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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."
If everyone does it, then maybe its not so illegal.
Wow, I didn't know about these laws. Were they enforced often, or just placed on the books so that they could say they did, and then largely ignored? If they're as wide-reaching as they seem (I didn't RTFA), there's no way they could be enforced enough to modify people's behavior, right?
Those who anthropomorphize science and/or nature already believe in an intelligent designer.
I don't think anyone's going to be breathing a sigh of relief because the law seemed both unenforced and unenforcable. If it really made criminals of most of the population, then the average citizen probably didn't worry about this law much, if at all.
OTOH, I like seeing Australia taking a more friendly stance on this. Although the change will mean very little for the citizens, it's a message that they're declaring this stance instead of leaving it de facto.
http://www.TheGamerNation.com/Forums
but i'm not alowed to walk around with 3 oz of weed 20 pills and a dash of nutmeg
I hear the Canadian government is set to legalize nutmeg. You should look into immigrating.
I seriously doubt someone had unclear conscience while trying to copy his own CD-s to his own mp3 player.
Again brainwashing in action to make what's moral and what's legal the same thing.
If they outlaw living should I have bad conscience for being alive?
I mean, I live in Canadam, and I can buy a spindle of 50 blank CDRs for 8.99 CDN or so on sale, 50 DVDs for 9.99. Thats 18 measly cents a disc for CDRs or 20 cents a disc for DVDs... its even less for DVDs if you figure it per GB. The levy is pretty much irrelevant.
Surely a blatant attempt by the media companies to get back at Apple for refusing to allowing to gouge the consumer even more by the 99c/song price.
Perhaps you meant AU$1.69?
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Yes, Australia started out as a group of penal colonies (mostly)...
Yes, There were a lot of penal settlements...
However, most of the people sentenced for transportation were sentenced for quite petty "crimes", say, stealing a loaf of bread or poaching a rabbit so their kids didn't die of starvation.... obviously a hanging offense. It was the 18th century equivalent of running a red light. They still managed to tame the harshest continent on earth and prosper, creating one of the greatest egalitarian societies the world has ever seen.
Secondly, that still only accounted for a very small minority of the population. I'm hazy on the exact figures but only about 4% of the Aus population have any convict descent at all, something like 40% of the current population wasn't even BORN here. Add to that the vast numbers of free settlers who immigrated here over the last 2 hundred years seeking a better life while creating the worlds only multicultural success story (apart from the occasional whacko who appears in every society, and some recent blown-out-of-proportion beach riots where the citizenry took back the beach from thug troublemakers of Middle-Eastern appearance).
Add in the worlds best beaches, coral reefs, rainforests, snow country and general quality of life and all-in-all we feel sorry for anyone who DOESN'T live here. Accuse me of parochialism as much as you want, the fact remains it's God's Own Country with pretty much all of the advantages found elsewhere without most of the disadvantages. Sure we don't get it right all the time but hey, it's pretty damn close.
Now contrast that with a country (no names) who was founded by extremist religious whack-jobs fleeing incarceration once Europe finally took out the trash, who eagerly embraced slavery, who eliminated pretty much all of the native population, who's Founding Fathers were mainly sozzled drunks beating their manservants and who now comprises 5% of the worlds population but accounts for over 50% of the worlds drug usage and who gun each other down by the tens of thousands in the streets each year.
A nation of peaceful, easy to live with honest people or a nation of murdering drug addicts ?..
wow, tough choice....
Oh, and British people are generally ugly and have major personal hygeine problems, so we can forget about them too !
Australia never had Fair Use laws in copyright, it was always just assumed it was ok, now I guess its good there is legislation to protect the consumer.
Australias has to adopt DMCA under the Australian/American Free Trade agreement so I guess its a little late for this now though.
The bigger worry is for the TV channels who stand to lose the most from advertising revenues. More and more people record shows off television simply so they can watch it later to skip through the adverts. If advertisers stop paying premium rates for prime time television, then there is a big risk the quality of the shows will go down due to large inshow advertising "hi joey, i see your enjoying a thirst quenching sprite!" because it's the only way to get the adverts to be watched (assuming people actually watch Joey).
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.
Australia does have Fair Use (or "Fair Dealing") provisions in copyright, it's just that home recording/time shifting isn't one of those provisions.
Australian Fair Dealing provisions allow for:
- research or study
- criticism or review
- reporting of news
- professional advice given by a legal practitioner or patent attorney
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
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?
I see the day when we will have the same restrictions. Look at the MPAA, RIAA. They are constantly trying to close the "Analog Hole". They want to make it illegal to timeshift. How well do you think your TIVO will work when you can only get the signal via their box. They provide one you say? Guess what happens when there is no competition in any given field? The choices suck.
The truth is, this is RIAA math (not the RIAA, but same kind). Remember that 4 blank CDs may cost $2 or whatever, but their value is the $150 that a 4 disc box set might cost (because that is what you could pirate with it). Logic, as usual for these kind of groups, does not apply.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
[US President]: Hey, I hear that you are letting your minions copying CDs down there. You do remember the agreement we had right?
[AUS President]: huh?
[US President]: The FREE trade agreement?
[AUS President]: Oh yeah, I forgot. Don't worry, should be fixed in a jiffy. Btw, I got to get back to Australia in a week. The people seems to get a bit worried when their president is away for more than a few months.
[US President]: Ok, I guess I can replace you with an intern. Go ahead and get out from underneath my desk.
All hail to our Yanky overlords. I, as an Australian, welcome our inclusion into the United States of America as its newest state. I also welcome renaming our parliament to "Congress" and our Prime Minister to "President". One can only hope that the states will outsource its prison facilities over here.
If I can do it, its probably not worth doing... probably
... is still considered quite criminal by US law. Even by the slashdot crowd agrees that it's criminal (golly gee, it's physical property of which the victim is actually deprived!). I doubt that it's any different in Britain.
Just because we don't send people to Australia for it doesn't make it not a crime. We don't send people to Australia for a lot of things these days.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
Not that it would stop them, but remember that the Recording Industry Association of AMERICA has little sway in Australia...
Just to insert a little sanity here. In Australia, most copyright violations are prosecuted in the civil courts (exceptions include sale of couterfeit goos, called 'passing off'). It is only in corrupt countries where the media corporations can easily buy new laws that such things have fallen under criminal prosecution.
Let's not even begin to talk about the DCMA, the shiny new laws which make videotaping a movie in a theatre more heavily punished than several types of killing, or the perpetual copyright on Mickey Mouse or anything else that american corporations bother to pay supreme court justices for.
Nihil Illegitemi Carborvndvm
Although, maybe if we had debtors prisons, fewer people would plan to go into bankrupcy.
Not for long...
To learn more about debtors prisons, see: American Revolution, Causes of...
ARIA has zero political clout in Australia. Remember all that fuss about parallel importing and how it was going to destroy Australina artists? Well ARIA tried to stop it with a political and public campaign (remember the TV ads?). They failed.
Years later, the local music scene is thriving, and CD prices have... well at least stopped rising if not actually come down.
Before the US Congress is passing a resolution to refuse to co-operate with Australia unless they change their laws to protect American IP again, as they were -
because we all know that this is *exactly* what the RIAA wants here Stateside, right? To make you buy the CD, buy the MP3, and then buy it again when the license expires.
Thinking outside my Head
They were a penal colony founded on crimials, but their nation was definitely NOT founded on a basis of criminality, regardless of what the british thought at the time.
That's much like America... from King George's point of view, America is a country founded by "terrorists". We practically *invented* guerilla warfare, for christ's sake.
It's all a matter of perspective. My British friends celebrate July Fourth as "Good Riddance Day".
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Only if you're not an asylum seeker. :)
While I (as an Australian citizen) would be first to say this is a good thing, let's not get all excited. What this is giving us is nothing more than what our yankee friends have had for years - the ability to time-shift and format-shift. And what's more, they're talking of making us pay for it, in the form of a media levy.
On the other hand, it is a pleasant surprise to see a government actually taking a look at reality, and adjusting it's laws thusly, rather than trying to do it the other way around.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Having spent a fair bit of time eyeballing the intellectual property provisions of the FTA back when I was living in Australia (and thus more concerned about it than I am now), I was pretty sure that we've agreed to criminalise copying CDs (or was that bypassing Technical Prevention Measures (TPMs) which are increasingly common these days). Anyway, we're confusing the issues. We SHOULD be able to copy CDs for our own purposes (I'd much rather carry an iPod with my entire collection than a backpack of CDs, many of which are irreplacible). We SHOULD NOT be able to steal music using P2P software et al. The cost of criminalising the former in the name of preventing the latter is too great.
We also did some other stupid things to ensure 'justice' prevailed, including telling judges how to do their job by insisting that they consider the retail value of copies even if that is not realised (ie if your 10y/o son downloads the latest Disney tripe, selling at the time for AUD50 as a DVD, and it sits in [insert your favourite P2P software here] for 6 months during which time 100,000 copies are made then you are to be tried for AUD5,000,000 of piracy despite having nothing to show for it but an AUD10,000 Telstra bill).
There I go confusing the issues again... downloading from P2P networks IS theft (even in a world where CD/DVD prices are extortionate); making the most of your intellectual property license (ie CD/DVD purchase) by transforming the work into more convenient formats is not.
Possibly the fastest way to show how out-of-date the copyright laws are in a country like Australia or New Zealand (where it is technically illegal to format-shift or record shows or whatever) is to sue someone on behalf of the Music Industry as a "friend".
Make a public warning ahead of the actual action, publically stating that some unnamed poor sod will be legally sued into oblivion, and then follow through with the threat (and any subsequent appeals.
Of course, finding a person to do this and take all the flak for this type of action would be near impossible.
The mind boggles at how the music industry would react to having a "friend" sue all the normal users of their music...
"Artist" in this context means "media corporations", and "lose" means "fail to gain".
Every fucking time there's an Australian story this comes up; right after the Simpsons jokes. This might have been slightly amusing 50 years ago when it was invented, not any more. If I posted similar anti-American jokes in every story that mentioned the country I'd be in negative karma in no time, but anti-foreigners is "funny".
No one who tells the joke does it as a sign of respect, it's a sneering putdown. Incidentally, my family came over in the Gold Rush, I don't have any convicts in my family tree that I know of, though if I did I wouldn't be ashamed, neither would I be proud. Are American blacks proud of their "slave history"? Would you joke with then (assuming you're not black) asking where their shackles are? Or ask a Jew to show his Auschwitz tattoo? Actually, I wouldn't be so sensitive if this crap didn't come up every time Australia is mentioned here. Continual baiting wears you down.
I've heard of some countries (Canada, for example?) having levies on blank CDs and MP3 players. The article mentions this is a possibility for Australia too. My question is how does the money raised by these levies find its way to the copyright holders? (Artists, publishers and so on.)
I mean in a practical sense, is there a form that you fill in to state that you are the copyright holder for a particular work, and then they hand over a bit of cash as your cut of the pool? Could I write and record a song, release it under my own label, then make a claim for blank media compensation? Or would I have to be a "recognised" popular artist, or signed to a big record label before the compensation kicks in? I'm genuinely curious to know how the money raised by these levies gets distributed.
My question is how does the money raised by these levies find its way to the copyright holders? (Artists, publishers and so on.)
Basically, all the people not signed by an RIAA label get a net 4% of the goods taken by blank media taxes (they don't have RIAA lobby dollars working for them). RIAA-signed artists get a total of 38.4% of the take, and the RIAA member publishers get 57.6% of the take. Note that this is a description from the RIAA, so that 38.4% may potentially be siphoned off into that 57.6% via fees orwhat-have-you.
It's irritating knowing that a percentage chunk of sales of many computer storage devices goes to lobbyists working to punch holes in free use, and even more irritating knowing that despite the fact that I have to pay for potential infringement, I *still* don't get to infringe legally.
You know...every time the RIAA complains that they need to be around to fund artists, and it's important that they exist to do so, and if they didn't get federal protection in the form of funds...I wonder what would happen if *100%* of that tax went to artists -- publishers not included. That *would* fund artists, presumably cutting out the middleman. Never going to happen, but an fun thought.
Another interesting idea -- an artist can choose to be supported by blank media sales *but* need to place all their work into the public domain *or* be supported by regular retail sales but not get any blank media sale funding.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.