Kerry Nettle (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Australian Greens oppose this legislation. We want an Australia with a diverse and productive use of information and cultural generation. We support a balanced regulation of copyright, one which protects the capacity of owners and, in particular, producers of intellectual property and cultural products to benefit, but also where users and consumers have a right to fair use. Copyright law in Australia is currently unbalanced, and this will not be addressed by the Copyright Amendment Bill 2006. Indeed, it will be made worse. This bill, as we all know, is the result of the commitments made by the Australian government as part of the US free trade agreement. Allan Fels, the former head of the ACCC, and Fred Brenchley, the former editor of the Australian Financial Review, described the process this way:

Australia is obliged to change its Copyright Act to accommodate stricter controls on technology prevention measures (TPMs), which circumvent copyright required under the US free-trade agreement (USFTA). But Cabinet is using this window to roll in a host of other changes. The result, however, is a shocker for ordinary consumers, who do not deserve to be treated like the real criminals, the copyright pirates.

So the free trade agreement with the United States has meant that the worst aspects of the American copyright system are being imported into Australian law with none of the consumer safeguards such as open-ended fair use rights that exist in the United States. The Greens opposed the free trade agreement with the US and the legislation that implemented it, and today we oppose this legislation also.

Like many in the community, we warned that the free trade agreement with the US would lead to further erosion of the rights of ordinary users in relation to copyright issues. This bill is further evidence of what we were saying then. Peter Moon, a Melbourne IT lawyer, was spot-on when he said in Tuesday’s Australian Financial Review that the bill is ‘an Australian-US love child spawned by the free trade agreement’. Big users of copyright have got everything they want and more, and the users and consumers are faced with a big stick whenever they step outside the narrow and restrictive framework set by copyright owners. This bill will introduce new rights of time shifting and format shifting of various media, but those rights are so narrowly conceived that they allow the criminalisation of many common practices that are even allowed under the US laws.

Whilst the government has just moved to remove some of the worst aspects of this bill—the criminalisation of everyday practices through the strict liability for some offences such as recording a concert on your mobile phone—the essential problems remain. The target and the enormous effect of the bill can be summed up in this excerpt from a submission to the Senate inquiry by the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft. The federation represent big owners of copyright—in particular, the media and movie moguls of the US, such as Rupert Murdoch. In their submission they said:

The reality is more than 1/5 of Australians are currently involved in the types of infringing behaviour the Government expressly intends and needs to deter. This means ordinary everyday Australians from all walks of life and of varying ages. Ordinary people who make illegal copies of film and television programs for work colleagues and friends. Doctors, lawyers, factory workers, mothers, students using ordinary equipment engaged in pirate movie uploading, copying, swap clubs ...

These are not appropriate or acceptable ‘consumer’ or ‘small business’ behaviours but they are growing rapidly.

In other words 20 per cent of Australians are threatened by the penalties that are put forward in this legislation. They are not copying material to mass-produce or sell on the black market. They are doing what people have done for thousands of years: enthusiastically sharing knowledge, stories, music and artistic creation. The movie moguls may hate it but it is the way that life is. People cooperate and share ideas. That is what makes us human. This bill seeks to quash that capacity in this area.

As Fels and Benchley pointed out in the Australian Financial Review:

Copyright is an intangible. Complying with it in the digital age with its host of new technologies will require widespread public acceptance. Draconian personal fines and laughable restrictions are not the way to achieve it.

Once again we have the alleged needs of big business, in particular US media corporations, triumphing over common sense. This is why the proposed changes have been almost universally condemned and that the amendments the government claims address these concerns do little to change the substantive problems. The government should understand the modern world of digital media, but the recent changes to media laws and the failure to get a handle on the broadband needs of the country suggest that they do not. The government should listen to the concerns of the community and to industry users, who are saying clearly that they do not want to go down this path. In the Age this week Mark Pearce wrote:

These laws must be junked. We need to start afresh. There are more media technologies coming down the pipeline every day. Each one will present new threats, and new opportunities. If we overreact, in response to a bogus threat, we’ll box ourselves in and consign Australia to second-rate status in the global creative economy.

He is absolutely right. This bill should be scrapped. The Greens will not be supporting this bill and hope that others in the Senate will do likewise.