Oz government: hearing the people?
p2pnet.net News:- It seems that kicking up a fuss over very badly drafted law can make a difference – even if it’s just a slight one.
The Australian Government has announced further changes to its proposed Copyright Amendment Bill, and they mostly go in favour of the little people. Briefly, these include:
Limitations on the strict liability offences
Replacement of the unrealistic format-shifting of music proposal with an exception allowing “space-shifting”: we will be able to make copies of a sound recording to use on any device that we own and that plays sound recordings (the copies need not be in a different format from the format of the original)
A new defence of fair dealing for parody or satire (no longer subject to the three-step test)
New wording for s 40 (research or study), limiting the meaning of “reasonable portion” to 10% or a chapter for published material
Key cultural institutions will be allowed to make 3 (rather than one) preservation copies of certain material
The big victory has to be the changes to format shifting for music – the previous suggestion was simply unworkable and would have resulted in the majority of Australians breaking the law on a regular basis.
Of course, we’ll still not be able to circumvent DRM for the purposes of space shifting … so perhaps we should hold out on the celebrations for now.
While these changes are welcome and address some of the issues with the legislation, there continues to be major problems with the law as proposed – as I and others have pointed out in previous articles. See:
At this stage it appears as though they will have to be resolved in the future as the current Government is determined to have the Bill in place by the end of this year, whatever form it is in.
Sally Hawkins – p2pnet, Australia
[Hawkins is a former musician and songwriter who decided to study law after doing a course in Music Business Management in 1991; she's worked for various departments in both Federal and State Australian Government, holds a Bachelors Degree in Legal and Justice Studies (Criminal Law), a Bachelor of Laws (Honours) and is currently a postgraduate student with Southern Cross University writing a thesis on Copyright Law/P2P File Sharing.]
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December 1st, 2006 at 10:58 pm
The altered Bill was passed by the Senate yesterday and will return to the lower house of parliament next week for a final vote; it will be legal to space shift music as soon as the Bill is passed (a mere technicality given the government majority is formed in that house), circumvention provisions will become operative on 01/01/07.
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