A few weeks ago, I reported that ContestedFooty.com had received a cease & desist letter from the AFL over its use of original images depicting AFL players in the context of reporting and providing commentary on AFL news and events.

We were able to put the administrators of ContestedFooty.com in touch with a local solicitor who was willing to donate the time to examine the AFL’s claims and demands. I am now happy to report that ContestedFooty.com has advised the AFL that they will continue to use images relating to Australian Rules Football in their independent coverage of the sport.

(more…)

Cory Doctorow is reporting that Australia is part of a group of countries that are opposing a treaty that would ensure that people with a print disability have greater access to published copyright material.

The draft treaty (MS Doc; Google cache here) includes several important clauses, including:

• an exception to copyright infringement for non-profit supply of accessible versions of works to which a person with a print disability already has access in a non-accessible form;
• a statutory licence for reasonable for-profit supply;
• an exception to anti-circumvention law to allow blind persons to break technological locks that make the work inaccessible; and
• most importantly, an exception that allows importing and exporting of accessible versions of copyright works, enabling them to be distributed to blind people in other countries.

Please help us ensure that people with a print disability have access to published copyright material in an accessible form by raising awareness and contacting the Attorney-General’s Department.

(more…)

A few days ago, a Swedish court found the four figures behind thepiratebay.org guilty of criminal copyright infringement and sentenced them to pay approximately $5M AUD in damages and serve a one year prison sentence. The severity of the punishment is surprising, particularly as the operators of the Pirate Bay played a fairly loose role in any copyright infringements — merely providing an index of torrents already posted and tracked elsewhere.

But whatever we may think of The Pirate Bay, this case raises another example of a very troubling period for copyright law. Pirate Bay and other public trackers are clearly responding to consumer demand, and tougher sanctions for copyright infringement are unlikely to change that. Over the past ten years, we have seen that these actions have rarely, if ever, been successful in curbing the volume of filesharing. New filesharing technologies developed after Napster, Aimster, Grokster, Kazaa, and the creators of other networks were successfully sued. This trend is likely to continue, because the underlying demand is not being addressed.

The goals of copyright are noble. We all want to ensure that professional creators have the ability to be paid for their work. But the current approach of imposing harsh punishments on users and intermediaries is not helping with that goal.

(more…)

Michael Geist is reporting that ”[t]he European Parliament has voted for a proposal to bring more transparency and public access to documents. The resolution includes specific language about the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.”

Acting in accordance with Article 255(1) of the EC Treaty, the European Commission should immediately make all documents related to the ongoing international negotiations on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) publicly available.

The justification for the language is:

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) will contain a new international benchmark for legal frameworks on what is termed intellectual property right enforcement. The content as known to the public is clearly legislative in character. Further, the Council confirms that ACTA includes civil enforcement and criminal law measures. Since there can not be secret objectives regarding legislation in a democracy, the principles established in the ECJ Turco case must be upheld.

Geist notes that ”[t]he vote sends a strong signal on the need to open the ACTA process and heightens the pressure on the negotiating countries to remove the veil of secrecy.”

(more…)

Thanks to an impressive campaign spearheaded by Creative Freedom NZ, New Zealand’s controversial ‘guilt upon accusation’ clause, s 92A, will be delayed and may be suspended and may be abandoned.

Section 92A is a graduated response provision that requires ISPs to “adopt and reasonably implement a policy that provides for termination, in appropriate circumstances, of the account with that Internet service provider of a repeat infringer.”

Unfortunately, the definition of ‘repeat infringer’ is not clearly defined. The provision states that “repeat infringer means a person who repeatedly infringes the copyright in a work by using 1 or more of the Internet services of the Internet service provider to do a restricted act without the consent of the copyright owner.”

This wording is familiar - it is almost word for word identical to the Australian limitation on safe harbours in s 116AH, which provides that “The carriage service provider must adopt and reasonably implement a policy that provides for termination, in appropriate circumstances, of the accounts of repeat infringers.”

There has been an incredible showing of online protest at the forthcoming introduction of s 92 in New Zealand, and a lot of international support. We at EFA are heartened by the change that New Zealanders have been able to achieve. This is a notable victory for users, and is very encouraging for similar action worldwide.

(more…)

EFA has lodged its submission to the Department of Broadband, Communication and Digital Economy’s Future Directions review.

The submission tackles a number of important issues for the digital economy, including open access to public sector information, electronic accessibility of printed material to people with a print disability, broad-based ICT training, and copyright policy.

We conclude the submission with a reminder that our policy framework ought to empower Australians to access and build upon information in the digital economy:

As Australia transforms into a knowledge based economy, the policies we choose to adopt for the creation and dissemination of information become crucially important. It is becoming increasingly clear that greater access to information and greater technical and legal abilities to remix, build upon and improve that information are fundamental drivers of innovation. EFA believes that the single most important issue in an innovation policy is ensuring that Australians are empowered to innovate, and that the barriers we impose to innovation are justified with reference to our social goals.

Edit: This submission is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License.

Electronic Frontiers Australa (EFA) today expressed concern about a lawsuit filed against Internet Service Provider iiNet in the Federal Court. A consortium of media companies have sued the ISP for allegedly allowing its users to download infringing movies and TV shows by failing to terminate their accounts after allegations of infringement by the copyright industry.

“This lawsuit is the latest attempt by the movie industry to bully Internet Service Providers into becoming copyright police,” said EFA spokesperson Nicolas Suzor. “ISPs are not in a position to monitor and terminate internet access to users based upon unsubstantiated threats from copyright owners, and should not be asked to do so.”
(more…)

by Nic Suzor

Today I attended a briefing session on ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement ) hosted by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). I felt it was a good meeting, and I really got the sense that DFAT were interested in public participation. There was a good deal of frustration on both sides of the fence – participants expressed serious concerns about the lack of transparency in the negotiating process, and DFAT consistently repeated that they were bound by confidentiality agreements and could not divulge details of the draft text of the agreement. Participants in the Tokyo round of negotiations agreed that the full text of the agreement will only be made available after negotiations have been concluded and the text finalised. Understandably, there were a number of members of the audience who were hesitant to accept any of DFAT’s assurances as to the content of the agreement without access to the negotiation documents.

Overall, whilst I think that the process is far too secretive, DFAT appear to have gone a long way to make available what they can, and they seem genuinely interested in hearing from interested parties in Australia. Unfortunately, input will be limited (blind) until negotiations are complete and the text finalised, but DFAT assures us that they are considering the issues thoroughly and there will be genuine opportunity to debate whether or not to sign at the end of the process.

(more…)

More than 100 public interest organizations from around the world today called on officials from the countries negotiating Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) — the United States, the European Union, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Canada, Mexico, Australia and New Zealand — to publish immediately the draft text of the agreement.

(more…)

On Saturday 20 September 2008, EFA Board Member Colin Jacobs and EFA Chair Dale Clapperton will speak at the Software Freedom Day event to be held in Melbourne, Australia.  Starting at 11am, Colin will speak on the Rudd government’s current ‘clean feed’ Internet censorship agenda, and present a comparative analysis of ‘clean feed’ against other Internet censorship regimes around the world.

Dale will discuss legal and policy issues of importance to open software and open software developers, including copyright, contract, and competition law, including recent cases in Australia and the United States of America, and the development of the secretive and worrying ‘Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement’ (ACTA).

Colin & Dale’s presentations will be interactive and participatory, and time permitting, will be followed by a Q&A session.  They look forward to the opportunity to meet EFA members and supporters at this significant event.

Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) today expressed its concern about the lack of transparency in the development of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). EFA is also troubled by the little information that is available about the substantive content of the proposed plurilateral agreement, which threatens to dramatically alter the copyright balance in favour of corporate rights owners, impose significant liability on Internet Service Providers, and require the institution of invasive surveillance and filtering.

EFA Chair Dale Clapperton slammed the negotiation process. “Negotiations for ACTA have been conducted secretly. The public have a right to be involved in the development of measures which will significantly alter their legal rights. So far, only copyright owners have been involved in this process, and the outcome will undoubtedly favour their interests over the legitimate interests of users and reusers of copyright material.”

(more…)

Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) has lodged a submission to the Commonwealth Attorney-General’s Department (AGD), arguing that Australian consumers be given the right to make digital copies of their films, photographs, and computer and video games for their private use.

The submission is in response to the AGD’s review of sections 47J and 110AA of the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth), which currently only permit certain forms of analog to digital and digital to analog copying. For example, the current law allows Australians to digitise a purchased photo once, or to print a purchased digital photo once, or to make a DVD copy of a VHS tape.

(more…)

Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) today expressed its concern at the decision of the Full Federal Court in the Cooper v Universal Music Pty Ltd appeal. The initial decision in this case held that a Brisbane webmaster, his Internet Service Provider (ISP), a director of the ISP, and a technical support employee of the ISP were liable for ‘authorising’ the infringing activities of users of a website which acted as an index and search engine for MP3 files located elsewhere on the Internet.

(more…)

A Senate Committee inquiring into the controversial Copyright Amendment Bill 2006 has issued a report recommending changes to the Bill. Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) today cautiously welcomed the report of the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee but expressed concern that the Committee did not recommend the criminal provisions be deferred until next year.

(more…)

Nov 2006: EFA has made a written submission to the Senate Committee inquiry into the Copyright Amendment Bill 2006. The Bill, in its current form, contains a deeply flawed and over-broad implementation of the Technical Protection Measures provisions of the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement. The Bill will also introduce new purported rights of time-shifting and format-shifting which are much narrower than those existing in the United States, and contains a raft of new criminal provisions designed to make it easier to criminally prosecute Internet users for copyright infringement. These laws could be applied to children as young as 10 years old, and carry penalties up to 5 years jail.

See EFA’s Submission to the Copyright Amendment Bill Inquiry.

Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA), in conjunction with the Australian Consumers’ Association and the NSW Council for Civil Liberties, has lodged an amicus curiae application with the Full Federal Court in appeal proceedings regarding the Kazaa file-sharing software.

The three public interest groups, represented by the Communications Law Centre at Victoria University, are seeking permission to take part in the appeal as ‘friends of the court’.

(more…)