The Courier-Mail reports that Australia is to amend its copyright legislation, introducing a number of new fair-use provisions. In particular, the Federal Government will make “time-shifting” legal, so that for the first time, Australian citizens will legally be able to video television programmes to watch at a time which is more convenient. Also, the practice of converting CDs to MP3 format in a way that will enable them to be played on an iPod will be legalised. However, it is not yet clear whether a levy will be placed on the sale of blank CDs and MP3 players. A spokesman for the Australian Attorney-General has said: “We should have copyright laws that are more targeted at the real problem…We should not treat everyday Australians who want to use technology to enjoy copyright material they have obtained legally as infringers where this does not cause harm to our copyright industries."
Time shifting: soon to be legal in Australia
He added that the new defences recognise "everyday forms of private copying that do not harm copyright owners".
The IPKat notes that the UK has recognised time-shifting for many years, but not format-shifting.
AUSTRALIANS TO TRAVEL THROUGH TIME AND SPACE LEGALLY
Reviewed by Anonymous
on
Sunday, January 01, 2006
Rating:
No comments:
All comments must be moderated by a member of the IPKat team before they appear on the blog. Comments will not be allowed if the contravene the IPKat policy that readers' comments should not be obscene or defamatory; they should not consist of ad hominem attacks on members of the blog team or other comment-posters and they should make a constructive contribution to the discussion of the post on which they purport to comment.
It is also the IPKat policy that comments should not be made completely anonymously, and users should use a consistent name or pseudonym (which should not itself be defamatory or obscene, or that of another real person), either in the "identity" field, or at the beginning of the comment. Current practice is to, however, allow a limited number of comments that contravene this policy, provided that the comment has a high degree of relevance and the comment chain does not become too difficult to follow.
Learn more here: http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/p/want-to-complain.html