p2p news / p2pnet: The Australian Government has today announced it will introduce major changes to the Australian Copyright Act.

Good changes include legalising time shifting and format shifting, allowing consumers to:

• Copy music, newspapers and books from ‘personal collections’ onto iPods and mp3 players.
• Record tv and radio programs to ‘time-shift’ once at a later time. This exception will not allow a recording to be used over and over again or to be distributed to others.
• Schools, universities and libraries and other cultural institutions will be free to use copyright material for non-commercial purposes
• New exceptions will be created for people with disabilities to allow access to copyright materials
• Copyrighted material will be available for use for parody or satire

However, these amendments will also:

• Increase surveillance, fines and damages for internet piracy (file sharing) including on the-spot fines, proceeds of crime remedies, and a change in presumptions in litigation to make it easier to establish copyright piracy – for large scale piracy the content owners may no longer have to establish each breach of copyright law.
• Remove the 1% cap on the royalties paid by broadcasters to record companies, allowing record companies to negotiate the terms on which music can be played on the radio (good luck public radio!)
• The format shifting provisions do not include a general right to make back up copies, any new copy must be in a new format. They don’t apply to computer programs. Furthermore, on the sale of the original item, all other copies must be deleted.
• For the time being. it’ll still be illegal to format shift audio visual material, this will be reviewed in two years’ time and a decision made then as to whether the scope can be expanded to digital audio-visual materials in a way which complies with international obligations.
• Research will be undertaken by the Australian Institute of Criminology on the nature and the extent of piracy and counterfeiting in Australia and how best to respond to the problem.
• In relation to DRM: “The Government is still considering this issue of copy protection.”

There’s a press release available here, and you’ll also find material available on the Australian Copyright Councils site here.

Sally Hawkins, p2pnet - Sydney, Australia

This entry was posted on Monday, May 15th, 2006 at 12:34 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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