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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.
Servlet v2.4 container in a single 161KB jar file ? Try Winstone
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.
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
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.
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.
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.