September 23, 2016

US economic research finds copyright should be more robust in the digital age

As the Productivity Commission delivers to Government what’s expected to be a controversial report into Intellectual Property today, research from the US questions the push for relaxing Australia’s copyright rules. The Chief Economist of Washington’s Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal and Economic Public Policy Studies, Dr. George S. Ford, has weighed into Australia’s current copyright […]

May 6, 2016

Fair doesn’t mean free: changes would crush local content

The Productivity Commission’s draft report on Australia’s copyright arrangements makes recommendations that would be incredibly detrimental to our national creative talent. The report is overall profoundly disappointing and a major cause for concern, says Copyright Agency Chairman Kim Williams. “I cannot think of another recent report that so seriously misses the main drivers of its area of […]

April 14, 2016

Paul Goldstein on the rise and rise of fair use exceptions

Prof. Paul Goldstein, widely regarded as one of America’s finest legal minds on intellectual property, gave a speech late last year at an IFRRO Forum in Mexico City where he described a “great and worldwide battle (…) between the compensated use of copyrighted works and the free use of these works”. He predicted the outcome of this struggle would […]

March 2, 2016

The potential impact of ‘fair use’ on creators

In today’s Australian newspaper, Copyright Agency’s CEO, Adam Suckling, looks at why a change to a US-style copyright system will discourage Australian innovation. The opinion piece ran as part of a larger feature, The Fight Over Fair Use. Adam writes, “There’s no doubt we all love a great story – whatever the medium: books, television, films, plays, […]

December 7, 2015

PwC Report says copyright changes should be ‘evidence based’

Changes to Australia’s copyright laws to a US-style ‘fair use’ model would ‘undermine incentives to invest, trigger company closures and smash local creativity’, according to a cost-benefit analysis by PwC – as reported in the Australian Financial Review article: Don’t change copyright law, urges PwC. The view is supported by the Copyright Agency, along with other media […]

Michael Robotham

December 3, 2015

Copyright and Piracy: Michael Robotham

First let me say that I am passionate about freedom of speech, freedom of thought and freedom of expression. I also want to laud the digitalisation of media as one of the greatest breakthroughs in history. Until a few years ago, despite being translated into 23 languages, my psychological thrillers were accessible to a relatively […]

September 14, 2015

Our culture will pay for loss of rights, says Turow

American best-selling author and former President of the US Authors’ Guild, Scott Turow, addressed the Australian Society of Authors’ Congress recently. He urged authors to stand united to retain their rights and for readers to back them through buying their books. Read this edited version of his engaging and informative speech, which was published in […]