Australian Digital Copyright Laws Eased
May 15th, 2006
From here:
Under the new laws, it will now be legal for people to tape their favourite television or radio programs for viewing by family and friends.
But recordings must not be sold or hired nor played at school or to public audiences.
“These are commonsense amendments which will maintain Australia’s copyright laws as the best in the world for the benefit of our creators and other copyright owners,” Mr Ruddock said.
Good to see the law catching up with the (harmless) reality.
[UPDATE] BoingBoing reports that we’ve been shafted on this! They’ve picked up on this story in the Sydney Morning Herald (my preferred source of online Australian news, btw). I guess the Government figure that a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down, except that in this case the sugar is nothing special and the medicine is poison.
Cory from BoingBoing says in the article linked to above says, “You’d think Australia would be smarter than that: it’s pretty sad to be the easy-lay nation that Hollywood turns to when it can’t convince America to put out.”
Well Cory, it is sad. I thought Australia would have been smarter than too. I feel dirty and used.
[Lee Hopkins touches on the new laws in his latest post, and I leave a comment there pointing him to the SMH article above, along with some more of my views on the matter.]