forum

The Attorney General opened the Copyright Futures conference in Canberra yesterday.

As part of his speech he mentioned that last week he held a roundtable forum with ‘about 30 of the key representative groups’.

Wonder what that was about? According to the Attorney-General, some of the emerging themes were:

• whether the Government would benefit from an independent source of advice in addition to my Department, especially for technology and competition issues 
• access to justice considerations for individual creators and also the effectiveness of the Copyright Tribunal
• addressing piracy in the online environment
• the roles and responsibilities of declared collecting societies
• whether there should be new rights for visual artists, indigenous creators  and audio-visual performers
• the relationship between copyright and contract law, and
• whether there should be new exceptions to allow greater access to copyright materials.

Then, he identified the Government’s agenda:

These include the issues of resale royalty legislation for visual artists and the review of restrictions on the parallel importation of books. 

I am also evaluating proposals on the use of internet material by educational institutions, the role of Internet Service Providers in relation to online infringements, and appropriate enforcement of intellectual property crimes.

There is also the push for Governments to consider how to enhance access to and re-use Government information.

(Of course, in the best traditions, the printed speech is followed by a copyright warning notice.)

The speech is online here.