The current government push seems odd for a couple of reasons. Firstly, we are a net IP importer. Every time we tighten IP law we end paying up more for music, patents, movies, books. We would be better off using the loosest copyright law we can get away with. Instead we going to end up inflict upon ourselves one of the more restrictive and consumer unfriendly copyright laws the world has seen to date.

Secondly, this is an area that is changing very quickly. I doubt anybody knows how the digital distribution landscape will end up. Certainly not the content providers, if history is any guide. The movie industry in particular run around screaming wolf at every new technology, most famously when the MPAA representative said: "the VCR is to the American film producer ... as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone". The VCR became their primary source of income. Yet it appears we are letting the current content providers dictate what technology we are allowed to use. Its like letting pollies decide who can vote for them.

If you are interested in reading more, here is another IP Academic's blog about the issue:
http://weatherall.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_weatherall_archive.html#115831469820662216

It's fascinating watching how private interests influence debates such as these. If anyone out there is interested, they may want to look into the history of the Disney Corporation and how copyright law has been amended in the US as the Disney trademark reached it's end... in tandem with extensive lobbying from Disney representatives, the period before copyright lapsed was extended just as Disney Corporation would have lost the fruits of the now-deceased Walt Disney's labour.

Int'rusting stuff. We do need to preserve the bottom line of artists and creatives, but within reason. It's hard to sympathise with the rich, famous artists complaining about copyright infringement, though do we have to lump them in with legitimate threats to the sustainability of the creative livelihood?

Thanks Brian for bringing to our attention this very alarming development.

Whilst the copyright owners wish to label those who copy IP against the copyright laws as thieves, I would suggest that the real thieves are the copyright owners themselves who have stolen from the rest of humanity much of the vast potential that computer and communications technology has to improve the lives of everyone on the planet.

If the laws intended to protect the monopoly incomes of the copyright owners turn the majority of people into criminals, then the laws are clearly stupid and have no place in a free, open and democratic society.

Personally I favour the removal of all laws which prevent the copying of any intellectual property. Even if such a situation cannot be achieved overnight, at least we should aim for it in the longer term.

Of course removing copyright laws does have the potential, as pointed out by TurnRightThenLeft above, to threaten the livelihoods of artists and others who create intellectual property, however if we were all prepared to think outside the square, largely imposed upon us by the copyright owners of the world, we could come up with other means to ensure that they are fairly and adequately remunerated.

I suggest that for every category of intellectual property - music, software, movies, chemical formulae, industrial designs, journalistic and academic works, etc, a world-wide database be set up which can be accessed through the Internet. All who contributed works to such a database could be remunerated through a pool of money collected through the taxation systems of every country in the world.

(to be continued)

(continued from above)

If the volume of downloads were measured, then formulae could be arrived at that would guarantee that everyone who contributed to the database would be remunerated according to the value of the work. The formula should not be linear, rather it should be based on something like a square root or the log of the number of downloads. This would ensure that the more popular a work was the better remunerated the contributor would be. However, it would allow those who are struggling to establish themselves to still be remunerated adequately whilst preventing established contributors from being remunerated too excessively.

Of course such a database would be a massive and expensive undertaking, but the benefits to all of us would be so great with the massive economy of scale that the Internet makes possible, that it would easily pay for itself very quickly.

The additional 'wealth' in the hands of everyone able to access the database through the Internet would dwarf even the enormous wealth that the copyright owners have been able, up until now, to take from the rest of us, so from the point of view of humanity as a whole, sharing of knowledge in this way would be undeniably and massively beneficial.

It would be vastly simpler than the current shambles of the international copyright system with all the costly technology and legal system that it requires.

Other links that my be of interest are : http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=141#16420 and http://www.copyrightmyths.org

Am I right in thinking that one of the implications of this proposed legislation will be the establishment of the basis for demanding right of entry into private homes for purposes of inspecting for possible breaches of DTMs?

Correction re previous post: TPMs (Technical Protective Measures)