Pirate Party promotes Fair Go for Fair Use Bill

With the closure of submissions on the Copyright Legislation Amendment (Fair Go for Fair Use) Bill 2013, Pirate Party Australia urges all Parliamentarians to support this vital change to Australia’s copyright laws. The bill is for an “Act to provide for the better use of, and fairer access to, copyrighted information, and for related purposes,” and would introduce much needed provisions and protections to Australian copyright law[1].

Chief among these is the introduction of fair use: a broad, flexible copyright exception that would be similar to that in place in the United States. Under fair use, greater use of copyrighted material would be permitted based on certain ‘fairness factors.’ This would be an enormous boon to the digital environment where copyrighted material is being used in many different ways that are not strictly speaking legal.

“Australia has, through various treaties and trade agreements, been burdened by many of the negative aspects of US copyright law without introducing the positive aspects,” said Joseph Miles, Pirate Party Senate candidate for Victoria. “Under the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement, the copyright term was increased to life plus seventy years, and yet Australia did not import with that fair use protections. A situation where Australians are subjected to a stricter copyright regime than even the United States should not be tolerated.”

“Copyright is a two-way street: it does not exist solely for the copyright holder’s benefit. There must be provisions for the fair use of copyrighted material by society. After all, it is Australian citizens who, through the Copyright Act, provide copyright holders with their right. This Bill will significantly level the playing field.”

In addition, the amendments would introduce safe harbours for educational insitutions to prevent them from being responsible for copyright infringement performed by students and staff, as well as preventing price gouging that continues to force Australians to pay more for digital content. If passed, the Bill would effectively implement many of Pirate Party Australia’s plans for copyright reform in Australia.

Market segmentation in the form of geographic blocking like region encoding means that Australians cannot reasonably access content that is available overseas at the same time as those markets, and are frequently subjected to unnecessary higher costs. Australians have been paying up to 66% more than Americans on Microsoft products[2], while Apple has blamed the price difference for content available through its iTunes Store on content owners who are “running on old-fashioned notions.”[3]

“Artifical market segmentation is causing a serious global imbalance. There is no need to charge Australians more for access to the same content on the same servers — there is no additional overhead,” Mr Miles continued. “Unless content is provided easily, timely and cheaply, Australians will look elsewhere. It is time for copyright holders to face the reality that we no longer live in isolated markets and societies and change the way they do business.”

“The Fair Go for Fair Use Bill is a small but much needed step in the right direction. Unfortunately it does not deal with insanely lengthy copyright terms or make exceptions for non-commercial file-sharing, which underscores Pirate Party Australia’s approach to copyright reform. However it does allow more reasonable use of copyrighted material. Considering the approach both major parties have to copyright issues, Senator Ludlam and the Greens are to be applauded for this Bill.”

Pirate Party Australia’s copyright policy focuses on moving Australian copyright law back into the commercial arena and maximising the benefit copyrighted material can bring to Australians[4], and is fully supportive of the Fair Go for Fair Use Bill as a modest change to bring Australian copyright law in line with rights granted to citizens of other nations.

[1] http://www.aph.gov.au/parliamentary_business/committees/senate_committees?url=ec_ctte/copyright_amend/index.htm
[2] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-07-29/geo-blocking-mps-committee-price-report-apple-adobe-microsoft/4850484
[3] http://www.zdnet.com/au/apple-ask-record-labels-movie-studios-why-itunes-pricing-is-higher-in-australia-7000012970/
[4] https://pirateparty.org.au/wiki/Policies/Copyright