Phone books, yes, maybe, no, sometimes: Goodbye to copyright for databases? Federal Court finds no copyright in phone directories. TV guides too: The High Court Decision in IceTV and Nine Network. Both cases resolved against the purported copyright holder but not as a result of unambiguous law and not setting a clear precedent either. The copyright law in this country regarding compilations (there isn't database-specific law) is such an unmitigated morass that it takes thousands of dollars just to get a worthless opinion, and millions to go to court because you will end up arguing all the way to the High Court. The big players are now lobbying for compilation specific laws, but only if the laws enshrine their "rights". For the smaller player (myself included) the legal costs of fighting for what I consider right utterly dwarf the (still) ludicrous licensing fees some parties charge for simple lists of facts; a not dissimilar situation to patent troll demand letters.

What killed the National Broadband Network as a progressive fibre-based infrastructure project was the politicisation of a technical project. The Parliament (not the Government), having decided to do the project should have allocated the money to the project for the next ten years, got the **** out of the way, and stayed there. However, at the time we had a corrosive opposition party that saw an opportunity to pester an internally fragile, and later minority, government. They could not let cheap political points lie for the greater good. That they had the help of certain vested commercial interests is not surprising, but that was only possible while the political division continued. Had the same politcial effort been put into constructive endeavours aimed at furthering the project we would still have a fibre-to-the-home network project, that was not in danger of being canned entirely (my prediction), and Murdoch and the shock-jocks would have been neutered.

This is the MPAA, they will not do anything unless someone is paying them to do it. What do you think the MPAA's per-click charge would be? Seriously though, the message is probably court approved and cannot be seen to be commercially preferential to non-parties in the action.

Current copyright in the US exists from the time of creation but the 70 year expiry period does not start until the author dies, which clearly has nothing to do with either publication or creation dates. The assumed death of the author and periods for works-for-hire do not kick in until 95 years after publication or 125 years after creation, whichever occurs first. Publish something in your twenties and the world can expect it to be locked away for at least the next 125 years.

It seems reasonable to assume the AC's great public policy contribution would apply from publication (i.e. the point at which the work ceased to also be a trade secret) but I do not hold much hope of any elaboration on the AC's part.

Australian law, for example, does not require artistic merit (i.e. not a slavish copy) for a new copyright to exist in the photograph. An artistic work is defined as, "a painting, sculpture, drawing, engraving or photograph, whether the work is of artistic quality or not." (Copyright Act 1968 Sect 10). Whether it is a slavish copy of a public domain work or not is irrelevant in determining the rights pertaining to the image of the object. Other provisions covering databases of works would also come into play under Australian law if you tried to harvest a substantial portion of the image library.

As for Wikimedia Commons, "Wikimedia Commons only accepts media that are explicitly freely licensed, or that are in the public domain in at least the United States and in the source country of the work." (emphasis and reformat mine) Assuming there is some validity to the copyright claims over the images from the Vatican under Vatican law then you could not post them to the Commons. Similarly, "Media licensed under non-commercial only licenses are not accepted either", which would preclude many (all) the images created of the Bodleian's collection which carry a Creative Common Non-commercial licence.

I am not saying Australian law applies to this specific case, just reinforcing that the United States is not the World no matter how much they assert it is. I am also not saying that Australian copyright law is not an arse.

The few images I have seen carry a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported licence.

Here is the logic. The image is a work carrying copyright: you cannot reproduce the image without permission or staying within fair use/fair dealing provisions of relevant laws. The words on the pages in the are a public domain work: you can quote from the book with impunity. Logical in some minds, but copyright assertions by gatekeepers has a long history of abuse.

I wish I held your optimism. The area I live in has had digital TV broadcasts since before 2004, with the analogue signal being discontinued entirely in May 2013. Since 2004 the three commercial stations (in particular) have stopped sourcing the little 1080i material they broadcast in the early days, cannibalised the bit rate for the HD stream they are obliged to transmit, and opened low bit rate SD streams for tv shopping (e.g. 4Me, Extra, Extra 2 (timeshifted Extra), 7 Two, 2 x TV Shopping Network, Spree TV). Gem, a notionally HD stream, is also about 50% TV shopping and all upscaled.

Would not be so bad if the streams were H.264 encoded rather than MPEG: bits would not be so tight. At least our SD streams are anamorphic 16:9, pillarboxed for 4:3 material.

Now if only the broadcasters would use the HD stream to carry HD content we might have some net gain out of the process. The little 1080i material is generally upscaled SD and/or crippled by a low bit rate to accommodate yet another SD TV shopping/trash TV stream. ABC News 24 is 720p, SBS HD is upscaled SD simulcast, Gem is upscaled reruns and shopping, 7Mate is trash TV for "blokes", One HD is M*A*S*H and Get Smart reruns in glorious 1080i

No such beast in Australia AFAICT. You can pay cash for the card but you have to activate it online with the usual intrusive questioning.

Brisbane's version of this is called Go Card. Budgeted at a mere AUD 134M it came with the long tail for Cubic who get to operate it for, presumably, a healthy slice (undisclosed) of each ticket. Especially healthy... every year since introduction in 2008 the trip price has risen 15%, more than swallowing the small price drop used to entice people on to the system. They also take 24 hours or more to credit accounts with electronic funds paid in, and operate a completely unaccountable system for penalising those not recorded as "touching off."

Brisbane is a couple of hundred thousand smaller than Chicago's population. Perhaps the Chicago price is because the city did not want to give Cubic the endless commission.

They are not going to do this for the insurance companies out of the goodness of their hearts. So the stated business model is do precisely what they claim not to do, selling information gathered this way to "stakeholders."

Governments, police forces and the NSA are stakeholders too (whether or not LoJack want them to be). How long before the location data is married to traffic light changes resulting in infringements issued on the basis that your car passed a red light: no camera deployments required and no defence. Or speed information and speeding infringements... Or proximity to an unrelated crime... Or the location of political opponents... Or journalists... Or whistleblowers... Ubiquitous tracking will be abused.

... or just part of the legal costs already sunk on trying to put this particular genie back in the bottle

In the unlikely event that Mr Assange gets himself out of the Ecuadoran embassy and to the United States without being arrested by UK police, and the US border authorities did not immediately detain him, and US did not indict him on some charge of their own, then he would still be arrested shortly afterward. The Swedish authorities would have started extradition proceedings with the US the moment they got wind of Assange leaving the UK.

A recent skydiving accident story with a more cheerful outcome: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2487761/Wisconsin-skydivers-survived-mid-air-collision-said-extreme-sport.html