Australian Media 'Crooks' to Come in from the Cold 273
pagefault writes "News.com is reporting that millions of Australians who tape TV shows and copy CDs will soon get the right to do it with a clear conscience. From the article: 'The Federal Government will next year legalize the video recording of television shows for personal use, and the transfer of songs from CDs to MP3 players, in a bid to overturn a ban which has made criminals of much of the population."
Re:Pathetic (Score:3, Informative)
Tax? What tax? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Pathetic (Score:3, Informative)
Perhaps you meant AU$1.69?
Re:Any Enforcement? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Everyone's a criminal! (Score:3, Informative)
Before the obvious tirades start.... (Score:2, Informative)
Yes, There were a lot of penal settlements...
However, most of the people sentenced for transportation were sentenced for quite petty "crimes", say, stealing a loaf of bread or poaching a rabbit so their kids didn't die of starvation.... obviously a hanging offense. It was the 18th century equivalent of running a red light. They still managed to tame the harshest continent on earth and prosper, creating one of the greatest egalitarian societies the world has ever seen.
Secondly, that still only accounted for a very small minority of the population. I'm hazy on the exact figures but only about 4% of the Aus population have any convict descent at all, something like 40% of the current population wasn't even BORN here. Add to that the vast numbers of free settlers who immigrated here over the last 2 hundred years seeking a better life while creating the worlds only multicultural success story (apart from the occasional whacko who appears in every society, and some recent blown-out-of-proportion beach riots where the citizenry took back the beach from thug troublemakers of Middle-Eastern appearance).
Add in the worlds best beaches, coral reefs, rainforests, snow country and general quality of life and all-in-all we feel sorry for anyone who DOESN'T live here. Accuse me of parochialism as much as you want, the fact remains it's God's Own Country with pretty much all of the advantages found elsewhere without most of the disadvantages. Sure we don't get it right all the time but hey, it's pretty damn close.
Now contrast that with a country (no names) who was founded by extremist religious whack-jobs fleeing incarceration once Europe finally took out the trash, who eagerly embraced slavery, who eliminated pretty much all of the native population, who's Founding Fathers were mainly sozzled drunks beating their manservants and who now comprises 5% of the worlds population but accounts for over 50% of the worlds drug usage and who gun each other down by the tens of thousands in the streets each year.
A nation of peaceful, easy to live with honest people or a nation of murdering drug addicts ?..
wow, tough choice....
Oh, and British people are generally ugly and have major personal hygeine problems, so we can forget about them too !
Re:Everyone's a criminal! (Score:5, Informative)
And more to the point, many of the people originally shipped to Australia were convicted of offences which would be considered barely criminal today, like stealing a loaf of bread (or copying a CD?).
I wonder if any of the convicts on the First Fleet were sent over for stealing music? Sneaking into a concert hall for example?
Australia does have Fair Use (Score:3, Informative)
Australian Fair Dealing provisions allow for:
- research or study
- criticism or review
- reporting of news
- professional advice given by a legal practitioner or patent attorney
Re:Everyone's a criminal! (Score:5, Informative)
What about the fact that it's the country (a government department no less!) that invented 802.11g?
What about the fact that a hell of a lot of healthcare stuff is started in Australia?
I remember reading something a while ago about the bionic ear was an Australian invention, and probably a ton of other stuff...
Re:Any Enforcement? (Score:1, Informative)
This is not so much about laws which explicitely forbid personal copying. This has more to do with the fact that since we did not previously have explicit laws allowing "fair use" type provisions, the copyright laws could be applied to the absurd. So these new laws, open holes to allow the reasonable use of copying.
Like in firewalls with a default deny policy. We had no specific allow rule.
Was anyone ever even brought up against copyright laws due to what reasonable people would consider "fair use" in Australia? I know of none and it certainly was not common if it did ever happen. This is why judges exist in the first place. They are there to interpret what is right and wrong with respect to law and adherence to it.
Re:Before the obvious tirades start.... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Wow... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Fair Use (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Everyone's a criminal.... *at first* (Score:1, Informative)
There was a census done.. I forgot exactly when.. perhaps a hundred years after Australia was first settled by the Brits; 1788-1888. Of the entire European population in Australia, convicts and their descendants accounted for only 10%.
Re:Just wait a year or two (Score:2, Informative)
Interesting that those two prisons at Port Arthur and Sarah Island became very efficient at ship building. Eventually the government shut down ship building operations because private companies could not compete with the low price of convict built ships.
Re:Everyone's a criminal! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Everyone's a criminal! (Score:5, Informative)
I use it to kill weeds and small children.
Re:Everyone's a criminal! (Score:3, Informative)
Blank media breakdown (Score:3, Informative)
Basically, all the people not signed by an RIAA label get a net 4% [riaa.com] of the goods taken by blank media taxes (they don't have RIAA lobby dollars working for them). RIAA-signed artists get a total of 38.4% of the take, and the RIAA member publishers get 57.6% of the take. Note that this is a description from the RIAA, so that 38.4% may potentially be siphoned off into that 57.6% via fees orwhat-have-you.
It's irritating knowing that a percentage chunk of sales of many computer storage devices goes to lobbyists working to punch holes in free use, and even more irritating knowing that despite the fact that I have to pay for potential infringement, I *still* don't get to infringe legally.
You know...every time the RIAA complains that they need to be around to fund artists, and it's important that they exist to do so, and if they didn't get federal protection in the form of funds...I wonder what would happen if *100%* of that tax went to artists -- publishers not included. That *would* fund artists, presumably cutting out the middleman. Never going to happen, but an fun thought.
Another interesting idea -- an artist can choose to be supported by blank media sales *but* need to place all their work into the public domain *or* be supported by regular retail sales but not get any blank media sale funding.