Australia’s Copyright Debacle

In an effort to suck up more to the USA as part of the Free Trade Agreement, Australia is revamping its copyright legislation and proudly proclaiming that New Zealand, the UK and other places are watching as they will want to copy the Australian model.

Bollocks. For a start, New Zealand has its own mind and has always been more enlightened about not using copyright legislation to criminalise ordinary folks. Remember that New Zealand was the first country where it was legal (indeed mandatory) to have region-free DVD players.

So, what is Australia up to? Well, the latest effort is best seen on the Copyright Amendment Bill 2006 – Frequently Asked Questions where such wonderful pieces of advice and answers to questions include:

Is it an offence for a 14 year old to record himself or herself lip-synching a pop song and post it on the Internet?

Recording yourself lip-synching a pop song may mean that you are making an unauthorised copy of the sound recording. However, posting the recording on the Internet will not in itself constitute a criminal offence.

If the recording is posted for the purposes of trade, it may amount to a criminal offence and be subject to an on-the-spot fine.

Well, that’s OK – it is not an offence for a 14 year-old to record themself lip-synching, as long as you can’t hear what they are lip-synching to. Of course, what this doesn’t say is that it is an offence for the same 14 year old to actually sing the song themself so presumably it’ll be a case of the constabulary slipping around to the 14 year old’s home and “slapping on the braclets”.

Of course, what is even sillier is:

Can I still sing Happy Birthday in a public place?

Yes. Even if the words or lyrics to Happy Birthday were still in copyright in Australia, simply singing it in public would not be enough to attract criminal liability. There are no on-the-spot fines for this conduct.

This means that, for example, a busker can sing a copyright song at the entrance to Wynyard Station in Sydney where thousands of people can see and hear the performance and in many cases leave money for the busker’s performance. But if the busker performs it on the Internet where probably only a few people will see it unless it happens to become an Internet Classic, then it becomes an offence even if the busker is not making any money from it.

Best of all, however, is the following:

Can I play a DVD that I have bought overseas?

Yes. You can use a multi-zone DVD player to view the DVD if it has a region coding TPM on it.

Of course, to do this you must use a DVD player that circumvents the TPM (Technology Protection Measure) and the legislation makes it illegal to circumvent that technology. What makes this even more bizarre is that the legislation allows me to “format-shift” copyright protected material, unless that “format-shift” needs to circumvent the TPM. So this means, for example, that if I buy a DVD in the US, I can watch it on my multi-region DVD player but I cannot convert it to an MPEG format for uploading to my PSP to watch it there.

The copyright legislation is legislation from people that do not understand and are being too influenced by international interest groups.

Oh, and one last thing, lest I be arrested for breaching Commonwealth of Australia copyright, the following should be noted about the excerpts (strongly emphasized) above:

© 2005, Commonwealth of Australia

The material contained on this web site constitutes Commonwealth copyright and is intended for your general use and information. You may download, display, print and reproduce this material in unaltered form only (retaining this notice, and any headers and footers) for your personal, non-commercial use or use within your organisation. You may distribute any copies of downloaded material in unaltered, complete form only (retaining this notice, and any headers and footers). All other rights are reserved.