The Pencil Guy: Hourann's illogical blog

Why copyright levies suck

Tuesday 28 February 2006 at 9:42 pm

An interesting copyright-related story: a few months ago, when the federal Attorney-General was calling for submissions for a review of ‘fair use’ in Australian copyright law, one of the options presented was the introduction of a levy on blank media aimed at compensating copyright owners for illegal copies made with those media. Fortunately, very few of the submissions supported that idea (and indeed, most called for wide ‘fair use’ rights).

Over in Canada, they have exactly such a levy, but it turns out that its value hasn’t changed much in the last few years despite big drops in blank media costs. So, Canadians are often paying ridiculous amounts for blank CDs, with the levy being about A$0.25 each. The words ‘record company cash cow’ come to mind.

I really, really hope the AG’s department listens to the submissions and doesn’t try doing that here.

And now for something completely different: I’d always thought that all Perth train drivers were slightly balding men in their 50s who love nothing more than disrupting thousands of travellers every now and again with a middle-of-day strike. However, looking at some charity promo photos that appeared today, clearly I was wrong.

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