Fair Use Review in Australia

Jaka writes "The Australian Attorney-General's Department is conducting a review on exceptions to copyright law. Currently Australia allows 4 specific 'fair dealing' exceptions (research or study; criticism or review; reporting of news; and professional advice given by a legal practitioner, patent attorney, or trade marks attorney - it's technically illegal here to convert songs from CD to MP3, or to record a TV show unless it's a live broadcast). They have published a request for public submissions (.pdf or .doc) on whether to expand this list, or adopt an open-ended 'fair use' policy similar to that used in the US and allow the courts to decide if any particular use of copyrighted material should be excepted from copyright law. As we're getting our own version of the DMCA thanks to the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement, if something isn't done to broaden copyright exceptions we'll end up with even more draconian copyright restrictions than the US."

Comments

Re:Australia?

[OzPeter]

To quote a comedian I once heard (whose name escapes me, but I know he was from the US of A)

"I'd rather live in a country founded by criminals, than one founded by puritans."

Getting a bit off topic

I always laugh at what you can't do in the USA because of wierd laws designed to protect you from yourself, compared to what we can do here in Oz.

I remember back in about '76 or '77 when we had full frontal female nudity on prime time free to air network TV. Yet in the US you made so much hoopla out of Janet Jackson's tit that it seemed like you thought it was the end of the world.

And before you write me off as some whinging foreigner, I spend a lot of time in the US and am getting married there in August. I know that individually you can be nice people, but collectively .. that leaves a lot to be debated.

Re:Its a matter of nature

[SilverspurG]

but then again he was stealing IP no matter which way you look at it it was wrong

On the contrary. Joe User is receiving a perfectly legal copy from someone who is sharing it with him. Joe User is not stealing anything. That person who is sharing the copy, in most cases, legally purchased a copy. All whimsical arguments about licensing aside, once a person legally purchases a product and is in possession of it then it is perfectly legal for them to share it with any and everyone.

The US military solves the IP problem in a practical way: If they don't want you to share something they don't share it with you. It's that simple. Military minds are very practical when it comes to solving the real problem as opposed to running around in endless circles debating the legal definition of intellectual property.

If the media industry feels their profit margin isn't high enough they're free to jack up the price of each copy sold. They're even free to come up with customized hardware players that work on an encrypted data format (HA! See how far THAT business model takes them!). This business about pretending they still own something after they've legally sold it is ridiculous. This business about making federal felons out of legitimate customers after the point of sale is equally ridiculous.

Face reality. They legally sold it and the owner of the new copy is legally sharing it. This artificial creation of licensing has got to stop. There are two types of transactions in reality: full sale and rental. If I rent something then I fully expect to give it back. If I buy something, however, then the seller knows at the point of sale that I own it once they've accepted money for it.

I have over 400 legally purchased CDs and fewer than 30 mp3s which I don't legally own the original CD for. I don't share my material on the public network and I don't use common p2p sharing software (Kazaa, napster, whathaveyou) but I am sick and tired of the arguments, dischord, and strife being caused by people who can't cope with the concept of "It's bought and sold... Let go!"

Re:Its a matter of nature

[SilverspurG]

they are selling you intellectual property

Whimsical conjecture. As near as I can tell using the standard five senses that nature endows (nearly) everyone with, they sold to me a physical object. It is well within my technological capabilities to reproduce this object, or something very near to it with the same functionality. They know this before, during, and after the point of sale. If they don't take this into proper consideration then they are poor businessmen and I do not want my taxpayer dollars supporting such a blatant oversight. It's not like they're being blindsided out of the blue by aliens with magical technology. Every other business in the world must carefully consider its supply lines, its customer base, its distribution routes and it is the responsibility of the business owner to ensure that these considerations are properly accounted for before selling the product. If not, it is still the responsibility of the business owner to modify their own processes accordingly to adjust their profit margin.

It is not my responsibility, as a taxpayer, to support a business which sticks its head in the sand about the viability of its product and the availability of technologies which affect its product. Did the makers of leather armor try to take the makers of the longbow to court? No. They made better plate armor. Did the makers of the ancient wooden galleons try to take the makers of steamships to court? Maybe, if they were caught up in ridiculous patent disputes but, in the end, it is their responsibility to make a better product.

Stick with reality.

The physical medium of the CD just happen to be a convienent vessel to transfer the information

More whimsical conjecture. The reality is they sold to me an object. I own that object. They should quit trying to pretend they still own that object.

You have to think of IP rights as a concert ticket

No, I don't... but go on.

With the ticket you can listen to the music at the concert, you can even give the ticket to a friend to go in you place, but should you really expect that you and your hundred buddys get in the door because you made a bunch of photocopys of the orginal ticket?

Did you even read what I originally wrote? This metaphor is the same as hardware players with hardware encryption. The door bouncers at the concert venue are the microchips checking to ensure that the ticket isn't a photocopy. I said that the media industry is free to attempt to implement this. See how far that business model gets them when we have to buy a new player every few years at $200 each.

but one physical cd = one rightful owner

Absolutely. One physical toothpick, one tissue, one sheet of toilet paper... until someone makes more.

There's no secret in the world that the everyday consumer has the technological capability to make more. That issue was brought up at the time CD writers were put on the market and the appropriate compensatory tax was added to the cost of blank CDs (supposedly).

Get over it. Face reality.