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News From Oz: Copyright and Contract
Posted by Raul Ruiz on Tuesday, October 01 @ 00:25:08 EDT
Contributed by Kim
Copyright
Kim writes "Remember all those debates about copyright and contract? How copyright owners can restrict any fair use defences by imposing contractual terms before allowing access to their copyright works? And all the debate about Article 2B, now UCITA? Well, if you remember that debate you may be interested to know that the Copyright Law Review Committee in Australia, in a report released yesterday, 30 September, have recommended the Australian Copyright Act be amended - to prevent the exclusion or modification of exceptions identified as being fundamental to the copyright interest in Australia - including "fair dealing for the purposes of research or study, criticism or review, reporting news" - our equivalent of aspects of the US fair use defense. I suspect this news will not be welcomed by copyright owners....I also suspect that it will be very difficult to get any action on such proposals through the legislature.

The Commonwealth Attorney-General's Department's summary of the CLRC report , is interesting:
"the CLRC has found that private agreements are being used to set the terms and conditions of access to, and use of, copyright material. The CLRC expresses the view that this is creating a displacement of the copyright balance and makes 6 recommendations for change. The central recommendation of the Committee is that the Copyright Act 1968 be amended to prevent the exclusion or modification of exceptions identified as being fundamental to the copyright interest in Australia, namely: * fair dealing for purposes of research or study, criticism or review, reporting news, and giving professional advice; * library and archives exceptions; and * exceptions designed to promote the proper functioning of technology, such as those allowing works and other subject matter to be temporarily reproduced in the course of communication. The Committee also recommends that the integrity of the permitted purpose provisions introduced by the 2000 Digital Agenda reforms be retained by preventing a copyright owner from making it a condition of access to his or her copyright material that users will not avail themselves of a circumvention device or service for the permitted purpose of doing an act that is not an infringement of copyright under the Act.
This would be a pretty important restriction. Our Digital Agenda reforms are essentially our equivalent to the DMCA. It would mean that in in using copy protection technology, copyright owners would not be allowed to make restrictions on fair dealing (ie fair use) a precondition of access. One suspects that these suggestions may end up being far too controversial to end up being enacted in legislation. Other CLRC reports (like a report on simplification of the copyright act) have ended up sinking without a trace - particularly since they were considered too radical. And the Australian government has taken a long time to release the report - it was submitted by the CLRC to government in April. Now we know why it's taken so long. More on my blog."
 
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