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Australia To Adopt U.S.-Style Copyright Laws
An anonymous reader submits "Australia has just announced that it has finalized a Free Trade Agreement with the United States. Included in the treaty is an agreement for Australia to implement American-style DMCA copyright laws, extensions to the term of copyright, and an agreement to move towards American-style patent and trademark laws (and we all know how well those work, don't we.) I suppose this is the misery-loves-company school of treaty negotiation."
This is terrible. For a business like ours that could only exist because of the public domain this is a sad thing to see. We were planning on introducing 1984 soon and shipping it only to Canada, Australia and New Zealand, but this cuts the market down for it even more.
Australia was always shit with copyright, and under the control of various copyright groups anyway. A friend I knew at university was accused of distributing large amounts of software. He had his house raided, his computers taken, his parents laptops seized as well, all under suspicion. Nothing was ever found, he hadn't (to my knowledge) ever distributed copyrighted software, nor was he ever charged with anything.
Do you think he ever got any of his stuff back? No chance. The police say they no longer have it, but aren't forthcoming about which copyright agency took possession of it. It shits me especially since he was borrowing one of my motherboards and drives at the time. All gone.
That was in 2000. There's no accountability now, I don't see this as making anything worse.
Um ... you might want to note the following from SMH today.
Quarantine standards would be downgraded, Americans would be able to circumvent investment rules and American drug companies would get the opportunity to override the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme that provides cheap drugs to Australians, the Greens said.
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Addresses here. Don't forget the senate as Greens and Labor together may defeat any required legislation.
Don't be abusive, but explain the problem clearly. Most pollies probably aren't even aware of how dangerous such moves are to Australia's well being.
Australia does not have a bill of rights, and the consitution doesn't really focus on the rights of individual.
It's probably reflective of the circumstances in which the country became a federation -> via an Act of parliament and not a war.
Also interesting is that the governments powers in relation to the areas where laws can be enacted (listed in Section 58) can be somewhat overridden by treaty obligations!
It happened before -> the Federal government stopped a dam from being built (a state issue) in Tasmania by declaring the area it was being built in a world heritage listed area.
It's been happening for a while. The US had some perfectly reasonable copyright laws up until 1976, when we changed our laws so we could join the Berne convention. We changed our laws to "harmonize" with Europe. And then in 1995, Europe extended their laws from life+50 to life+70, and shortly thereafter [1996], the US extended its laws to match.
It's a crap trick that political and corporations play. Pass a law in one area, and then force other areas to pass similar laws to "harmonize". It's why other contries are getting their own versions of the DMCA
Do I even have to ask why instead of Australia extending their copyrights (they were/are a life+50 nation), the US doesn't scale back US laws to match Australia's?
no one in australia drinks fosters
why do you think we send it overseas?
dms0
You should feel guilty if your just watching - ATR
Click here for the Australian IT article on this issue
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*This is the cute bunny virus, please copy this into your sig so it can spread
is fairly dull and doesn't really mention such grand concepts as freedom.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
A link to the Australian Broadcasting Council news story on the same item.
It's actually the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, as noted throughout their copyright notice, etc.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/02/06/10758540 63514.html
Singapore's FTA with the US came into affect on 1st Jan. It looks like the US is making it a matter of policy now to ram the DMCA down trade partners' throats.
See here: http://news.com.com/2100-1025-1000154.html
S.
At what point does financial globalization lead to the homogenization of national laws, even horrible ones?
It has already happened in many areas. Numerous treaties, including this one, have helped make patents cross-border. The EU is a giant cross-border experiment, and systems like NAFTA, NATO, OPEC, and the Arabian and Asian trade pacts, reinforce things even more.
The UK is already experiencing a small form of one world government in terms of the European Union. European Union laws often override the old British ones entirely, particularly in areas relating to human rights. It's not going to be long before something like UN law overrides all others, and if it's like the UK.. we won't like it, but we'll fall over and accept it anyway.
Last time I looked at pricing for such services in Australia the costs were astronomous.
Think about the population density in much of Australia. It's the second-lowest in the world, right after barren Mongolia, according to about.com. It's expensive to run phone cables out to remote sheep ranches in the middle of the desert.
That being said, I'm still amazed that Aussies have such a anti-tech hard-core conservative political bent, what with all their censorship laws and the like.
May we never see th
At the end of the day, there is no way that the Liberal Coalition in Australia will ever be able to force this so-called FTA through the Senate.
The ALP have indicated they will block passage, as has at least one Independent.
Long live the Senate.
A dream is good. A plan is better.
Well actually, we do, technically. Queen Anne's Bill of Rights of 1689 is still on the books, inherited from English Law. Some quotes:
Oh, you thought the US invented this concept? The "Founding Fathers" had a very flexible definition of Copyright.The Australian Constitution is available on the web (Naturally), and a casual read will show that it's been heavily inspired by the US one of over 100 years earlier. We like to think ours is better, but YMMV.
Zoe Brain - Rocket Scientist
Come to New Zealand instead. We are close to Australia and share a lot in common. But we have an Anti-Nuclear policy that prohibits US naval vessels from entering our economic zone with confirming they do not cary nuclear weapons or propulsion. As the US will never release this info, then can never come visit. Without changing our anti-nuclear policy a FreeTrade agreement is pretty much impossible for New Zealand.
And having said all that, it really isn't so bad now. 32GB/month 512/128 ADSL for US$60/month or 10GB/month 1500/256 ADSL for US$70/month. Sure there's loads of room for improvement, but we aren't the broadband backwater we were 2 years ago.
Yeah, that's why we have PAL television, GSM mobile phones and 240V electricity ...
... good dog
sit boo-boo sit
I work for a Federal Senator, and I *BEG* any Australians reading this to write to their Member of Parliament, Senator and local newspaper to raise awareness of the issues relating to IP laws in this deal.
Australians are extremely apathetic about politics and most of you probably believe that writing to an MP will have no effect, but I assure you that we read everything that comes in and the Senator reads everything personally too. It only takes a few letters to make a real difference.
They say for each letter written to a newspaper there are 30,000 people with the same opinion who don't bother to write. Don't be one of them.
Focus your letter writing on:
- the Democrats
- the National Party
- the ALP
The government is too tightly controlling of its members for anyone to break ranks, except maybe the nationals. The Democrats are probably the most important players, and the Greens are unlikely to deal on this and the ALP will make a strategic decision.
Read Pynchon.
Immigration NZ lists a lot of IT jobs as being "Priority Occupations". These make it pretty easy to come into the country and work.
There are heaps of really good recruitment companies that help with a lot of this sort of stuff if people want to come on over. Here is the directory listing of recruiters in nz Google NZ Recruiters
I think what you might be trying to say is that a small, but vocal, minority of businesses are trying to prevent the progress of science and useful arts.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Because you are absolutely naive if you think Howard cares at all about the people of Iraq. He didn't say anything when the Kurds got gassed. Before the war, during the war and after the war he demonised Iraqi refugees and tried to send them back to Iraq so that Saddam Hussein could kill them. He even lied about Iraqi refugees throwing their children overboard in order to get re-elected. This was a huge scandal in Australia. So during the last election he was willing to sacrifice Iraqi refugees in order to get re-elected. Do you really think he gives a damn?
I seem to remember him admitting that the reason Australia was going to war was to help America. Helping the Iraqi people was never an issue. The Free Trade agreement was an issue that was repeatedly brought up by politicians and the media as well as the need for American military protection. Considering this he is stupid to send troops to war without guaranteeing economic and military benefits for Australia. He really is Bush's doormat.
There is a fundamental misunderstanding here. People say "adopt DMCA style laws". The fact is that these laws (now enacted by the US, EU and other countries) are the result of the WIPO Internet Copyright Treaties agreeded upon in the late 1990's (1998 if I remember correctly).
What this means is that these countries long ago signed up to the treaty, it just takes a few years for legislative changes to be introduced and have effect.
Oh and to add, quite a lot of these refugees are still locked up somewhere - yes including children and have been for years. Some of them have gone so far as to sewing up their lips, committing suicide, etc. The Howard government is trying to reduce their legal rights as much as possible (Wait, they have the right to appeal? Hmm, let's see if we can take that away...)
Anyone in Australia during the last election would remember the demonisation of Iraqi refugees. Man, they were a threat to the country! Evil, I tell you, the sort of people who would throw their own children overboard these Iraqis fleeing from Saddam Hussein. They are not the sort of people we want in this country. If we don't stop them now, they'd all come here and ruin this fine country of ours Australia. Only the Howard government can stop this. The opposition would let all these *Iraqis* come in. This won Howard the election (he was trailing in the polls before he started this line).
After listening to Howard demonise Iraqi refugees for years, not even the most fervant Howard fanboy would believe that he went to Iraq to help the Iraqi people. Especially since the demonisation still continues to this day. In fact his core base would probably turn against him if he started expressing too much concern for Iraqis. Talkback radio (ie. Alan Jones and John Laws) would kill him.
They did exactly that here in the USA, stole about 10 year's worth of stuff from the public domain and put it back under copyright.
No, they didn't. In Britain, when they enacted life+70, they returned all stuff that had left life+50 but not life+70 to copyright. In the US, however, copyright extensions have merely extended the length of copyright, not returned anything to the public domain. The latest copyright extension made it 95 years for old books, but all the books that had left copyright - those older than 1923 - stayed out of copyright.
There's one exception, though. At one time, to get US copyright, you had to publish in the US within 30 days, and renew that copyright in 28 years. Failure to do so would lose copyright in the US. The URAA returned copyright to all the foreign books that had lost US copyright or (more common) not got it in the first place.
I think you should go and have a talk to your lawyer friends about some of the misconceptions you have disclosed in your post. You got it right when you referred to the common law (i.e. the body of judge-made law that can trace its origins back to the Norman monarchs, and really got going when the Plantagenate Henry II established a uniform court structure to replace the local assemblies previously used by individual areas to dispense justice specific to that area) as common sense, but the common law is almost entirely subordinate to the will of Parliament, which, like Congress, has a reputation for doing all sorts of stupid things. The US is also a common law jurisdiction, but that hasn't stopped the DMCA yet as far as I am aware.
Your reference to the lack of specific legislation is simply reflective of the differences in legislative practice between Australia and the US. Australian Parliaments tend to make statements of general principle that the courts can interpret with a certain amount of flexibility, whereas US legislatures seem to be much more controlling, even to the extent of very specific (and often quite harsh) sentencing formulae.
The right to record TV broadcasts doesn't actually exist: it is most definitely illegal. The right to decompile is protected by legislation, not by common law. Go read the Copyright Act (avaiable at AustLII) for more info.
Finally, the article you linked to is by Sir Anthony Mason, Chief Justice of the High Court during the most progressive era of its existence. His words should therefore be treated with a certain amount of caution, especially given the more conservative, literalist makeup of today's Court.
We are a new Australian political party attempting to get 500 members and based online.
Our stance is that the FTA and specifically this DMCA provision runs contrary to Australia's best interests, so if elected we will strike it down.
We also oppose software patents and call for a dramatic reduction in copyright terms back to the 10 year timeframe or similar.
Visit our website, and more importantly our forum, for more in depth information and a chance to actively shape our policies.
Visceral Psyche Films
For Australia, the agreement includes:
- Immediate access to US markets for all manufactured goods and services;
- Elimination of tariffs on exports to the US of wheat, other cereal crops and minerals;
- Almost all tariffs to be removed from manufactured exports and the automotive industry;
- Sixty-six per cent of agriculture tariffs to go;
- The right to maintain local content rules in broadcasting and film;
- Maintenance of the hotly contested Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, although a committee will continue dialogue on health policy.
The United States will:It does appear there have been additional concessions made by Howard that are not being made known to the Australian public. It is only through the American spokepeople that we are aware of these concessions at all.
It has not yet been ratified by parliament, and the opposition is promising to block it in the Senate in it's current form.
We will see...
Q.
Insert Signature Here
An overview
In particular, I quote:
"Australia retains the flexibility to implement the Agreement in a way that meets our domestic circumstances, for example, providing a mechanism to introduce public interest exceptions in relation to technological protection measures."
The Auses don't know what they are getting themselves into. If there is anyone from Aus still reading this - stop this trade deal while you still own your own natural resources.
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
According to the NY Times the "United States pays 10 times as much as Australia does in tariffs in the joint trade between the two countries."
Your numbers are off by a fair bit, as there are approximately 20,000,000 Australians in an area less than half the size of South America, a continent noticeably smaller than North America. The number of Indonesians is closer to 200 million than 300 million (234,000,000 according to CIA World Factbook estimate).