Pro-DRM Law May Be Coming To Australia

paxmaniac writes, "The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the Australian Federal Government will soon introduce laws making it illegal to circumvent copy control 'technological prevention measures' (or TPMs). The laws will make it illegal to modchip a console, to hack a DVD player to make it multi-region, to install DVD decoders on your PC, or to circumvent DRM in any other way. From the article: 'Anyone found to have used technology to circumvent copy control TPMs will face fines of up to $6600, while those guilty of distributing enabling devices and services to others through a variety of means face imprisonment for up to five years and possible fines of $60,500.' Australia is obliged to introduce these laws as part of it's Free Trade Agreement with the USA. Gee thanks, George!"

Comments

at least they are honest

[tehwebguy]

"technology prevention" is certainly what DRM does.

"while those guilty of distributing enabling devices and services to others through a variety of means"

you mean like.. computers?

Re:FTA

[russotto]

When it was passed in the US we were told it was required for harmonization with Europe.

Re:FTA

[snottgoblin]

the more educated, the more likely you're a voter

I don't know if you meant that in general or just wrt the US but from where I come(India) most of the educated abstain from voting as they do not like any of the political candidates and consider them to be incompetent. It is the poor and uneducated folks who make up the numbers as they vote based on religious/caste based grounds.

Re:Should all Be Legal

[bigpat]

These should all be legal in the confides of your own home. But what should be illegal is you trying to make money and selling your hacks/modchips.

No.

As long as there is a legal use for DRM Circumvention, then the devices should be legal to sell.

We don't throw Xerox sales reps in jail just because their technology could be used to infringe on copyright.

Copyright law struck a balance between the rights of creators to benefit from their work and the ability of the public to benefit from the work once it was published. And it balances the Freedom of expression rights of both the original creator and those that would make use of the original work in a derivative work. The concept is fair use. Enshrining DRM into law without allowing for reliable ability to make fair use of content throws fair use out the window and undermines the foundation of copyright law. DRM lets the content producer have it both ways and effectively invalidates the time limited provisions of copyright law.

In the US, prohibitions on DRM circumvention are unconstitutional because they violate Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 which allows congress "to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries"

Anti DRM circumvention laws violate this provision, "securing for limited times", because the legal effect is to allow authors or their delegates to control copying far beyond any expiration of copyright.

As far as I am aware the most of the challenges so far to the DMCA have focused on peripheral issues. Whereas they should be focusing on the lack of any type sunset provision for legal use of DRM. Congress certainly has the right to allow DRMs use, but if it legally and effectively prohibits copying well beyond the expiration of copyright, then the law is quite clearly unconstitutional as well as unwise.

Probably about the same.

[pavon]

I also suspect, though I can't prove it, that there is also a high correlation showing that the less educated a voter, the more likely they vote for Democrats.

I don't know that that is the case. While the Democrats used to have very strong support with working class people (low income correlates with lower education), this has been decreasing, and is only kinda strong support now. Moderately educated college students are more likely to vote Democrat than Republican, however this is balenced out by the fact that the group of most highly educated people are as well. After the last presidential election, the Democrats liked to point out that the states with the most educated people also had the strongest Democratic support, the opposite of your claim, although this doesn't necissarilly prove that the educated ones were the ones voting Democrat.

And of course the numbers could come out different depending on if you use mean or median education level, etc. In the end I'd guess that the average education levels of voters is more or less the same for Democrats and Republicans.

NAFTA is dead.

[Anonymous Coward]

To be even more specific, Canada won every round in every court that mattered, INCLUDING the WTO and the NAFTA arbitration panel (that consists of 2 Americans and 1 Canadian). Unfortunately for our lumber industry, winning in court has no effect on the USA since they have shown they are totally willing to simply ignore the results if they do not fall in their favour. The current conservative government is more concerned with sucking up to the Americans than they are about protecting the interests of Canada, so they are ramming the agreement through, and the industry and provinces are pissed off but reluctantly agreed in order to get some semblance of normalcy back to the market.

Ultimately, however, I suspect that the lumber situation will mean the end of NAFTA. The conservatives under Harper have demonstrated a distinct lack of backbone when dealing with the USA, so are unlikely to be elected in their current form, and pretty much every other party has declared that they want NAFTA renegotiated. What is the point of having an "arbitration panel" if the USA simply ignores their decisions?