inamerrata

Well, not a very complete one but hey. The online forums are basically over now, and were quite interesting. There was a bit of give and take with the review team, which was good and more than I expected, and will hopefully be quite useful. It wasn’t very well attended, which works out great for those of us that were there. :)

One interesting claim is from Jamie Wodetzki, and goes along the lines of:

Some of the discussion regarding what should and should not be legal would potentially be caught by a more generalised fair use exception, based on the US approach which is not limited in application to specific purposes. It’s fair use that has allowed time-shifting copies in the US (the old Universal v Sony “betamax” case). If we had a broad fair use doctrine in Aust, it would be flexible enough that the courts could apply the provision to excuse “copies” made in many socially/economically desirable situations. But for now, the reality is that when we record a TV program to watch later, or copy a CD to tape for listening to in the car, we breach copyright. Silly really.

Jamie appears to be a representative of SISA, which apparently stands for Supporters of Interoperable Systems In Australia, and appears to have made submissions in that capacity to past enquiries.

It would be interesting to know how accurate this is. Can people be sued in Australia for taping a show at 6pm, then watching it at 7pm? Is there any case law at all? Any good reasoning on why such a thing shouldn’t happen under existing law? This comes up because the current review aims to consider things like PVRs, which are like videos but more annoying to broadcasters since they make it much easier to skip ads (and much better for users, for many reasons, including the ease with which you can skip ads). More annoying means more likely to be sued. It may be that the poor law in this area is why we don’t have PVRs readily available in Australia.

UPDATE 2003/09/12:

The Australian Copyright Council, a somewhat disingenuously named private organisation that acts for copyright holders interests, has an infosheet that mentioned private taping of TV programs.

No special exception allowing copying for private use

There is no exception which allows you to tape from TV for private use — for example, to watch a program at a more convenient time, or to watch a program again, or to give the tape to your friends to watch.

Hat tip: Indulis Bernsteins via google.

UPDATE 2003/09/12:

The fact that private copying is probably illegal does not, of course, discourage owners’ interest groups from pleading for reimbursement for it. There are two important questions here: is such reimbursement necessary for an effective marketplace? For example, does widespread ownership of VCRs discourage authors from putting stuff up on free to air TV? Second, is there any legitimate moral basis for copyright owners to object to time-shifting of free-to-air programmes?