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The Act abolished common law copyright in unpublished works, hence completing the process that began with the House of Lords decision in Donaldson v Beckett , which held that copyright was a creature of statute. The scope of the imperial copyright system by changes in the UK Act was expanded to include architecture , sound recordings and motion pictures.


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The Act was enacted following the collapse of the imperial system after the passage of the British Copyright Act , and following recommendations of the Spicer Committee, which had been appointed by the Australian Attorney-General in to review the Act to see what changes were necessary for Australia to ratify the Brussels Act of the Berne Convention. The Act remains in force today, but has been amended on a number of occasions.

Copyright law of Australia - Wikipedia

The first major review occurred in when the Whitlam Government appointed the Copyright Law Committee, chaired by Justice Franki, to examine the impact of reprographic reproduction on copyright law in Australia. The committee was also asked to examine the impact of photocopying and "to recommend any alterations to the Australian copyright law to effect a proper balance of interest between owners of copyright and the users of copyright material in respect of reprographic reproduction. During its deliberation the Franki Committee observed that because Australia was a net importer of copyrighted works it should be careful to not adopt too radical solutions.

The Franki Committee recommended, amongst others, the adoption of a statutory licensing scheme.

Copyright law of Australia

When commencing its review the Committee stated that the primary purpose of copyright law was: On the other hand, as copyright in the nature of a monopoly, the law should ensure, as far as possible, that the rights conferred are not abused and that study, research and education are not unduly hampered. The s and s saw a range of inquiries into many aspects of copyright law. The CLRC was disbanded in by the Australian government after it had produced a number of reports. Part 1 , Simplification of the Copyright Act: Copyright in the New Communications Environment: In particular, it strengthened anti-circumvention laws, for the first time making it illegal in Australia to circumvent technical measures used by copyright owners to restrict access to their works, and expanding the measures which count as technological restriction measures which may not be circumvented.

The Act also introduced a series of new exceptions into Australian copyright law. The best known are the private copying exceptions, which follow on from proposals by former Attorney-General Philip Ruddock to allow people to record most television or radio program at home to watch at a later time with family or friends, and to format-shift their music make copies from CDs onto personal computers and portable music players.

Unlike some countries in Europe, or Canada, there is no fee or licence payment on players to compensate copyright owners for these private copies, although the exceptions are narrowly defined and do not allow, for example, making copies for friends or family. The Act also introduced a copyright exception allowing parody and satire, and an exception to allow certain non-commercial use by public sector institutions like universities, schools, art galleries and archives, provided that an Australian court decides an exception would be consistent with the Berne three-step test.

The other notable change made by the Act was to expand the provisions concerning criminal copyright infringement.

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The Act introduced strict liability offences for some copyright infringements, and a system of 'Infringement Notices' on the spot fines. The stated aim of these provisions is to make copyright easier to enforce, particularly against commercial infringers. After concerns from user groups and the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, [7] many strict liability offences that would have applied to non-commercial acts were removed from the final bill.

Australian copyright law has been influenced significantly by the structure of English law, in addition to the Berne Convention and other international copyright treaties. Thus there is an exhaustive set of types of material protected, and an exhaustive set of exclusive rights. In terms of the types of material , Australian law confers rights in works, also known as "Part III Works" after the Part of the Act dealing with this: It also confers rights in "other subject matter" Part IV Subject Matter , which cover the kinds of material protected in some countries by 'neighbouring rights': To be protected, material must fall into one of these exclusive categories.

The rights in Part IV subject matters are more limited, because infringement requires exact copying of the actual subject matter sound-alikes or remakes are not covered. In terms of the exclusive rights , different kinds of subject matter have different rights. Owners of copyright in works have rights to reproduce, publish meaning publish for the first time , perform, and adapt the work, and communicate it to the public including broadcast, or communicate by making available online.

The rights of owners of copyright in artistic works are more limited there is no right to control public display of artistic works. Infringement occurs where a person does an act falling within the copyright owner's exclusive rights, without the authorisation of the copyright owner assuming that one of the exceptions does not apply. Before the Amendments, Australia used a "plus 50" rule to determine when a work entered the public domain.

Put simply, a "work" i. The Amendments changed the benchmark to "plus 70". This brought Australia into line with the United States of America, the European Union , and certain other jurisdictions; but is longer than the "plus 50" minimum required by the Berne Convention and still applied in many other jurisdictions, including New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Canada, and many other Commonwealth countries, as well as China, Japan, and South Korea.

Similar to the foreign reciprocity clause in the European Union copyright law , the change to the "plus 70" rule is not retroactive, so that if copyright has expired before the coming into force of the amendment it is not revived. The result is that:. Now, in Australia, in accordance with s of the Copyright Act , copyright does not apply to works that were published before 1 May In Australia, according to s33 of the Copyright Act , any literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work that was published after the death of the author will continue to subsist under copyright 70 years after the year of first publication.

If a work is published 10 years after the authors death, copyright would subsist for 70 years after first publication, i. Television and sound broadcasts are copyright for only fifty years after the year of their first broadcast though the material contained in the broadcast may be separately copyrighted. The Copyright Disabilities and Other Measures Act , which was passed on 15 June , abolished the indefinite copyright term for unpublished works. As of 1 January , unpublished works out of copyright 70 years after the author's death if the author is known, or 70 years after creation otherwise.

Generally, anything published before is in the public domain. An interesting consequence of this for the Internet is that a work may be in the public domain in the US but not in Australia, or vice versa. It is important to note that except for the works falling under the " Rule of the shorter term ", copyright does not depend on the country of origin, the country of publication, or the nationality of the author.

A work published in the US by a British author may still be in the public domain in Australia if the author died more than 70 years ago or died before , whichever is the shorter. The main exceptions to copyright infringement in Australia come under the general heading fair dealing. Fair dealing is comparable to the United States' fair use ; it is a use of a work specifically recognised as not being a copyright violation. In order to be a fair dealing under Australian law a use must fall within a range of specific purposes. These purposes vary by type of work, but the possibilities are:.

In order for a certain use to be a fair dealing, it must fall within one of these purposes and must also be 'fair'. What is fair will depend on all the circumstances, including the nature of the work, the nature of the use and the effect of the use on any commercial market for the work. Fair dealing is not the same as fair use. This has, for example, been interpreted by US courts to allow for reasonable personal use of works, e. Australian copyright law does, however, have a number of additional specific exceptions which permit uses which may fall outside of both fair dealing and fair use.

For example, a number of exceptions exist which permit specific uses of computer software. While Australian copyright exceptions are based on the Fair Dealing system, Since a series of Australian government inquiries have examined, and in most cases recommended, the introduction of a "flexible and open" Fair Use system into Australian copyright law. From to there have been eight Australian government inquiries which have considered the question of whether fair use should be adopted in Australia. Six reviews have recommended Australia adopt a "Fair Use" model of copyright exceptions: One review recommended against the introduction of fair use and another issued no final report.

In late , Australia added several 'private copying' exceptions. It is no longer an infringement of copyright to record a broadcast to watch or listen at a more convenient time s , or to make a copy of a sound recording for private and domestic use e. Because Australian copyright law recognises temporary copies stored in computer memory as 'reproductions' falling within the copyright owner's exclusive rights, there are also various exceptions for temporary copies made in the ordinary course of use or communication of digital copies of works.

In , moral rights were recognised in Australian copyright legislation.

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Only individuals may exercise moral rights. The moral rights provided under Australian law now are:. There are also proposals in Australia for the recognition of "Indigenous communal moral rights", aimed at assisting indigenous people to protect the integrity and sanctity of indigenous culture. A draft bill was circulated to a limited set of stakeholders in ; since then the Bill has been listed as one the government planned to pass, but has yet to be introduced.

From mid, performers have also been granted moral rights in recordings of their performances, similar, but not identical, to the moral rights granted to authors. We began work on the collection, cataloguing episodes, beginning the process of digitisation,and constructing a robust website that would be able to stream digital content on demand. That technical work kept the Archive busy for the first 18 months of the project, but once we began organising shows for streaming, we realized that the legal situation was complicated.

Our only choice was to pull clips from other programming, in order to avoid complete pull-down notices. A licence to Digitise. In early , the European Commission initiated a series of negotiations among different categories of stakeholders on a number of copyright related issues connected to the advent of digital technologies.

Several workgroups were set up and worked over approximately 10 months. After months of negotiation, the workgroup on audiovisual licensing produced a document that defines common principles for contracts between archives and rights holders. The presentation will discuss the negotiating process and the key points of the text that, albeit signed in an European context, can easily be applied to other countries.

Do the Right Thing! Explaining the complexity of legal issues a film and sound, and broadcast archive like the NFSA faces in its mission to collect, preserve and share audiovisual heritage usually earns you yawns, glazed looks or worse — indifference. With a few notable exceptions most of our audiences, and many of our users, donors and depositors, are blissfully unaware of the often arcane, outdated and prohibitive copyright framework we operate under in Australia. Preservation Archives and Film Ownership: A Case for a New Deal. The lack of ownership over the works that were protected and promoted by the film archives since the inception of their institutional field certainly has been the major historical contradiction and shortcoming in this area.

The fact that many archives soon undertook limited acquisition or restoration agreements cannot hide the long-term problematic impact of the building of large collections preserved without the corresponding control of their use. In the face of it, archives tried a variety of initiatives, none of which really succeeded in smoothing their action or creating a new collective environment — the resulting scenario today being, in fact, a bigger and bigger internal division of the field out of our different financial capability to cope with ownership demands and, in the weaker cases, the downgrading of its cultural offer.

The purpose of this paper therefore is to question our willingness to still try and change this environnment, as much as our strategy while doing it. Being a case for a new global negotiation path, it is however a proposal to change our own approach to it, based on the differentiation, rather than the identification of the archive field in regard to the larger area of the heritage players, as well as on a clearer, materially defined network and scope of public activity.

Partnering with Rights Holders. First, the LC is working with the film industry, including on direct funding and funded staff for preservation and cataloguing of archived materials; joint distribution agreements for preserved films; and access initiatives for films with limited marketplace value. Second, the LC is working with other film archives, particularly on international exchanges and repatriations of American films with mutual quit-claims, but also on educational and access partnership initiatives and fair use best practices.

Third, LC has an extensive loan program and is working with a local theater on joint series. Fourth, LC is working extensively with educational institutions, both at the K and university levels. Finally, LC has developed best practices for acquiring rights from filmmakers and other donors and sellers of film collections: As the complete chain of cinema has become digital, the deposit of theatrical release elements is drying out as a source for archival film collection, at least for international films.

However, while this is naturally a concern in regards to collection building, it is also a lifting of obligations and burdens, which might then be applied to other important tasks. This is typically a national obligation already. FIAF might be the place to discuss which important national cinemas are not collected and preserved by trustworthy institutions. An effort to ensure the collection and deposit of local versions and subtitles should be considered and might not be as sensitive an issue as the moving images, but is also not a small task.

Against the backdrops where legal deposit is not applicable to motion picture film, National Film Center NFC of Japan has built up collections to more than 70, films as the national film archive. Since archiving the national film heritage depends upon a separate agreement with each donor and holder of original materials, frequent negotiations with film industries and communities are always required. Naturally, copyright is one of the key issues in the negotiations.

This presentation first gives an overview of the copyright status of motion picture film in Japan, and focuses on several elements, some of which are unique to the Japanese copyright law, as follows:. With drastic digital shift and diversified digital access, however, the hybridisation of preservation is urgently required while the hardships of making independent film production sustainable increases the possible risk of neglect, disposal and orphanage of invaluable film heritage.

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Access the slideshow presentation HERE. Towards a level playing field: Copyright, archival collections and the attention economy. The attention economy has largely been dominated by big commercial and transnational players like Google, YouTube and Facebook. Archives are fundamentally different organisations with radically different objectives. Archives offer something unique through providing access to rich collections that are curated; that is, interpreted, contextualised and then shared through collaboration with donors, creators and copyright holders. There are significant challenges to carrying out our legislative mandate to provide access to a national collection of programs, including complex copyright legislation, collective licensing and orphan works.

But there are ways in which archives can, and do, meet those challenges to become meaningful participants in the attention economy. In doing that, we move toward creating and shaping a new, more level playing field. A horizon-scanning exercise, describing an ambitious vision for a scaleable, dynamic film archive collections information architecture which would enable the community to:.

There are three major developments in the film archive domain, which make possible a radical transformation of collections information sharing and access:. Shared film metadata model: EN , with the conceptual framework it embodies, makes it possible to understand our databases in like for like terms, for the first time. Unique identifiers for moving image works: Together, these make possible a scaleable aggregation of holdings metadata across all film archives, with no requirement for a central data store, or manual aggregation.

Instead we can imagine applications which call APIs dynamically, to retrieve holdings using the unique ID as the key and the shared data model as the map. How to digitise 10, films from 10 archives in 5 years and live to tell the story. Dutch Solutions to Clear Legal Obstacles. We will present some of these solutions so they hopefully can serve as an inspiration for archives around the world facing similar challenges.

For reasons of curatorial control, the SFI decided to spend the money by acquiring equipment and hiring new staff to carry out the work in-house. To guide the work two policies were adopted, one dealing with selection criteria and relations with rights holders, and one dealing with ethical issues involved in treatment of sound and image. This curatorial policy was a crucial step to have old and new members of the team adhering to a set of common principles. Sensory Moving Image Archives. Radicals, Austrian Film Museum, Vienna. The Call for Presentations is open until 11 February The Call for Papers is now available.

Submissions are open for the competition and FOCAL welcome entries from the whole spectrum of production, restoration and preservation spheres.