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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 brings up an interesting notion. At what point does financial globalization lead to the homogenization of national laws, even horrible ones? In the past, idiocy could be somewhat contained due to the fact that different countries have vastly different review procedures and generally different sensibilities about abstract concepts such as intellectual property. This article serves as a frightening example of how financial interests may lead to the exportation of horrible ideas.
One is also led to wonder what good ideas will be lost as testing of creative ways to deal wth modern problems could be in violation of treaties such as this one.
How many roads must a man walk down? 42.
This may be 'finalised' but it has got to get through both houses of parliament, and in the run up to a close election, with any luck the Senate (the upper house) will eviscerate the "DMCA by stealth" approach. At least they didn't get to shaft the Australian pharmaceutical scheme, which the US pharmas desperately wanted to do, as it is very cheap and fair.
A link to the Australian Broadcasting Council news story on the same item.
Humorous signatures are over-rated.
Here in NZ, everyone is upset because we missed out on a fair trade agreement with the States, no one really expects one, but every once in a while someone pops up and says there's one around the corner. I tell you what though, with those kind of agreements required, I feel better off not having one. Let alone all the sucking up Aussie has had to do to get it.
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.
Does anyone with knowledge of Austrailian law know if the Austrailian treaty will violate some of their freedoms in the way the American DMCA has violated some of the United States citizen's freedoms contained within the constitution? This wouldn't sound so outrageous if the freedoms contained within the treaty didn't really tread upon Austrailian constitution/law, but if not...
My question is: How will this affect Project Gutenberg Australia?
I don't imagine they will be able to recall public domain items back into copyright, but does this mean an end to the release of additional public domain works for the next 40 years (when current items released under the 50 year term reach the US level of 90 years)?
I was going to put a sig here, but I had already submitted the message.
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.
I live in the USA. Sometimes it's government does things right and sometimes it does things wrong. When a bad decision is made by the US government, I look to the rest of the world to show them the light... but what happens? They say "great job! we'll do the same stupid thing". Why can't some countries do something different than the US and prove that there is a better system out there.
If the world becomes homogeneous we will lose out on the benefits of diversity. Europe became strong because it was so diverse. Once it and the rest of the world is thoroughly homogenized, the world will be a worlthless clump. It will never grow. Competition and diversity breeds success.
Wait a minute! Are we just following the lead of the British? Sending our worst criminals, the dregs of society, to Austrailia?
Don't do it Aussies! It's a trap!
this insignificant little Australian just wants to know if he'll get a vote in the Presidential elections. You know, now that we're a fully fledged 51st State.
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
no one in australia drinks fosters
why do you think we send it overseas?
dms0
You should feel guilty if your just watching - ATR
Man, the list of countries the people of the US have to apologize to because we can't keep our stupid Government in it's own backyard keeps growning and growning...
Click here for the Australian IT article on this issue
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(^.^)
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*This is the cute bunny virus, please copy this into your sig so it can spread
Every time the US sneezes they pass their germs on to the rest of the world. Not that the US doesn't have its moments in the sun, but in Canada we see this happening far too often - US passes Law X so we must do the same.
The root cause is twofold: US pressure either directly or through unelected world organisations, and the knee jerk reaction of our own politicians.
The US which I personally view as one of the least democratic democracys, is effectively sabotaging democracy in the rest of the world, when it uses its influence to cause laws to be passed in other countries. This is a dangerous game in the long term. Undue influence on the policy in other democratic countries erodes democracy worldwide, and whatever George Bush may think, makes the world a little less safe in the longer term.
I sometimes wish I could boycott politicians like I do the RIAA :)
is fairly dull and doesn't really mention such grand concepts as freedom.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
The whole country could divided into regions, each consisting of 1000 people. That makes around 10,000 regions to cover all letterboxes in the country. We need to find 10,000 Internet connected sympathisers, one living in each region. These people join a mailing list. Material to be dropped is sent to this list (digitally signed for verification). Each person prints 1000 copies at their expense and delivers promptly to all 1000 letterboxes in their region.
The hardest thing will be to agree on the material to be distributed. It should not be extreme, but plainly and simply put forward, in an irrefutable way, that extentions to copyright are not in Australia's interest. Try to keep party politics out of it and keep to the issue.
I don't have the resources or know how to run such a mailing list. Any volunteers (preferably based in Australia)? I'm in Sydney. If lots of people step forward, it will be light work. I don't hae much time, but even if I help get this kick started, by prompting people to come forward, then step away (I'm going to try not to) from it I'll have done my bit.
If interested send mail to copyrightaustralia@yahoo.com. Ideally the people who run this will not be into party politics, but will care passionately about copyright, IP and Australia's well being.
Apologies for the typos, but I am trying to get this out early to attract Slashdot's attention.
America has no goods or resources that you couldn't obtain more cheaper from the APAC region.
While America would be a wonderful captive market full of consumers, the trouble is that they are all paying in US Dollars, and due to the fiscal irresponsibility of the US Government, that is nothing but American Debt. You give away your valuable goods and services to America and they pay you back in debt. Their debt, which is now your problem and not theirs, as there isn't an army big enough to force America to make good on their debts.
No, no, that's the UK.
Speaking as an Australian I can say that Australia is more accurately America's doormat.
Take for example this trade agreement. Australia could hardly get anything on agriculture, one of its biggest export areas and one where America's trade barriers really hurt. And yet we are still planning to sign it as a good deal. Personally I'm trying to work out how exactly this trade deal is going to help us at all. The farmers hate it and claim it sells out the farming industry (actually it's more like the status quo hasn't really changed ie. the deal gives almost zero benefits to farmers). The unions hate it and claims it sells out the manufacturing industry. The actors and TV producers hate it and claims it sells out the Australia movie and TV industry. The doctors are just relieved because they thought it could have been much worse (they thought PBS would be dismantled or crippled - it's still not clear whether it will be or not so the doctors are still worried). There are some vague rumblings of support from manufacturers but it seems more like some will benefit and some will be hit badly so it's a toss up whether manufacturing as a whole will benefit. Trust me, we're a doormat.
I mean geez, Howard, if you're going to send troops to Iraq to support an unpopular war, couldn't you at least get some financial benefit from it? And I thought he was a smart political operative. I guess his love of Bush (trust me even conservative Murdoch-owned newspapers here put in cartoons showing Howard worshipping Bush in bed) over-road his political smarts.
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.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is likely to take a dim view on all of this.
They opposed the prosecution of the Sony mod-chipper - not for piracy reasons, but for competition reasons. Playstation games are cheaper in the US, and have more range in Japan.
They oppose region coding of DVDs - and as a result almost all Australian DVD players, even from the big companies, are region free out of the box. Same reasons, bigger range, more choice.
No matter what the U.S. wants, businesses in there have no force of law here - specifically the RIAA and friends.
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.
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.
As an Australian I'm not really surprised at our prime-minister's submissive attitude towards America. Mark Latham, now leader of the opposition and potentially our next prime-minister, once famously commented that prime-minister Howard was an 'ass-licker' while referring to talks between the president and the prime-minister.
It may have been a little imprudent to say so in front of the media, but he was simply saying what alot of people were thinking at the time. Maybe if American politicians had the courage to be so forthright there wouldn't be DMCA or Patriot or IP lawyers mocking your most basic constitutional rights so flagrantly.
Speaking of which, the 'licker' comment was made during the lead up to the war in Iraq. The assertion was that if we supported the US in their little WMD wild goose chase, then we'd be favoured in the upcoming free-trade talks (not to mention post-war contracts). I guess they stiffed us on the free-trade!
I ran a benchmark on my quantum computer, now I can't find it anywhere!
Absolutely! Which is why you certainly won't see us looking at other brutal regimes too closely in case someone actually expects us to do something about them! Crap, if we'd actually wanted to make a stand against crimes against humanity we would have had to go into shitholes like Rwanda and Cambodia and who knows where else! I mean...what?...oh riiight...sarcasm, huh? Sorry I spoke out of turn.
Australia is still mainly an exporter of agricultural goods (including enormous amounts of sugar and beef) and minerals, I live in one of the biggest cities in Australian and the biggest industry is probably tinning pineapples. As a result we'll get the DMCA for virtually no return, and the USA won't get a lot back because even at 10% less US manufactured goods are going to be more expensive than the asian equivalents of similar quality. About all the extra stuff the USA will be able to sell over here is agricultural goods.
I read with some concern that the Free Trade Agreement with the US will involve harmonising our intellectual property laws with the US, in particular with the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. This would be a disaster for innovation in Australia.
I refer you to the following paper, entitled "Unintended Consequences: Five Years under the DMCA" by the Electronic Frontier Foundation:
http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/unintended_consequences .php
This paper describes the harm that has been done in the US to free speech, scientific research, and fair use since the DMCA's introduction. Introducing a similar law here would be devastating.
My own company, Southern Storm Software, Pty Ltd, would be directly affected by such as change. At present, Australian law protects those who reverse engineer a competitor's product for the purpose of interoperation. DMCA-style laws would make me a felon solely for trying to compete fairly in my chosen market.
I urge you to please reconsider, so that Australia remains competitive in the Information Technology industry, and does not become a victim of the large Copyright interests in the US who are not interested in true and open competition.
Name and address added.
http://www.southern-storm.com.au/
You're right: what's the point of ridding a country from a vicious dictator who brutalizes his own population, destroys the environment, instigates war and supports terrorism unless you actually get some financial benefit from it?!?
No, you are right, we should do it because it is the right thing to do. So, when does the war against Bush begin?
Joking aside, most of the people who criticize Bush and the war are making just your point, though you seem to have missed it: We belive they started the war for their own financial benifit, not because of the goodness of their hearts. After all, they don't mind vicious dictators anywhere else.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
When this was first mentioned, I spent some time reading up on the topic: I might as well share some links here.
The only organisation that I could find actively lobbying against the dilution of Public Domain rights in Australia was Australian Library and Information Association, a professional organisation for librarians. They are following this issue, and may appreciate your input and support; their online journal also contains an insightful article by an Australian National University professor of law on copyrights and public domain.
As other have pointed out, the retrospective extension of copyrights from Life+50 to Life+70, which even those advocating a longer copyright term admitted had no justification, is of particular concern to Project Gutenberg of Australia (site seems to be down at present--anyone know why?), which had published a number of until now Public Domain works on their site (for instance, the works of George Orwell). There's already some discussion of this on Distributed Proofreaders (registration may be required)--if you're a DP'er, you might like to contribute, and if you're not a DP'er, you should be.
HTH
I know, it's a controversial idea. :)
/. readers, get *off* /. and get cracking on those submissions! Or, perhaps, get involved with some organization that's likely to put together such a submission and contribute. Or at least let them know it's an important issue. The Australian Computer Society might be a good place to start, for example. While you won't get rid of this completely, you may help mitigate it so that it's not ridiculously sweeping or draconian.
From the article:
Tighter controls on circumventing technological protection of copyright material together with a mechanism for examining and as necessary introducing public interest exceptions in relation to technological protection measures, along with a transition period to provide the opportunity for public submissions in this area, as well as other measures in relation to circumvention tools
From this paragraph, it appears that the government would actually like to hear what the problems are with legislation that outlaws software that might potentially be used to infringe others "intellectual property". At least they are aware that this may cause problems, and I see this as a good thing.
So, Australian
All that is required for evil to flourish is that good men only rant on Slashdot (or something).
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.
Absolutely fucking hilarious. The Australian posters on this board are all outraged that they're going to be forced to adopt U.S. style copyright laws, and that our government is nothing but a spineless U.S. puppet...and your insinuation is that by adopting more U.S. attitudes and laws, that will somehow make it all better? Maybe we needed to negotiate a free trade agreement on whatever it is that you're smoking right now.
"What?!? You don't like the taste of shit? I know how to fix that! Here's some more shit for you to eat!!"
Nope, not quite. From the SMH article:
Mr Crombie said even after the long phase-in period, Australian beef farmers would still fail to get free trade with the US.
"After a transition period we had expected that all beef tariffs and quotas would vanish," Mr Crombie said.
"In contrast, under the agreement beef quotas will remain in perpetuity.
"And although all tariffs are eliminated, safeguard provisions are in place.
"These will result in tariffs being reimposed if there is even a minor downward movement in US beef prices - a drop of 6.5 per cent."
So basically, after 18 years we get to sell the US another 70,000 tonnes of beef (equivalent to only two days of US beef production), and the tariffs will be right back where they started if US beef prices drop slightly (so we can't even compete in the market). What exactly does this give us?
My uncle happens to be a significant (Australian) beef producer, and when speaking to him a couple of days ago, he seemed quite optimistic about the FTA. I wonder if he still is today.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
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.
But doesnt this treaty have to be passed by both the US congress and the Australian parliment before this (and the other measures in it) actually become law?
We all know how most congressmen only care about money (the same money paid by big american corperations to Bush to get him to push for these nasty things in the first place) so I suspect getting the trade aggreement passed through congress would be trivial.
However, in australia, it has to pass through the Senate. Now is the time for all aussies to pressue the parliment NOT to pass this totally UNFAIR aggreement that basicly gives the US everything it wanted for nothing in return. Just like the senate has rejected or ammended several other contraveral/crappy pieces of Howard Government legislation (much to the annoyance of Howard), it can reject (being a treaty like this, they cant ammend it) the FTA. (at least I think so, I dont fully understand how this kind of thing works here in australia)
In any case, regardless of what happens, one way to protest (against this and other things including the general "bush says jump, howard says how high" moves that have been going on lately) is to not vote for howard or his party.
Why wont the farmers in america accept a "gradual reduction of protection over 15-20 years"?
Reducing the protection gradually over that long a period would give them plenty of time to either get better (and still be able to survive in a lower-subsidy/lower-tarrif/lower-protection environment or if thats not possible, to get out of farming into something else.
A few things should be noted about the agreement.
:P
1.) Its an all or nothing agreement, meaning if either government does
not pass all of the agreement terms then the whole agreement is
termed void
2.) The opposition parties to the current Australian government are
all against the main terms of the agreement, because they don't treat
Australian farmers fairly especially sugar farmers.
3.) The agreement wont go through because in the long run it
favors the Americans more than the Australians in many areas.
4.) Tariffs have been lifted in Australian industries that are
slowly being moved off-shore into Asia i.e.: car manufacture
5.) The US has lifted tariffs on goods that already have a highly
competitive market in the US.
These and many more things about the agreement will see the agreement
fail to pass the senate in Australia, so as far as Australians having
to participate in the imbecilic decadent patenting and licensing
schemes of the US, all I can do is just laugh he he he he he heeeee
Arash Partow's Philosophy: Be a person who knows what they don't know, and not a person who doesn't know.
Yep. Why, with all the guns in the hands of civilians here in the U.S., the government would never dare pass a law like the DMCA.
Oh, wait...they did.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
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."