← "Maybe we should be paying more attention to our spam" | Return to Main Page | "The Albert Cheng mess" →

August 06, 2004

You are on the invidual archive page of What was public is now private again?. Click Simon World weblog for the main page.
What was public is now private again?

Australia is close to signing a free-trade agreement with the USA. It's not a perfect deal by any stretch: there are serious restrictions and ommissions due to various domestic political pressures. Anyway, the Sepos have done their bit, seeing it as a thank-you to a coalition of the willing member. In Australia the deal is stuck in the Senate while the two major parties quibble over the impact on Australia's drug subsidy scheme but it is inevitable that a deal will be done: can't go p!ssing off the Americans when they are saying thanks.

One of the overlooked aspects is Australia will now have to increase the term of copyright protection by 20 years. It seems perverse that retrospectively some items that were in the public domain are now to be removed again. My limited understanding of law is usually courts frown upon retrospective legislation and this would seem to be a case of it. Is this part of the law of unintended consequences or just a mistake? I hope the latter because it defies belief that which was open and free can suddenly become copyrighted again.

(via Kolya)

 posted by Simon on 08.06.04 at 02:18 PM in the




Trackbacks:

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://blog.mu.nu/cgi/trackback.cgi/39965

Send a manual trackback ping to this post.


Comments:

yep that reminds me of the chewing gum issue. we just cant imagine the u-turn/about face when them Legitimate Gangsters caved in to some US Senator's demand. we were disgusted i tell ya. disgusted.

 posted by: the letter b on 08.06.04 at 05:52 PM [permalink]

And the US already pulled the stunt of putting public domain material back under copyright. A Mickey Mouse act of Congress to protect the original Steamboat Willie cartoon of Walt Disney featuring Mickey from becoming public domain. This was when copyrights stopped being about protecting the ability of creative people to make a living and more about protecting the profit margins of corporations that scavenge off the creativity of dead (think Walt) or just brain dead (think Britney) people.

 posted by: Tom -Daai Tou Laam on 08.09.04 at 09:36 AM [permalink]




Post a Comment:

Name:


Email Address:


URL:


Comments:


Remember your info?







Disclaimer
All content, including comments, on this site operates under a Creative Commons Licence. The content except for quotes reflect my personal opinions and not those of my employer, family, co-workers, fellow Sydney Swans supporters or anyone else. The comments section is open but if you write it, you stand by it. I take no responsibility for comments. I may, at my sole discretion, moderate, alter or remove comments. I reserve the right to unashamedly change the rules as I go along. All emails are publishable unless otherwise marked. If you don't like it, use the little x in the top right of your browser.