Australians Allowed to Format Shift Media

An anonymous reader writes "Australian Federal law will now allow format shifting of media (ie:Ripping CDs to MP3s). Something long allowed under US copyright legislation, but only now coming to the Land Down Under." From the article: "Once the new laws are passed, 'format shifting' of music, newspapers and books from personal collections onto MP3 players will become legal. The new laws will also make it legal for people to tape television and radio programs for playback later, a practice currently prohibited although millions of people regularly do it. Under the current regime, millions of households a day are breaking the law when they tape a show and watch it at another time."

Re:Isn't is supposed to be legal?

[chrisjrn]

No... the law here previously stated that the only fair use for copying was for educational, etc. purposes... The law hadn't changed since the 1960's. The issue was that the law explicitly stated that you couldn't make copies. So, now the law has a fair use clause like the one in the States, and all is now good in the world of CD Ripping

Re:A victory in the right direction.

[stuboogie]

While this is certainly great news for the Aussies, I don't think we can find any comfort here in the States. While current US copyright law may allow format shifting, the DMCA is being utilized to effectively nullify this fair-use of media. The legality of the anti-circumvention clause of the DMCA, as it relates to fair-use, has not been truly tested in our courts (brought before the Supreme Court). Until then, the **AA will continue to try and eradicate many of the uses we have become accustomed to believing are rights.

wrong

[NiroZ]

you guys got it all the wrong way round. just because it wasn't legal, doesn't mean it was enforced.

Re:Phillip Ruddock

[AlanS2002]

That's certainly a supprise given Mr Ruddock's backward views on just about anything else.

Re:What took so long ?

[mabinogi]

The difference is that in the USA there is not specific rule that allows format shifting, just that the "Fair Use" law is actually just a set of vague guidelines to allow the courts to decide what is fair use and what is not.
Mostly that's a good thing, but sometimes it results in the definition of "Fair Use" in any one case coming down to who has the most money to spend on lawyers.

In Australia and other countries, there are "Fair Dealing" laws, that very precisely set down in law what is allowed and what is not. That means that they don't adapt well to new technologies, but does mean that you know where you stand, and don't have to worry so much about the whim of the court.

Re:I'd gloat, but for the little voice back there.

[NoMaster]

On the other hand, the Australians may be lagging behind, but at least they're moving in the right direction.

You're missing something here. Admittedly it's not in the story, which is just a Sunday paper feel-good puff-piece, but it's there nonetheless.

This is all part of the Australian Government's responsibilities under the so-called "Free Trade Agreement" signed last year. The other part - which they inexplicably fail to mention in that story, or any other currently on-line - is the introduction of DMCA-like legislation to go with it. Over the past few weeks there's been the occasional story in the media about this, mostly mentioning the benefits to Australians, but occasionally stating how the US government has been pressuring the Australian government to "align" their copyright laws with those of the US.

Or in a few words: We're finally getting legislated "fair-use" rights - along with a DMCA.

Re:I'd gloat, but for the little voice back there.

[NoMaster]

To follow up my own post :

There's no official statement on the government website yet. Here's a link to the "Fair Use and other Copyright Exceptions" discussion paper. [ag.gov.au]

Refer to sections 4, 10, 12, and Attachment B (article 17.4.7. of the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement).

Re:Um...

[mabinogi]

um. No. 100 (reached by rasing ten to the power of two) does not equal 4 in binary, because 4 does not exist in binary. 100 exists in binary as does four, but you cant get 100(binary) - or four - from raising ten (1010 binary) to the power of two (10 binary) And you definitely can't get it by rasing 10(binary) to the power of 2(binary) as 2 also doesn't exist in binary.

All three of the sig, the reply and your reply to the reply are nonsensical as they mix bases without specifying which base is being used where.
10^2 does not equal 4 in any base, neither does 10^10.

The original sig should have said "Binary...the number system where 10^10 = 100 and 10+10 = 100".

I guess I know which of the 10 types of people in the world you three are ;)

I'm not sure why this is news

[Anonymous Coward]

In Australia, we have a law system inherited from the British. This basically means laws are applied at the discretion of the court. We have a criminal offence called "going equipped to commit arson" - which means you're carrying a lighter or matches. That law hasn't been enforced for a long time, I'm not sure if it was ever enforced. In America, no doubt people would be arrested much more frequently for this crime, because in America laws are enforced until abolished.

We live in a land where people aren't as litigation-happy, and as a result laws tend to be forgotten instead of being removed (for example, it is perfectly *legal* to urinate on the front right hand tyre of a car in public over here, but you'd probably be arrested for doing so). So this isn't really saying anything about our rights to copy and format-shift, and as was said above it's more to allow DMCA-type legislation to be enforced by American companies through our justice system.

The fact is, we never needed an update in our law system because no one's treated it as a big deal here. I'm sure if this sort of story was run here, most people would wonder why the media and government are stating the obvious.

Re:I'd gloat, but for the little voice back there.

[Kadin2048]

If media companies want to broadcast something -- throwing it out into what out to be a public resource (the managed EM spectrum) -- then they should have come up with a business model that didn't require a legislative solution that reduced citizens' rights to use their equipment as they see fit, in a non-interfering manner.

What the satellite providers did is took the public's airwaves and decided to apply the business model of a privately-owned medium (cable television) to them. Only unlike cable television, which has an argument for controlling access, satellite broadcasters do not, any more than your local VHF or UHF broadcaster should be able to say that you can only watch their channel if you own a particular brand of TV.

The satellite TV laws made something that you can do with nothing but a receiver and a box of circuits -- equipment that can't possibly interfere with or adversely affect others reception -- illegal. People talk about drug and vice laws as creating criminals out of basically harmless people: with the laws the broadcasters have managed to get passed, you can commit a host of federal offenses just by opening up a piece of equipment (which you own) and working on it in the right way with some basic tools.

Your post is indicative of how deeply ingrained their way of thinking has become: if a content provider wants to only deliver content to certain people, then they should only deliver it to those people. Buy the wires, buy the rights-of-way, and deliver the content. I don't particularly like the cable and telephone companies, but they at least have a solid argument for going after you when you climb up their pole and tap into their line.

But by allowing the satellite companies to do what they've done -- basically apply a legislative solution to a technological problem, and privatize a large swath of public resources to do so -- we've opened the door to a host of laws that create crimes where there were not crimes before ("anti-circumvention," even in some cases the dissemination of information that has to do with circumvention), and we've basically ensured that the future will be filled with more locked-down content, because it's so much more profitable. Why worry about selling advertising when you can sell subscriptions (or subscriptions AND ads)? You can make money from both ends that way.

In many cases we only allow the pay-per-use services to exist (or get started in the first place) because there are free alternatives. People shrug and tolerate pay-to-listen TV and radio, because they think they'll always have the free sources available. This is shortsighted: the business model of pay-to-listen is far more lucrative from a broadcaster's perspective, and we've seen it demonstrated that our laws gets changed to suit their whims. Free-to-air TV and radio: your days are numbered.

That we've been brainwashed in this country (and in most of the world, apparently) into thinking that it's right for companies to broadcast signals out into the ether, via the public airwaves, and pick and choose what people on the receiving end can do with them in a non-interfering fashion. Now that to me seems illogical.

Almost True.

[StArSkY]

In the FTA hearings the democrats (minor party in Aus) pushed for the introduction of Fair use into to counter-balance the DMCA provisions. The recommendations presented to the government include fair-use provisions

If you go back and read the public submissions, a large number of them were warning the government that DMCA without fair-use would unbalance the copyright laws.