more US television content. There are currently laws in place that mean television broadcasters must allocate a certain amount of hours to Australian content. It's much cheaper to buy television content than it is to make it, so the broadcasters are well and truly in favour of it. Many consumers feel that we get too much US content as it is without opening the flood gates.
There are many ways a free-trade agreement would benefit Australia as well. As a largely primary producer, the subsidies the US government give its wheat producers price Australia out of the market. No-one has managed to convince me either way that such an agreement would work out better or worse for Australia. I certainly can't see any benefit for the US. Obviously, things will change (some for better and some for worse) for both parties. But is it truly worthwhile for either?
Refuse to make a statement in your sig!
Check this out.
Use of copyright to restrict redistribution is actually immoral, unethical, and illegitimate. It is a result of brainwashing by monopolists and corporate interests and it violates everyone's rights. Copyrights and patents hamper technological progress by making a naturally abundant resource scarce. Many, from communists to right wing libertarians, are trying to abolish intellectual property myths.
Who the hell wrote that? Well, it's better than the RIAA's version. Interesting :-)
I think you should be guaranteed 20 yrs, and anything after that (up to life of creator, or 100 years for a corporation, whichever comes first) would be fine as long as:
1. The owner pays for continual upkeep and maintenance on a pristine "master copy." This mean recopying it, restoring it, digitizing it, or transcribing to new media/formats as necessary to guarantee that a usable copy is available at the end of the copyright term. This also includes storage costs for the Library of Congress (or equivalent body in country where copyright is being extended.)
2. For every year beyond the minimum, compulsory licensing must be made available if there are no publicly purchasable copies of the work. For example, if Vol 1, Issue 9 of Comic X is out of print, and the publisher wants to hold on to the copyright, they must make that material available for sale (ie, via a digital download, on-demand copy, graphic novel or other compendium) or else be subject to compulsory licensing of the work. This ensures that copies of the work are publicly available (even if they have to be extremely expensive.) None of that stop selling for X years to build up demand crap that Disney pulls.
Why these conditions? To make sure that the material is available to the public, and if the owner doesn't want to pay for the master copy (to ensure that the work is accessible after the copyright expires) then the copyright expires right there and then, and if people think it has value, they will copy/distribute it and preserve it that way.
For an example of where this is happening, some copy-protected programs/games from the 80's are no longer available from the original owners (no master copies exist.) The copyright has yet to expire, but even if it did, there are no master copies exist for people to copy and examine. However, there are collectors (ie, pirates) who might have broken the copy protection, archived those copies, and have kept copying them to new media (5 1/4 floppy -> 3.5 floppy -> hard drives -> CD-Roms -> DVD, etc.) This is moot without the hardware to run this stuff, so enter emulators to run the software.
Thus, an item that had value was maintained by the copying of collectors even when the original owner lapsed in their duty to preserve that original. Ironically, this behavior, preservation of a public good (which it would have been, once the copyright lapsed), is illegal under the DMCA. What a way to erase cultural history and hundreds of man-hours of creative work in the name of profit and greed.
Dear Mr Wilkie,
A report has recently been commissioned to discuss the issue of increasing the life of copyright from 50 years after the creator's death to 70 years after the creator's death.
http://www.allenconsult.com.au/resources/M PA_Draft_final.pdf
Leaving my personal views on the actions of major corporate bodies with significant Intellectual Property assets aside for the moment, I would like to make two points.
The first is that copyright is supposed to encourage creation of new material. That's what the artificial structure called copyright is all about. The basic question behind the existence of copyright is "Why would people create something if everyone can just copy it?" Ignoring that people do readily create works for which copyright is applicable, yet still give freely to the public domain, I would just like to say that if any extension is made to the life of copyright I can find no way to justify retrospectively increasing the life of copyright on works that have already been created.
My second point is that the reason for encouraging creation of works is to enrich the public domain, not line the pockets of big business. Government should always be on the side of the public domain and should be constantly striving for ways to bring more material into it, not less. As such, it is my belief that copyright should only exist on a work so long as the copyright owner actively maintains it. The most simple method of encouraging this it to require a token payment be made every, say, ten years to keep the copyright work registered in a central database. The payment need only pay for the upkeep involved in maintaining such a database. The result is that if any copyright work becomes abandoned, it enters the public domain before it becomes worthless.
Please consider these opinions should any relevant vote come before parliament.
Thank you for your time,
Chris Johnson
I am an Australian who is quite frankly sick and tired of the corporate world slowly stomping away all our rights, privileges and national identity in the name of $$$. Look through my older posts for more insight on my views on copyright (short answer - they should be abolished).
I also don't believe in this "War on terrorism" we have enjoined with the United States. I see it as nothing more than a global land grab for US oil and gas interests. Read "Rebuilding America's Defenses" if you don't believe me (http://www.newamericancentury.org/).
Ironically it has taken the "war" to get me interested enough in where we are potentially headed to actually decide that if I can't change those IN power, I better get my voice heard by being in government myself.
So to this end I am interested in hearing from fellow Aussies (and others if you want to make your view known) on whether or not you want to support a future Senate candidate who is a geek at heart, and who plans to have a party based online with forums where everyone can make their voice heard. You've all heard that sending email to politicians is useless; well my view is that email and forums such as this are the BEST way to make issues known to those in politics (well, those that really care, anyway). It will allow me to disseminate my ideas and allow for consensus based policy making.
Anyone who wishes to help by donating a small amount of server space and forum expertise to set up a fledgling party page, please contact me at quizo_NOSPAM_69@hotmail.com and I will get back to you as soon as possible.
As we have learned from Pauline Hanson's screwups, I would need 500 registered party members to make this a legitimate endeavour, in time to run for the 2004 Federal Election. I'm not kidding myself though - as a lone Senator I would not be in much position to formulate national policy and have it succeed constantly, but I would be a tech savvy person who would vote down stupid laws that take away our privacy, and give $$$ to corporations at the expense of the citizenry.
Oh, and instead of a fridge magnet, I'd give everyone a CD with free software such as OpenOffice.org etc, and mandate that government use open standards to deal with the public.
Anyway, if anyone thinks they would like someone in office who is not a politician by nature (I'm a pilot by profession) then drop a comment here or email me (bear in mind Hotmail will die silently after the inbox fills so posting here is preferred!). If there's enough interest I'll begin the process of running for parliament next year.
I don't want to make this post too long so read my other posts for more insight into how I view the world.
Quizo69
Visceral Psyche Films