Campaign for Copyright aims to address the challenges faced by the digitisation of creative works. It is about ensuring creators continue to be fairly compensated for their works and that creators and licensees are aware of their rights.
As author John Birmingham says in Copyfight: “Copyright is not some arcane legal architecture designed to deny people what they are due. It is a codification of respect. Respect for the hours, hundreds or even thousands of hours, which a creator poured into their endeavour.”
The concept of copyright itself is under threat.
Considerable damage has already been done to creators and to the availability and diversity of the terrific creative work we all love and enjoy. Many authors are concerned that their titles are being stolen online. Some publishers have had to cut back investment, research and staff because of online theft. Of most concern is where publishers stop engaging new Australian authors in a genre because of online theft.
Some laws overseas too have produced perverse policy outcomes – such as a finding in America that under fair use laws the digitisation of a book can extinguish the author’s rights. In Canada a respected education publisher has pulled out of that country altogether thanks in part to the reduction in remuneration for secondary copying.
We need to campaign for copyright and to advocate for the value of creativity. The Copyright Agency has been standing up for creators for over forty years, but we need supporters and creators themselves to join in and speak out.
This section provides research, reports, articles and speeches to help you become engaged in the ongoing debate about the value of the copyright to the creative sector.
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The Australian Publisher’s Association (APA) estimates that if no action is taken to curtail online piracy, by 2016:
- $6m Australians will access online content illegally
- the annual value of lost retail to Australian content providers will be $7.5b
- 66,000 jobs will be lost in these sectors as a result
- the annual impact of internet piracy on Government revenues will be $1.7bn. (Book Industry Collaborative Council Final Report 2013, pg 66)
Most Australians actually want action on online piracy and are ready and willing to pay for content as long as it is easy and at the right price. Furthermore, 83% of Australians think creators should be paid for work they make available for sale online (UMR 2012). The Copyright Agency joined other Australian content industries to launched an online Digital Content Guide to help consumers find legal and legitimate content online.
We believe the current Australian Copyright Act needs to be updated to reflect how people consume content today. It is, however, clear, flexible, and it works to fairly provide payment to content producers.
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What we are doing
The Copyright Hub
The Copyright Agency has partnered with UK not-for-profit The Copyright Hub on its global permission technology. When a user wants to copy an image or a piece of text, they will be able to simply right-click on it to find out who owns it, whether the owner wants to be paid for its use and if so, how much they want. A simple transaction can follow.
“This signals a practical and fresh way of synchronising digital sharing with an outstandingly easy approval process,” Copyright Agency Chair, Kim Williams says.
Read ‘One click solution to connect creators and consumers’.
Learningfield
The Copyright Agency has developed its own online subscription service for educational texts and classroom collaboration tools with LearningField. This is a model that brings together leading publishers to one platform to fulfil the demand of a digital learning environment with more variety and choice.
READING AUSTRALIA
The Copyright Agency believes the creation of high quality, local content is vitally important to the education of our next generation. To support our educational publishers and Australian authors, we launched Reading Australia. This ground-breaking online initiative presents a list of over 200 quality titles from many of Australia’s finest authors. Our list was chosen by a selection panel from the Australian Society of Authors, and more titles are being added on an ongoing basis.
copywatch
This is an initiative by the Copyright Agency and Copyright Licensing Agency UK (CLA UK) to allow individuals to confidentially report unauthorised copying and other copyright infringements by corporations and help safeguard creative output and quality publishing.
DIGITAL CONTENT GUIDE
Australian content industries launched an online Digital Content Guide to help consumers find legitimate content. There are similar initiatives in other countries such as the UK Digital Content Map, the New Zealand We Create site, and the US Center for Copyright Information and CreativeFuture.
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