Wednesday, March 02, 2016

Copyright – The Fight Over Fair Use

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, documentaries – the story is king. So when pre-eminent storytellers, such as Nobel Prize winner J.M. Coetzee, Malcolm Gladwell, Margaret Atwood, Yann Martel and Stephen Sondheim throw their support behind a cause, there’s a good reason to ask why.
They and many others filed briefs this month with the US Supreme Court in support of the American Authors Guild.
Adam’s comments are part of a broader piece, The Fight Over Fair Use by The Australian’s National Business Correspondent, Annabel Hepworth, who interviews author, Linda Jaivin, among others, about the Australian government’s proposed amendments to the Copyright Act.
She writes, “Multinationals and others are pushing to change our copyright laws, particularly vital provisions involving the concepts of fair use and safe harbour — changes that critics warn could shut down publishers and cost the creative economy more than $1 billion.”

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