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Australian Media 'Crooks' to Come in from the Cold
pagefault writes "News.com is reporting that millions of Australians who tape TV shows and copy CDs will soon get the right to do it with a clear conscience. From the article: 'The Federal Government will next year legalize the video recording of television shows for personal use, and the transfer of songs from CDs to MP3 players, in a bid to overturn a ban which has made criminals of much of the population."
"These laws" are just Australia's standard copyright legislation. Our "fair use" rights don't include time shifting. It's just the way it's always been but has been routinely ignored (or unknown) by the general public and no-one is really going to sue you for it because (I believe) it would be a civil case where all they could gain are "damages" which would be so minimal as to not be worth the effort (As it's just single use in the home the inflationary costing that peer to peer copying allows them to claim isn't there).
While this is being suggested as a "win" for the people I'd expect there is strong motivation from business to sort this out too. It doesn't suit them for copyright law to be seen as flexible and routinely ignored now that distribution is so easy for people to do.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
I'm an Australian and I know of four police officers who are absolutely aware of my mp3(/ogg) collection. My collection is ripped from cd's that I legitimately own using sound-juicer and put onto my ipod using gtkpod. The police officers that have knowledge of this have part-taken in usage of my ipod to play these 'illegal' tracks and in three cases the officers themselves have children (or personally) who have mp3's both legal and illegal.
So I ask; how can the police enforce a law/requirement that they themselves do not respect? Further more I welcome this ruling from our great overlords (who I voted against) as it will stop most of the population being made criminals for using some thing (fairly) that they paid for. Kudos.
PS. Please don't arrest me and use this post* in court as an admittance of breaking the law!
*In the event that this post is used in the above fashion it is a complete fabrication! *Hides in his Bunker!
I ate your fish.
The question I have never seen addressed is how levies on the sale of blank CD/DVD media is/may be divided up by such organisations such as the RIAA or ARIA (Australia) and given to artists. It may be all well and good to say that the money goes to artists, but in practice I very much doubt it, it is just going to go into the general coffers of the relevant recording industry association to use as they see fit.
So, does anyone know where there is a published policy of how such money does supposedly get allocated to artists?