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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."
You guys are still all criminals anyways right? fp
First Canada, and now Australia. When will the US stop trying to push its draconian laws such as the DMCA on other countries?
Australia is trying to come to (the digital) age with its Copyright Act. Today the Attorney-General's department released a call for comments of an issues paper on the standing and possible changes of copyright exceptions: Fair Use and Copyright Exceptions [Word / PDF]. Currently Australians are not allowed to do platform shifting (e.g. ripping a CD to a MP3 player) and may only do very limited time shifting (e.g. recording television programs). Where fair use (US) and the private use exception (EU) may allow these acts, Australia does not know a specific exception for private use.
The Attorney-General said that "Many Australians believe quite reasonably they should be able to record a television program or format-shift music from their own CD to an iPod or MP3 player without infringing copyright law." [press release] The issues paper provides four possible changes to the current "fair dealing" provision and is open to others:
1. consolidate the fair dealing exceptions in a single open-ended provision (would require judicial interpretation)
2. retain the current fair dealing provisions and add an open-ended fair use exception (flexible but uncertainty about scope)
3. retain current fair dealing exceptions and add further specific exceptions (e.g. time & format shifting)
4. retain current fair dealing exceptions and add a statutory license that permits private copying of copyright material (possible problems with licensing scheme and DRMs v. private use)
The issues paper gives a nice insight in Australian copyright law's fair dealing provision, while it tries to provide the basics of other countries, especially the US. It does a fair enough job at that, though its analysis can be quite shallow (for example on the EUCD, which it refers to as the Information Society Directive). It does address the DRM v. fair use issue, which is a central part of the problems the Australian government seeks to solve. I don't see an effective solution in the proposed changes. But then there is no immediate (legislative) solution for it in the US/EU either. Looks like Australia has some catching up to do, before it solves that issue for us all.
We shouldn't need the courts. The law should be black and white. "you can do this" and "you cannot do this". When you leave grey areas you get idiots like the RIAA exploiting them to make profit.
I like muppets.
The problem is that the fair use laws being suggested prevent it from being used for anything that has some form of copy protection or that specifically mentions that copying is not authorised. Which means we can now legally tape stuff off TV but not much else.
I'd be happy to see Brittney Spears CD's at $40/copy with unbreakable DRM, because that's the best chance there is for better bands to get some exposure - by offering works with either more reasonably licenses or more reasonable prices - hopefully both.
I sent in a complaint to the senate inquiry about the US-AU-FTA, and they did nothing (except send me some nice looking books on their brainless decision). Why should I think they will change anything if I say something now?
People like you complain all day but do nothing to get away from Planet United States.
DMCA laws as much as we hate them are going to be here for a good long time. Until someone abolishes for-profit content, it's silly to say the DMCA is purely evil (flamebait MUAHAHA) which it isn't, well not as much as most slashdotters believe. Furthemore the hammer of the DMCA rarely falls on joe user, unless he was using napster (but then again he was stealing IP no matter which way you look at it it was wrong), so continue to tape your tv programs, rip ur CDs, download Pr0n. Until they start sticking DRMs on everything (which then u should boycott the product) and busting heads, sit pretty. The laws are there primarily for the big boys, the major piracy groups and would be piraters alike...
Nuclear war would really set back cable. - Ted Turner
it's technically illegal here to convert songs from CD to MP3, or to record a TV show unless it's a live broadcast)
Can't you just say you were "studying" the recording? Or you were preparing a critique? The exceptions sound rather broad, are they enforced at all?
It's good for business and if it turns out that in 30 or 40 years from now we can replace all our business with some magical positive return system then we can switch to it then. But in the mean time we're finding that we have mostly knowledge as our primary assets and pragmatically it is being protected through these treaties.
Take that with a grain of salt, it's just my off the cuff reaction.
Shh.
Somebody should come up with some standardized layout for /.'ers and other interested parties to submit a professional looking opinion quickly. Who is up to the challenge?
Maybe you can use this, or post your own Australian version, modifying it to what applies in your laws being proposed, and write your Government Representative to voice your concerns at the loss of personal rights.
u se/PostalCode.asp?lang=E
/ statement_e.cfm
Please write your MP on this matter. Use my letter below if you don't want to write your own.
Send your letter for free (no postage necessary), to your MP at the following address:
[your MP's name] M.P.
House of Commons
Ottawa ON K1A 0A6
Find their email address, but write by paper mail too. http://www.parl.gc.ca/information/about/people/ho
Dear Mr. Breitkreuz
To summarize the issues in this letter:
1. Internet Service Providers should not be required to keep extensive logs of private and legal online communications.
2. The government must not stop Canadian citizens from making personal-use copies of their legally purchased software, music, and movie media.
Background:
http://pch.gc.ca/progs/ac-ca/progs/pda-cpb/reform
Here is the reasoning:
The purpose of the Copyright Act is to support creativity and innovation in the arts and culture. To design a new Act on the failed and draconian Digital Millenium Copyright Act of the United States of America, would be a disaster for Canadian culture, and innovation. Also our court system could become clogged with law abiding citizens who make personal use copies of their music, software, and movie collections for no personal financial gain. An implementation of the proposed changes to the Copyright Act would unleash another "Gun Registry boondoggle" onto the Canadian people - creating criminals out of law abiding citizens at the expense of Canadian taxpayers.
Internet Service Providers like Sasktel should not be made to keep extensive client usage logs for possible future prosecution by various copyright-based industries. I don't want to pay for that system to be put into effect, and I don't think most people do. The phone companies are not forced by the government to record the content of phone conversations, only police can do that with a proper warrant. ISP logs are going to be equivalent to phone-taps, and that's a violation of my privacy. It's doing the job of the police, and is for the sole benefit of an industry basing its profits on an outdated business model that is no longer realistic for the Canadian government to protect.
It is completely unfair to be paying a levy to artists organizations for purchasing blank CD media to make home-use private copies of legal CD music, and now to also be unable to legally copy the music I've paid for off of Digital Rights Managed CDs. If copying CD music is going to be illegal, why is the government collecting money from the product for an illegal activity? I'm satisfied that the current levy is helping to compensate artists from illegitimate copying, and no new law is required to prevent me and other people from making sensible backups of our legal music, software, and movie collections.
Your representation in the House of Commons on this matter is greatly appreciated by me, and other supporters of personal liberty and innovation in the arts. I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
my name
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Hmmm, if review or study is an acceptable fair use of copyrighted music, can I as a musician copy any and all the music I like for the purpose of studying how to be a more successful professional musician?
Shitdrummer.
Don't keep putting people back in control who don't represent your interests.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
I think the whole situation with the FTA would be alot more fair if we could just buy things directly from the US. At least we could access the benefits of a large free market.
For example, we can't buy songs from the Apple USA store. The Australian price for a song was about $1.69 Australian according to some sources when the Austrialian apple store went online briefly before being pulled. At that price its way more than the US resident pays, even allowing for currency conversion rates its no more than $1.39 allowing for a profit on currency conversion.
And all the stuff about australia being a small market, etc, really doesn't wash to much when the website is already developed, etc, by apple. Particularly as Apple doesn't try to make much of a profit on all of this, the money all goes to the music industry. The majority of the songs will be common with the US site and shouldn't cost a cent more than it does in the US.
Just another example of greed by the **AA.
Michael
There is no cryptographic solution to the problem where the intended receiver and the attacker are the same entity.
"As we're getting our own version of the DMCA thanks to the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement"
For some reason here in Australia people online have suddenly made a big hoo-haa about the Free Trade Agreement bringing the DMCA here and it makes me sit back and wonder where they were 5-6 years ago since it is already here and has been in effect for quite some time: Copyright Amendment (Digital Agenda) Act 2000.
Not too long ago it was used in the Sony v Stevens case (and succeeded in the appeal) to make PS2 modchip sales illegal in Australia.
It's a bit late to be worrying about the affect of the DMCA in Australia now: We've had it for five years.
A while ago now there was talk of a forcing ISP's into a 'net filtering scheme.
I got vocal with my local members of parliment, then members outside of my area but within my state, then federal.
On my own, I don't know what difference it made, but logic came out and it got smacked down. Let's imagine there were a few thousand other people like me bothering them at every level, explaining as gently as possibly why it was an insane idea.
Make yourself heard as often and as loudly as possible. You will eventually wear the bastards down.
Let's simply ignore that the virtue of the RIAA being strongly government backed, and backed by the major players in the industry, makes it financially extraordinarily difficult for anyone with a more fair business model to compete in the market.
As for unbreakable DRM... I'm all in favor of it. I'm also in favor of the government staying neutral if someone breaks the unbreakable DRM. At some point, people are going to have to come to grips with reality and the reality is that nothing is unbreakable.
The consumer wants RIAA crap? Hardly. The consumer wants music. Given current business models and the distribution of available resources (ie. cash) to concentrate in a handful of established social circles, I'd say the consumer doesn't have much of an option. Your average 8-18 year old isn't looking any farther than the mall to find music nor or they listening any farther than the ubiquitous AM/FM radio.
XFM, Sirius, and internet radio is beginning to change some of that but until the politicians finally decide to separate their ego from their backsides it'll all end up the same as it is now.
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
IMHO there's nothing wrong if the creator of the work can set whatever license he wants - including (at his option) insane prices and unbreakable DRM.
:-/ If you look him up, turn the speakers/headphones waaay down before the page finishes loading.
Fine, but their right to tell me what to do with their work ends as soon as I hand over the cash. Then it's my copy, and they can kiss my ass. I'm not sharing it, but I'm sure as hell gonna do whatever else I want with it, including finding a way around any DRM.
What the consumer should do is react to this by ignoring the obscenely licensed crap the RIAA puts out and starts supporting their local bands that'll let you listen to music without the threats and lawsuits.
You can also go to places like CD Baby and Strange Fortune that specialize in indepentdent music. I was gonna also link one of my old favorite trance artists, Minister, but he's got an obnoxiously loud audio loop on his front page.
"The newly born animals are then whisked off for a quick run through a giant baking oven." --heard on Food Network
Why not give people the right to format shift, the review panel says, we're all doing it anyway, and everyone assumes it's legal, not to mention that the recording industry is not out of pocket if someone format shifts.
Also not surprisingly, RIANZ (NZ's RIAA) is opposing it like crazy because of some nonsensical argument about... well... I don't know... the end of the world occurring if someone makes a copy of a CD they already own for personal use.
Read the government's web pages about it here. The relevant part is under "New Exceptions".
Part of the free trade agreement was the pushing through by the US drug companies to stop Australian government subsidies of prescriptiion drugs to our own citizens. The Prescription Benefits Scheme (PBS) is a part of the larger Medicare scheme that all Australians contribute to via their taxes. It is effectively getting the government to make a large co-payement on drugs, so that unfortunate citizens don't get driven broke by huge drug costs iin order to treat afflictations that did not choose to suffer. That co-payment is then amortised across the whole country.
But the US drug industry cried "unfair to us", and got the FDA to screw up our internal systems for the sake of their profits.
As a person who has relied on specialised drugs in the past, this annoys the hell out of me, especially when seeing people I know in teh US suffer from the same affliction but not be able to afford the drugs. So I can see trouble looming ahead for us.
But what really takes the cake is the Bush recently announced his own PBS scheme for seniors in the US. If it is such a good idea, why did he allow the FDA to be manipulated so that it was sqaushed in Oz?
Free trade agreement? I think not.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
The whole point of the DMCA is that it isn't natural, on the contrary, its whole purpose is to restrict a "natural" property of digital content, namely zero marginal costs of distribution.
/. ways, claim something without providing an argument for it.
Now you may of course argue that such restrictions are necessary, but don't simply claim its natural, because that simply false.
"Until someone abolishes for-profit content, it's silly to say the DMCA is purely evil (flamebait MUAHAHA) which it isn't, well not as much as most slashdotters believe."
Ah, I see you have learned your
"Furthemore the hammer of the DMCA rarely falls on joe user..."
That's simply false. That they are clearly targeting joe user is one of the main problems a lot of people see with things like the DMCA.
"but then again he was stealing IP no matter which way you look at it it was wrong"
Nope, he was breaking copyright, not stealing anything, least of all intellectual property, whatever this dumb phrase is supposed to mean.
"The laws are there primarily for the big boys, the major piracy groups and would be piraters alike"
Again, this is simply wrong. First off all, laws are there for everyone, and further, looking at what the RIAA does your claim simply isn't support by facts.
From Judith Tizard's Amendments Proposed for Copyright Act:
;-)
"Prohibit the supply or manufacture of devices, means or information that circumvent technological protection measures, where circumvention could enable infringement of any of the copyright owner's exclusive rights, and provide criminal penalties for large scale commercial dealing in circumvention devices, means or information; "
ISPs are commericial enterprises that deal in large scale supply of information/data. Bye bye Internet.
Our glorious Australian copyright law gives us the right to make backups. Yep! Even if it's against the EULA.
:-(
But...
That's just the executable. No sound, text, or images can be backed up.
Politicians and public servants are paid to make up ridiculous inconsistent laws like that.
Sux to be us.
BEGIN rant
We can't get everything that is Region 1 coded in Region 4. Hacking your player is probably illegal.
One DVD store worker actually recommended I download the stuff I was looking for because it is never going to be released here in Oz.
rant END
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
Go back 10 years and I myself was buying many more CDs and (then) VHS videos purely because the type of stuff I was buying wasn't necessarily reviewed in a magazine somewhere and I took a lot of chances by just buying many of these products - most of the time I was severely disappointed.
Nowadays, I can just fire up Google and read a review...
The fact is that both the music & movie industry now sell a higher proportion of low quality sub-standard products that they push through advertising & hype. However, with a much more informed consumer base, it's more difficult to sell those products successfully.
So let's be clear about this, the issue is not about "fair use", it's actually about the MPAA and RIAA stopping the flow of information across consumers because bad "word of mouth" reviews do more harm to sales than anything else.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
They should define unfair use and work from that.
Unfair use- any use that results in a tangible loss of potential income from the copyright holder from the sale of the copyrighed material (i.e. not from the carrier or from any appended item*).
So it follows that fair use is anything that doesn't cause a tangible loss of income. Private copies for your own use are fair, transfer between media types are fair. Mix tapes for the wife are fair, mix tapes for distant friends are not fair.
Recording TV programs for yourself or close family is fair, recording TV programs and selling them is not fair.
*If they also define it as the copyrighted material itself (not including any carrier) that they earn a profit from, then it stops that Lexmark crap where they attach the copyright material to a toner cartridge and pretending the whole cartridge is the copyrighted material.
The Prescription Benefits Scheme (PBS) is a part of the larger Medicare scheme that all Australians contribute to via their taxes.
Sorry to rain on your rant, but it's not the Prescription Benefits Scheme, it's the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.
http://www.aph.gov.au/library/intguide/SP/pbs.htm
Rants have far more sway if they're accurate.
Australia has welcomed their new American overlords.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
Why is it that in America you have the right to shoot anyone on sight if they're trespassing, but in your own home you don't have the right to take out a screw-driver, open up your DVD player and tinker around?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
The trouble is that the RIAA represents most "good" music out there. Why? Because either one of the RIAA members will sign up an artists as soon as it gets popular enough or will just buy-out the non-RIAA company that represents them.
Your assumption seems to be that there is a lot of good music outside the RIAA and although "good" is highly subjective, statistically most music which is generally considered good is owned by RIAA members.
Saying that an average 8-18 your old isn't trying to find good music is basically saying they have bad taste, which is just plain ridiculous. Who says these people aren't looking but just didn't find anything else they think worth listening to?
This is not an attack on you personally but this argument is used quite a lot whilst being highly subjective. For the large majority of consumers, RIAA-backed music is more to their liking than the music produced by non-RIAA companies.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
1. The open-ended fair use exception is broader in scope than the Australian fair dealing exceptions, which are restricted to specific purposes.
2. The fair use exception is technologically neutral and does not require revision through legislation.
(I would think that the benefits of both these facts is obvious to all.) From me:
1. Greater harmony with USA laws is appropriate because of the FTA
2. '('time-shifting') is a fair use (Sony Corporation v Universal City Studios 464 USC 417 (1984, S.C ('Betamax decision'). ' this is NOT the case in Australia.
IMHO it should be.
3. a more harmonised legal environment will allow the better funded USA EFF to fight the good fight in the USA, and we can then reap the downstream benefits in Australia. (sorry about the self interest)
4. Law should be a reflection of how people think society should be ordered. The vast majority of Australians think that they can :
- record TV on their VCR's
- move music from CD to MP3
the current Australian law is not in harmony with these views, and as such Australians are commiting technical breaches of the law every day, mostly unwittingly. And the AG says so in the intro page.
This is wrong, as law should serve the people, not the corporations. :-)
Now I need to go and read that paper in depth, but that's my first thoughts.
We should be able to have backup copies of content or be able to convert it to other formats that are playable by the hardware and/or software the consumer owns.
It really pisses me of that i am in region 4 and i happen to like some content that just happens to be reguin 1, 2 or 6 that are not available in Australia.
You make an excellent point.
;)
I was rather venemous about the proposals in various areas, but in my 'official' correspondance I couldn't have sounded sweeter and I encouraged others to do the same.
Swearing and moaning about an issue might impress your buddys, but when you're dealing with people that consider themselves the 'upper crust' of civilisation, you need to use some longer words and occasionally even a thesaurus. Important not to talk down to them either.
I'd hope that would all go unsaid, but I guess you can never be too careful
They are filming "The Memphis Trousers". Pretty amusing :-)
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Welcome to the world of Australian taxi drivers.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
No, we just can't own semi-automatic and automatic rifles, you drongo.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
The more I read about these so-called "free trade" agreements, the more I have to laugh. Take this quote for example. What about a DMCA-like provision is considered free? It seems to me that these contractual clauses are just a world wide extention of US policy. Adopt our laws, or we close down trade channels, etc, etc. What a silly way to do business...
BDR Gear
Outdoor gear, MREs, and more!
They are filming "The Memphis Trousers Half Hour". Very amusing :-)
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Nice link, but almost three years old.
This was far more recent, about six months ago it raised its head again.
It got smacked down harder than Ike on Tina.
... he hates you because you're free.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
No way is option 3 or 4 any good! The fair dealing legislation is a joke. In this regard, the U.S. is in a FAR better position that Australians are. You are aware that the fair dealing legislation is VERY narrow and only covers those who are doing:
1. Research and study
2. Review and criticism
3. "Reporting the news", or
4. Legal advice (although the Crown is deemed to own copyright in federal statutes, and each State in state statutes).
You'd think that research and study would be pretty good, but noooo. You MUST demostrate that you are doing some particular course to even get close to this. You cannot be doing private research and reproduce any of the material on a medium such as a blog, etc.
Only number 1 (consolidate the fair dealing exceptions in a single open-ended provision) seems reasonable to me. And that is only good if clear legislation is formed.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Once Bob the indie down the street can't sell his stuff non-DRM'd and you can't play it, come back and talk about this.
If you're talking about a digital imprimatur, then what you suggest is already true in the case of computer programs for video game consoles.
Infact New Zealand has been reviewing the copyright law too, I'm still waiting for these new rivisions to make it legal to format-shift music.
The strange thing is, it only applies to music, dvd's and other video medium, you're bound by law not copy or "format-shift".
http://www.fanboy.co.nz/adblock/
Or, you could just order some iTunes gift cards from Amazon. They ship to Australia.
But as I understand it, you still need a credit card or debit card so that Apple can make a 0.00 USD charge to verify that the buyer is in a territory serviced by Apple's licensors. Yes, these licensors and their policies differ from territory to territory.
That was the Family First party:
e ring100904.pdf
http://www.familyfirst.org.au/policy/internetfilt
Here's a snippet:
"A Newspoll study found that 93% of parents of teenagers would support automatic filtering of
Internet pornography going into homes"
Well duh!
There is normally one of the minor parties that waves the "internet porn" flag at each election, and nothing ever happens, because in the end, its:
1) Very expensive and time consuming to implement
2) Easily bypassed.
"It's the smell! If there is such a thing." Agent Smith - The Matrix
It really pisses me of that i am in region 4 and i happen to like some content that just happens to be reguin 1, 2 or 6 that are not available in Australia.
Didn't the ACCC, Australia's antitrust agency, make a ruling that region lockout is an anticompetitive practice and thus all DVD Video players sold in Australia have to be region switchable?
Quotes from the article:
"it's technically illegal here to convert songs from CD to MP3, or to record a TV show unless it's a live broadcast"
followed by:
"or adopt an open-ended 'fair use' policy similar to that used in the US" (seems like they're saying this is better than what they have now)
followed by:
"if something isn't done to broaden copyright exceptions we'll end up with even more draconian copyright restrictions than the US." (except that it isn't better)
Wierd...
We Americans get all shocked and "send him to federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison!" at the sight of sixteen year old pornstars, but you Aussies are quite copacetic with the idea.
(No, seriously. Go to Hush-Hush.com and read their terms of service. I can't paste it in here, 'cause I'm at work and we have a proxy filter.)
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Copyright law itself is the exception: a temporary, artificial monopoly created by the government to allow intellectual property to act like real property in an otherwise free society. Exceptions to that exception are liberty peeking through. Because otherwise, free people will just violate the copyright law, undermining both intellectual property and the government that created it. That's what the first American nationalists meant by "inalienable rights": take them away, and the people will take them back. Copyrights have to be fair to the people, or the people will violate them. The copyright balance is a fundamental dissonance between liberty and capitalism, "free" and "priced"; getting it wrong threatens to destroy not only the property, but also to ripple through the basic moral respect government requires to govern.
--
make install -not war
Copyright law should be focused on unauthorized distribution of copies, not with the act of copying. Let people copy, time shift, format shift, etc to their heart's content, as long as they are not distributing their copies to other people, the law should not be concerned!
nobody's arguing the puritans left england as the persecuted - what it objectionable is the way they so quickly became the persecutors.
Having Killed the Indians, they used the Bible to justify slavery, and continue in that vien to seek out and destroy weak and underrepresented populations.
The Baptist are now telling people how to vote - or be ex-communicated.
so their point in coming here wasn't to "Avoid" persecution. It was to re-establish persecution on their own terms - and this is what is objectionable.
AIK
The big clash that was always going to happen is between DRM and anti-circumvention laws (an absolute requirement for the distributors to be able to prevent copying) and fair use rights (an absolute requirement that the distributors cannot prevent copying in certain cases). Note that the latter is very different to fair use exemptions (which is all you currently have in most jurisdictions, if you have anything at all) because the exemption says "If you can copy it, then the act is not illegal", while the right says "The distributor must not prevent you from copying it".
There isn't really much scope for compromise here. The distributor can never have rock solid controls on copying anyway (it's technologically implausible) and even if they did, they'd then have to undertake to provide copies as the law requires, such as on any new media format, or for backup (which is financially implausible and not future-proof), so that idea isn't really worth pursuing, legally or technologically.
Immovable object, meet irresistable force.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
What if someone's motivation for distributing their work isn't financial? The GPL is a somewhat poor example here, since Stallman's usual argument is that without copyright you wouldn't need the GPL, but in that case the key thing is that if you redistribute the material, you may only do so together with offering certain rights along with it. Here copyright provides protection for a moral position, not a financial one.
I think the proposal in question has merit as a practical measure, but it's slightly missing the deeper issue: the point of copyright is to encourage the creation and distribution of new works, by encouraging those who create such works to distribute them in exchange for some sort of "return on investment". There's nothing in that argument, either legally or morally, that requires such a return to be financial.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Isn't the RIAA music what the public is exposed to the most? No wonder the statistics are tilted in the RIAA's favor, not only that, but somehow they aquire this almost zombie brainwashed notion that if it isn't made by this or that company (in this case RIAA backed lables and artists), then it sucks, which in my opinion is inaccurate. If they had a balanced influence of indie and RIAA the statistics would be different.
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
Firstly, modernising our copyright laws is a great thing! Australians should act to provide input to the deliberations.
However, "Fair Use" enshrined in copyright is not specifically nescessary in Australia. The copyright laws here are more to do with "Users" and "Owners" of copyright. Consumers dont fall into either category (unless they start selling illegal copies, when they become "Users" of copyright, illegal users at that). However, if I buy a CD in Australia, as a consumer, I am entiteled to certain protections. I am entitled to use it as I see fit and it must function as advertised (a CD must play in any device I could reasonably expect it to play in). This allows Australians the right to claim their money back for copy protected CDs that dont play in a CD player or to bypass said copy protection to allow them to play said CD.
Like DVD region zoning; in Australia a consumer can freely bypass CSS to allow them to watch a DVD as this is what they reasonably expect when they purchase it.
The reason we need Fair Use is to allow media shifting; as this is not as clear cut a case of reasonable expectations protected under consumer laws.
Essentially, rather than our CD being considered a product, we need the law to recognise that it is both a physical product that must work (see comments above) AND a virtual product. IE, we actaully buy music to listen to; we should be able to listen to that music via any medium we see fit.
Let me be clear, I personally DO NOT agree with wholesale sharing of music files. In my opinion this is offside. However, I see nothing wrong with sending a friend track 6 off my new album to show them how cool it is or ripping the entire thing to my iPod and the hard drive of my car stereo. I would like this not to be technically illegal. Im also not certain we need to water down copyright to add this protection to consumers; this could easily be covered in statuatory consumer protection and policed by the ACCC.
Anyway, my rambling $0.02...
err!
jak
:) Fortunately such activities would most likely be viewed as an unfair barrier to trade by the ACCC.
You see, in Australia we have a statuatory body with the power to enforce consumer protection.
As the DMCA only relates to copyright, then they would be unable to enforce it against a physical product anyway. They would need to patent the specific method of operation for the printer cartridge in order to legally prevent people manufacturing copies.
Whilst we have to add a DMCA for the FTA, it doesnt impact on existing consumer laws or legal precedent. Our courts have been quite hard on the symmantics of "its got some software in there so we can get copyright protection" since they tend to see the intended and expected function as more binding under law.
Thats just my take anyway.
err!
jak.
I was more addressing those who attack America for being founded by Puritans. The way they talk, you'd think that they were the only ones to found your country!
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I'm not saying that indie music sucks. I wouldn't dare say such a thing since it is just a retarded notion that ones opinion is better than somebody elses, which I'm trying to steer clear of here.
;)
All I'm saying is that practically every indie music that gets somewhat popular is eventually signed by an RIAA-backed label.
Acception this, logic dictates that overall, the majority of popular music ("popular" meaning statistically considered "better" by the large public) is RIAA-backed.
This in turn dictates that non RIAA-backed (or "indie" if you will, though this really doesn't cover the spectrum very well) music is in general, less popular. To therefore say that such music is better is saying the taste of the large majority of the population is inferior to your own. That is a purely subjective statement, and an arrogant one as well.
Worse yet, to blindly assume that this majority would in theory prefer indie music is atleast as "zombie brainwashed" a notion as the one you complain about, even more so perhaps if accepting the statement I put forth several paragraphs ago regarding RIAA sucking in most popular indie music.
Unless ofcourse you think music stops being good as soon as the RIAA starts backing it
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
All I am saying is that RIAA backed music is considered the best becasue it is the only one the public for the most part really gets to hear, and that if they had more independent, music, then they would be able to judge on quality of the song with less of a bias, although there is no gaurentee that they will like some/most/all independent music in the first place.
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot