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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?"
Slashdotting a pdf on Allen Consulting's meager web server. Good move. Oh... good move!
(For those soon to be unable to reach it, it's basically the template rent-a-stance enumeration of weak arguments against extension, followed by a refutation, followed by an enumeration of arguments for, and supporting arguments for each. Selective focus with input from Allen associate Mr. Straw Man.)
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Don't make it retroactive. If it's really about encouraging new products, only make it apply to new products. Any extension to copyright lifespan shouldn't apply to anything created before the law is enacted.
Ironic. Companies like Disney, which make their money by deriviting copyrighted material from out of copyright works, want to retain their own copyright for even longer.
I will certainly be writing to my MP. Unfortunately as it is John Howard this won't make much difference.
Sadly this is another example of policitians putting corporate needs before the greater good. Until corporations can have their leverage over politicians dissolved, this will always be the case.
I say I ain't giving you no tree fiddy you goddamned Loch Ness monster, get yo own goddamned money!
yes good point.
however I cynically suspect that this kind of sensible point of view has absolutely no place in politics these days, especially over anything relating to intellectual property or innovation.
laws are made by companies with money. companies with money have already succeeded. the last thing companies that have succeeded want is innovation.
Will an extra 20 years really make that much difference that movies will either be produced or not produced? If you can't enough make money in the first few years (and ideally the first year)of realease, why bother at all?
How much (other than as much as their pockets can fit) money do they really have to make to justify their projects?
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!
The original justification for the length of copyrights, to keep them long enough to make money, no longer exists because of the rapid transmital and sales possible by current technology. IE a 100 years ago, it could have taken awhile to start amassing sales world wide. Today, distribution is possible worldwide immediatly. Copyrights should be *shortened* in todays climate. It borders on insanity (or an unrighteous desire for monopoly) to wish to extend them in this climate.
The way I see it copy right term extension is transference of public property into private hands without payment being rendered in return. What has Disney --and all those companies that have successfully lobbied for longer copyright durations-- given back to the public in return? Nothing. That's right. They got what was to be public property for free and gave the public *nothing* in return. Its corporate welfare and its theft.
Congrats, your Apache2 install went well. Now make sure you lock that box down and make us proud.
CB
free ipod and free gmail!
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.
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!
The answer is a utilitarian one: Human progress happens by building on the fringes of what we have now. If what we have now is locked up indefinitely, progress will effectively stop due to the cost of determining who owns what already exists.
Think about this for a moment. How much would your computer cost if, for every component in it, you had to pay a royalty to the descendents of Faraday, Telsa, Volta, Planck, Boole, Turing, Babbage and so on for everyone who discovered something crucial to its operation?
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
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