Australia To Legalize VCR Recording and CD Ripping

paritosh writes "While the rest of the world is trying to figure out how to stop the assault of anti-consumer intellectual property laws, Australia is breaking free from them." From the article: "See, it is currently illegal in Australia to record shows off the telly, or to transferbangle (Australian for copy) music from CDs to portable music players. The end result is that a large portion of of the Australian citizenry are technically breaking the law, and while that may not sit poorly with a nation born of criminality, it makes the legal system look a tad bit ridiculous. Could you imagine shipping all of those offenders to Madagascar?"

Comments

Will this come to fruition?

[dada21]

I'm concerned about a government with a history of destroying basic rights with excessive laws trying to change those laws with more laws.

I've heard promises from politicians every time I open a paper or turn on the news -- and those promises never bear fruit. I'm no Austrialian, but I wonder if this law that will "give" you a right (rights aren't granted by law) is really all they say it is, or if it is just a shill for the copyright-supporting cartels in some way.

I guess only time will tell. I don't trust it and I don't believe it will help consumers in the long run, but here is one place I want to be proven wrong (with time!)

Re:Will this come to fruition?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the same country that made selling regioned DVD players illegal as it was anti competitive. The same lot that insisted that all ISPs produced a "family friendly filter", but did not mandate that people use it. That drugs should be tested more than any other OECD nation before entering the market place giving us some of the safest medical practices in the world.

Odds are they will change the laws to say that selling or giving away copyrighted material that is not yours to do so is illegal. Making copies is fine. The music and film industry will kick up a fuss, but will not be able to "baffle with bullshit" since neither have as much political sway as a polititians daughter with her ipod, the problem will go away.

I don't think we will see any mandated copy protection systems, for the same reason that I can play DVDs from any region on my DVD player and can do so without breaking the law.

The rest of the world(and in particular the US)

[Anonymous Coward]

Take note of this: The laws should be shaped according to what the people want/deem illegal.

Re:The rest of the world(and in particular the US)

[ScrewMaster]

Up to a point ... legalizing murder would probably cause more problems that it would solve, even if the vast majority of the population thought it was a good idea. And copyright holders are, after all, part of those people you're talking about. It would be very shortsighted of us to ignore their needs since they create things that we want! Or at least, own the rights to things that we want. Conversely, it is equally wrong to tilt things so far in their favor that the rest of us get hurt. We had struck a pretty decent balance here, for a couple hundred years. That's what got thrown out of whack recently.

The issue (both here in the U.S. and in Australia) has less to do with the rights of the individual as it does with undue corporate influence in government. I don't know about Australia, but for a very long time the United States permitted limited duplication of copyrighted works by individuals. Fair use, and all that. Then, at the behest of some very large corporations that right was effectively nullified (oh sure, technically we still have it but in practice we don't ... just encrypt your data and fair use goes right out the window.) Too bad so many otherwise civilized nations have been modelling changes to their "intellectual property" laws after the way the United States' are now, rather than how they used to be.

Re:The rest of the world(and in particular the US)

[ScrewMaster]

This has not been because they believe that this is the best "model" or solution, but because they have been arm twisted by the US government and it's shill the WTO. They in essence get denied "free trade" with the US unless they tow the party line.

And who's fault is that? The world is full of bullies: if you can't stand up to a bully it's your problem, not his. More to the point, however, is the fact that corporate influence is just as big an issue in other countries as it is in the U.S., and the adoption of U.S.-centric intellectal property law cannot be explained away entirely by diplomatic and trade pressure. No, the reality is that politicians anywhere can be bought, and the media outfits have just as much (or more) political influence in other countries as they do here. This is even more true when you consider that most of them aren't even U.S. corporations!

As it happens, I think that the whole concept of "intellectual property" stinks to high heaven, and if other nations have the common sense to reject it so much the better for them. Also, may I point out that your examples aren't very relevant: few Oriental nations have any respect for IP (China and Taiwan certainly don't ... odd that their economies are booming in spite of that), and India and Russia aren't exactly bastions of copyright enforcement either. You would have been better off using the European Union: they've taken what we foisted upon them and have carried it past the point of absurdity.

Well...

[vidarlo]

Australia was originally a place for criminals. J/K aside, what Australia has , is interesting enough.

But the big question in my eyes is not whatever they make unDRM'd material legal to copy. The interesting thing if is they do as USA (And as Norwegian government tried to do), to make it illegal to circumvent copyright protection measurments. If that's the case, they pretty much ensure it is still illegal to copy media, because most media seems to be DRM'd those days, or at least has potential to be.

So to really make a difference, this has to legalize copying of any media, for non-commercial, private purposes, like listnening to it at your Personal Music Player. If they choose to do, it might stake out a path forward for other nations to follow.

I'm also for a law on media, that discusses your right to the exemplar, or just a general license to use that piece of media as you see fit. I'm for the last option. Let me buy a CD, and thereby rights to MP3s, oggs, and even a new cd for the production-cost of the cd (e.g 1-2$) if I loose the first one. Such a general license would be a nice thing.

Re:Well...

[Pseudonym]

From an Australian legal perspective, you might have a point that if this fair use act was passed after the amended copyright act (which it will be!) it trumps the anticircumvention provisions: If you are engaged in an act of fair use, you might be in the clear.

Re:Well...

[zsau]

The interesting thing if is they do as USA (And as Norwegian government tried to do), to make it illegal to circumvent copyright protection measurments.

One thing I've never understood, is what happens if these are purely software implementations, so that they don't work on non-Windows OSes. I've bought a few CDs that have apparently had DRM stuff on it, but I didn't know that while I was ripping it... but do the anti-circumvention laws consider it illegal if they only made an attempt for 95% of the market, instead of the whole 100%?

'Transferbangle'?

[FireballX301]

I suppose I'll go ahead and snark the glowboxy in order to transferbangle redundanmancy for general purposes.

On a side note google gave only 2 hits for transferbangle, both dupes of this little blurb. So yeah, uh, made up words suck.

Re:born of criminality?

[ScrewMaster]

Well, any people that can come up with gems like "flamin' herd 'o wild brumbies!" and "transferbangle" is definitely okay with me. And for that matter, if we're concerned about nations being born from criminals, well hell ... the United States has it all over Australia. We were founded by political and religious dissidents and broke away from England by starting a war (thereby pretty much criminalizing all of us so far as the Brits were concerned at the time.) And on top of that, we've spent a couple of hundred years accepting immigrants from just about everywhere, many of whom were less-than-upstanding citizens in their countries of origin (this is not always a bad thing however.) Austrialia was a prison colony once, sure, but so was America. At the very least it was a way to get rid of undesirables and put them to work, which is pretty much the same thing.

well, creating a society where

[superwiz]

everyone is a criminal is the most sure way to keep the despotism of "order". We all break speeding laws. Most people have broken drug control laws. Millions of people consume "illegal" copies of entertainment media. Police state is only possible if most citizens are in one way or another criminal. So the logic that the law is ridiculous seems almost to contradict the set course of modern society. How will the aussies keep the populas in line?

"Shipping to Madagaskar"

[Dot.Com.CEO]

That was, of course, the original "Final Solution". When it was calculated it would be too costly to ship millions of Jews to Madagaskar, the final solution as we know it came to pass.

This detail, and other small (deliberate) errors in style and substance in the article, make me think this article is a huge troll and Zonk (who else?) fell for it.

Re:When is a crime a crime?

[popsicle67]

It hasn't worked with marijuana yet. Maybe it only works when the government isn't making money from the law.

The scary part is

[zappepcs]

that Australia is not doing something special, they are simply catching up to most of the rest of the world as far as fair use goes. This should allow IMTS and others to open up for business there. The other scary part is that governments look at 'copyright industries' as a large tax source, so will always be overprotected.

FTA: "We should have copyright laws that are more targeted at the real problem," Mr Ruddock said. "We should not treat everyday Australians who want to use technology to enjoy copyright material they have obtained legally as infringers where this does not cause harm to our copyright industries."

I agree that treating everyday users as criminals is bad, but worse is treating 'copyright industries' as something special, something to be protected. This is not the way to encourage competition etc. There are so many different and important issues wrapped up in copyright protection and fair use that no single change will make everything ok. It will take many changes, most notably a change in attitude. When people are willing to get anything they can as cheap as they can find it, people will find a way to sell it to them, whether that is by pirating copies of movies and music or getting Chinese people to make clothes and durable goods at near slavery wages.

Addressing simple issues of theft or fair use is not *THE* answer, entire business practices, including those of protectionist governments, need to be addressed. In the mean time, I'm afriad that the protected will continue to bully their way into even greater protected situations until things come undone completely.

Abolish copyright

[richie2000]

It's about time someone takes a stand to abolish copyright as we've come to know it. It was all fine and good as long as the artists and writers benefited from their work, but the whole shebang has become too commercialized and streamlined it's not even funny anymore. It's all about focus groups, target audiences and enhancing the almighty bottom line by desperately trying to save dying business methods. Regular Joes are sick and fucking tired of being branded as criminals. Save that shit for the real gangstas, like the jaywalkers or people loitering with intent.

*IAA, wake the fuck up and smell the coffee. As long as you try to usurp copyright for your personal profits, we'll try to abolish it. And you can take that to the bank.

Pirates of the world - Unite!

Power to peer to peer!

Re:Fosters Beer is Laughable in AU

[kesuki]

fosters is only available in the pubs that took money to sell it. kinda the way budwiser etc are everywhere even thought they are the rancid horse piss 'king' of beers.

the 'pay to build the bar, then contract to be the exclusive beer supplier' model had been around since before prohibition. it's been proven to be one of the most profitable models, since you no longer to make sure you use quality ingredients in your beers. the cheapest ingredients will do when people have no choice.

Saying fosters is a good beer is equivalent to saying maxwell house makes good coffee. long ago in 1910 when maxwell house was a cafe owned brand and used genuine arabica beans it was an awesome blend... today it's cheap swill, only drinkable if you have no tounge.

better ingredients == better beer & shorter shelf life == fresher better tasting beer == higher production costs, more limited markets etc. you can't mass produce a quality beer for cheap, smaller batch sizes let you dump any that go bad in fermenting, can you imagine a company like fosters or budwiser Dumping a batch of beer because their product testers said it was swill? HAH they don't even test the samples for flavor i'd wager...

some brands of beer keep batch sizes low, and have trained testers who test the batches much like wine tasting, and anything that fails to pass is simply dumped. it's the way a quality beer production facility ought to be run.

Re:Fosters Beer is Laughable in AU

[AVGVSTVS]

That is patently false, you are spreading lies and disinformation, as well as displaying your ignorance of brewing. Why do you simply not admit your snobbery, declare that your choice of beer is by far the best, and that anything common must be "horse piss" as you so eloquently phrased it. I think we can all congratulate you on your exceptional sense of style, and your enormous genitalia which allows you to drink and appreciate such exotic and manly beers that we mortals could never fully appreciate.

USA will declare Economic War

[vettemph]

>>>they do as USA ... make it illegal to circumvent copyright protection measurments.

They will have no choice. The USA will impose trade restictions in order to force all countries to adopt our policies. This goes for all the poor countries too. If another country wants to exit 3rd world status, they will do it the George W. Bush way or else become part of the "axis of evil".

My issue with it

[Guppy06]

"While the rest of the world is trying to figure out how to stop the assault of anti-consumer intellectual property laws, Australia is breaking free from them."

When the United States Constitution was being drafted, Madison (et al) is on record as being opposed to the idea of having a Bill of Rights (it's my understanding that similar thinking kept a bill of rights out of Australia's federal government), as its existence implies that the Bill contains all the rights retained by the people and the states. He eventually had to backpedal a bit when he himself introduced the Bill of Rights to the first Congress, but even then they're carefully phrased in such away as to remove powers from government rather than giving them to the people ("Congress shall make no law..." instead of, say, Canada's "Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms...") and the Tenth Amendment was included.

My problem with this law is that it implies that VCR recording and CD ripping were illegal to begin with, and it required legislative action in Canberra for the government to grant these rights to the people it's supposed to be subservient to (in practice if not necessarily in legal theory). Basically, this is the Australian federal government telling the people "We can take away your right to do with your property as you please, but we're feeling magnanimous today."