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Australian copyright law

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Australian copyright law is based on the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works and defines copyright in Australia. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (as amended), is the national copyright legislation, inclusive of additions contained in the U.S.-Australia Free Trade Agreement (FTA). It does not cover all forms of intellectual property, for example, trademarks, patents and circuit layouts are covered by separate legislative Acts. However, designs may be covered by the Copyright Act (as sculptures or drawings) as well as by the Design Act.

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Duration of copyright

Prior to the U.S.-Australia Free Trade Agreement, Australia used a "plus 50" rule for determining when a work will enter the public domain. Put simply, a "work" (ie a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work) entered the public domain 50 years following the year of the creator's death, with exceptions. With the signing of the FTA in early 2005, copyright should now be understood as "plus 70", in line with the European Union and other regions. The extension to "plus 70" was not applied to Crown-owned copyrights.

Similar to the foreign reciprocity clause in the European Union copyright law, the "plus 70" rule is not retroactive. In short, this can be interpreted as:

Also any work that was published after the death of the author, will be out of copyright seventy (70) years after the year of first publication. Unpublished works hold copyright indefinitely.

Photographs, sound recordings, films, and anonymous/pseudonymous works are copyright for seventy (70) years from their first publication. 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). Most other works are also dated from the first publication/broadcast/performance where this occurred after the author's death.

The period of seventy (70) years is counted from the end of the relevant calendar year.

The United States Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (1998) defines an entirely different rule based on the year of first publication in the US: generally, anything published before 1923 is public domain. An interesting consequence of this for the Internet is that a work may be public domain in the US but not in Australia, or vice versa. It is important to note that copyright does not depend on the country of origin of publication or of the author. A work published in the US by a British author may still be public domain in Australia if the author died more than seventy (70) years ago or died before 1955.

Fair dealing

Fair dealing, comparable to the United States' fair use, is a use of a work specifically recognised as not being a copyright violation. However, unlike fair use, in order to be a fair dealing under Australian law a use must fall within one of 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, a term which is generally used in relation to the US's open ended exception, which allows any use (regardless of purpose) as long as it is 'fair'. This has, for example, been interpreted by US courts to allow for reasonable personal use of works, e.g. media-shifting, which would not necessarily be permitted under Australia's fair dealing laws. 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 (see List of some possibly non-violating actions in Australia below).

Moral rights

In 2000, moral rights were recognised in Australian copyright legislation. Only individuals may exercise moral rights.

List of moral rights in Australia

Automatic resale rights (royalty payments to the author on subsequent resales of the original and reproductions) are not covered by Australian legislation.

Ownership of copyright

Copyright is free and automatic upon creation of the work. A copyright notice (©) is not required on a work to gain copyright, but only the copyright owner is entitled to place a notice. It is useful in publishing the date of first publication and the owner.

Government-owned copyright

The Australian Commonwealth and State governments routinely own copyright in Australia. While this could be seen as being due to the concept of the Crown being traditionally paramount rather than the people, it is more influenced by the then British Commonwealth acting as a copyright policy-making body in the 1950s, which was the basis of the 1968 Copyright Act.

The Australian government does not infringe copyright if its actions (or those of an authorised person) are for the government. A "relevant collecting society" may sample government copies and charge the government.

The State governments follow different practices in regard to licensing, fees and waivers.

As of February 2004, the many aspects of Crown copyright were under formal review by the Australian Attorney-General's [Copyright Law Review Committee], which was accepting submissions.

Copyrights owned by the Crown in Australia have different durations to publicly held copyrights, as below:

Published literary, dramatic or musical works (includes published official records) 50 years after the end of the year in which the work is first published
Unpublished literary, dramatic, musical works Copyright subsists indefinitely
Artistic works 50 years from the end of the year when made
Photographs taken before 1 May 1969 50 years from the end of the year when made
Photographs taken after 1 May 1969 50 years from end of year of first publication

Composite copyright

Material can contain multiple copyrights, that are not diminished by their combination or mingling. For example a television broadcast is copyright, as is the visual footage and soundtrack, as well as the screenplay, music and lyrics.

Copyright Tribunal

The Copyright Tribunal was established under the Copyright Act 1968, and has certain powers relating to royalties and licensing. It receives operational support from the Federal Court of Australia.

Timeline of Australian copyright law

List of some possible copyright-infringing actions in Australia

List of some possibly non-violating actions in Australia

Proposed Changes

Recently Attorney-General Philip Ruddock has proposed that people will be able to record most television or radio program at home to watch at a later time with your family or friends but only once but the recorder has to be present.

He has also proposed that people are able to change the format of music for personal use in different audio hardware devices while mixing different whole songs on the one device/format as long as the music is a legitimate copy and it is permitted by the purchase agreement. The same will apply to books, newspapers, magazines, video tapes and photographs but not DVD's .[link]

References

 

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

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