World IP Day 2026: Copyright, Creativity, and the Future of AI in Australia
Written by Julian Watchorn, Vice-Chair, Electronic Frontiers Australia. On World Intellectual Property Day, we are reminded that copyright is not a barrier to innovation: it is one of the systems that helps make innovation possible. In 2026, that system is under pressure. As governments accelerate investment in artificial intelligence, there is a growing push to […]
Australian tech start-ups stand to lose out in proposed copyright reforms
The Australian government quietly introduced the Copyright Amendment (Service Providers) Bill 2017 to the Senate on Wednesday. If enacted, the bill will extend the scope of Australia’s copyright safe harbours – very slightly. Safe harbours protect internet hosts and platform providers from monetary liability for copyright-infringing content posted or shared by their users. For example, […]
Despite a victory on IP, the TPP’s resurgence hasn’t cured its ills
Ever since the United States withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) back in January, the remaining eleven countries have been quietly attempting to bring a version of the agreement into force. Following some initial confusion,it was announced on Friday that they have reached an “agreement in principle” on “core elements” of a deal. Even so […]
Streisand Effect helps Sci-Hub to acquire almost all scholarly literature, dooms traditional academic publishing
Techdirt has been covering the story of Sci-Hub, which provides unrestricted access to a massive (unauthorized) database of academic papers, for a while now. As several posts have emphasized, the decision by the publishing giant Elsevier to pursue the site through the courts is a classic example of the Streisand Effect: it has simply served […]
Amid Unprecedented Controversy, W3C Greenlights DRM for the Web
Last week, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards body publicly announced its intention to publish Encrypted Media Extensions (EME)—a DRM standard for web video—with no safeguards whatsoever for accessibility, security research or competition, despite an unprecedented internal controversy among its staff and members over this issue. EME is a standardised way for web video […]