Fair Use and Other Copyright Exceptions

June 30, 2005

The Commonwealth Attorney-General instigated a review, Fair Use and Other Copyright Exceptions, and invited submissions. The review resulted in part from the passage of the Australia United States Free Trade Agreement and the concomitant consideration of whether to introduce the US ‘Fair Use' regime for managing ‘exceptions' to copyright law to replace the Australian ‘Fair Dealing' system. The review also wished to consider a number of other matters including the proposal to introduce a blank media levy to reimburse copyright owners whose earnings had been damaged by illegal digital copying of their copyright property.

The Music Council made a submission to the review in June 2005. The submission attempts to find common ground among the sometimes conflicting interests of its very diverse membership. Generally, this is achieved by accepting the more urgent concerns of the main stake-holders insofar as they do not breach the equally urgent concerns of others. For instance, the submission supports the desire of libraries to increase the digitisation of collections for preservation and storage purposes and to support enhanced public access to digital copies by using licence agreements, but would not support any plan for their public dissemination of unlicensed and unremunerated digital copies because that conflicts strongly with the interests of copyright owners.

The submission covers these matters:

1. FAIR USE VS FAIR DEALING
2. TIME-SHIFTING TELEVISION AND RADIO BROADCASTS, INCLUDING UNDERLYING WORKS, FILMS, SOUND RECORDING AND LIVE PERFORMANCES
   • Format-shifting
   • Back-up copying
3. BLANK MEDIA LEVY
4. THE ACTIVITIES OF LIBRARIES AND LIKE INSTITUTION
   • Preservation
   • Storage and Collection Management
   • Access and Dissemination
5. ORPHAN WORKS

Read the submission