Government announces copyright changes

August 18, 2020

On 13 August, the government announced some proposed changes to the Copyright Act. You can see the the Minister’s media release here.

Most of the proposed changes follow from the ‘copyright modernisation’ consultations in 2018. These relate to ‘orphan works’ (works that a user cannot find a copyright owner for), quotation, and libraries and archives. The government also proposes to simplify the statutory licence for governments, following the successful simplification of the education statutory licence in 2017.

There are also some proposed amendments to the education licence that Copyright Agency administers. Our copyright licence works very well (especially during COVID-19) to ensure that Australian teachers and students can access an enormous amount of copyright material. It ensures that publishers, writers and visual artists are paid for the use of such material. We will carefully assess any proposed changes and keep members informed of further developments.

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