As part of a free trade deal with the U.S., Australia has agreed to extend the term of Australian copyright 20 years. As in the U.S., the term is now 70 years after the death of the author. The effect is to slow the flow of all future work into the public domain and retroactively delay the transition to the public domain of 20 years' worth of previously published work. The extension is as controversial in Australia as it was in the U.S. and for the same reasons. See Fergus Shiel, Libraries caught in copyright changes, The Age, February 11, 2004. Quoting Colette Ormonde, copyright adviser for the Australian Library and Information Association: "The outcome is bad for libraries. It is bad for students. It is bad for researchers. It is bad for all information users. We have agreed to a very restrictive US copyright regime with no clear dispute mechanism....[I]t will cause huge problems. People who have been using information that is in the public domain will suddenly have to pay for it." More coverage. (PS: It was wrong for the US to put private interests ahead of the public interest in a vibrant, continually-fed public domain, and wrong to pressure Australia to do the same. If copyright harmonization is important, then the U.S. should repeal the Bono Act and adopt the shorter Australian copyright term.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 2/14/2004 10:42:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
