Productivity Commission sparks widespread anger over copyright changes
Recommendations by the Productivity Commission to loosen copyright laws in Australia have sparked condemnation from the TV and creative communities, who have warned that the changes would undermine local investment in talent.
Free TV CEO Brett Saville says the Productivity Commission is “out of touch”
Amongst a sweeping set of recommendations the commission has said “Fair Use” provisions of the Copyright Act should be relaxed in order to reflect the changing way in which the world consumes creative content. In addition, the circumventing of geo-blocking should not be seen as a copyright infringement, the recommendations said.
The commission’s report said that Australians broke the law 80 times a day through “illegal” use of copyrighted material and suggested Australia look to the US and other international models for guidance.
The PC always looks at utility and in this case is simply making the point that IP laws allow owners to force Australians to pay more for books, movies and drugs than do people in the US.
Personally I doubt that any govt would bring on WW3 with US drug companies.
So the pressure here is to allow Netflix and Amazon and Google to decide the price of IP in Australia.
I’m not convinced it’s a bad thing. But the side effect is that if you have locally valuable IP you get a Google vacuum colonoscopy.