Proposed copyright amendments welcome but insufficient
EFA welcomes today’s release by the Department of Communications of an exposure draft of proposed amendments to the Copyright Act that seeks to address a number of important weaknesses in the current law relating particularly to the educational, library and archives sectors. In particular, EFA welcomes the proposed extension in the safe harbour provisions, as […]
How the TPP Will Affect You and Your Digital Rights
The Internet is a diverse ecosystem of private and public stakeholders. By excluding a large sector of communities—like security researchers, artists, libraries, and user rights groups—trade negotiators skewed the priorities of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) towards major tech companies and copyright industries that have a strong interest in maintaining and expanding their monopolies of digital […]
Digital innovation requires copyright reform
EFA welcomes the release of the government’s National Innovation and Science Agenda but is disappointed that the agenda is silent on copyright reform. As recommended by the Australian Law Reform Commission in their November 2013 report on Copyright and the Digital Economy, the introduction of a broad flexible fair use exception into Australian copyright law […]
Final Leaked TPP Text is All That We Feared
Today’s release by Wikileaks of what is believed to be the current and essentially final version of the intellectual property (IP) chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) confirms our worst fears about the agreement, and dashes the few hopes that we held out that its most onerous provisions wouldn’t survive to the end of the […]
The Happy Birthday song copyright scam ends
The Happy Birthday song hasn’t been in copyright for generations, and everybody knew it. That didn’t stop Warner Chappell music from running a scam where they extorted “royalties” from movies and restaurants that featured the song, charging less than it would cost anyone to litigate the question. Until, that is, a documentary about the song decided […]