The potential impact of ‘fair use’ on creators
March 2, 2016
In today’s Australian newspaper, Copyright Agency’s CEO, Adam Suckling, looks at why a change to a US-style copyright system will discourage Australian innovation. The opinion piece ran as part of a larger feature, The Fight Over Fair Use.
Adam writes, “There’s no doubt we all love a great story – whatever the medium: books, television, films, plays, documentaries – the story is king. So when pre-eminent storytellers, such as Nobel Prize winner J.M. Coetzee, Malcolm Gladwell, Margaret Atwood, Yann Martel and Stephen Sondheim throw their support behind a cause, there’s a good reason to ask why.
They and many others filed briefs this month with the US Supreme Court in support of the American Authors Guild.
Read opinion piece by Adam Suckling in The Australian
Adam’s comments are part of a broader piece, The Fight Over Fair Use by The Australian’s National Business Correspondent, Annabel Hepworth, who interviews author, Linda Jaivin, among others, about the Australian government’s proposed amendments to the Copyright Act.
She writes, “Multinationals and others are pushing to change our copyright laws, particularly vital provisions involving the concepts of fair use and safe harbour — changes that critics warn could shut down publishers and cost the creative economy more than $1 billion.”
Read The Fight Over Fair Use by Annabel Hepworth in The Australian.
ANOTHER resource
Download the full PwC report, referenced in these articles, Understanding the costs and benefits of introducing a ‘fair use’ exception.
The report was commissioned by APRA AMCOS, PPCA, Copyright Agency│Viscopy, Foxtel, News Corp Australia and Screenrights.
It finds that introducing a new exception to copyright law result in a loss of GDP in the order of $1.3bn.