Roger Clarke's Free Trade Agmt and 'I.P.'
Roger
Clarke
Principal,
Xamax
Consultancy Pty Ltd, Canberra
Visiting Professor,
Baker
& McKenzie Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre,
University
of N.S.W.
Visiting Professor,
E-Commerce
Programme,
University
of Hong Kong
Visiting Fellow,
Department
of Computer Science,
Australian
National University
Draft of 15 March 2004, with enhancements of 17, 18, 19 March; 8, 14, 15, 19,
22, 27, 30 April; 5 May
©
Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 2004
Available under an AEShareNet licence
This document is at http://www.rogerclarke.com/II/FTA17.html
1.
Introduction
The Australian and U.S. Governments have announced a
Free
Trade Agreement between the two countries. Chapter 17 is entitled
'Intellectual Property Rights'. It is
available
in PDF format. There are also two so-called 'side-letters', which
constitute "an integral part of the Agreement", one on
'Aspects
of IP', and the other on
'ISP
Liability'.
The purpose of these Notes is to briefly summarise the effect of FTA 17, its
impacts on Australian copyright and patent law, and its consequential impacts
on the Australian economy and Australian society. The document is intended as
a briefing paper on the matter, for consideration by public interest advocacy
bodies, professional associations, industry associations, the media, and
interested members of the public.
The document comprises the following sections:
References are available to
resources
provided by various organisations.
2.
The International Strategic Background
'Intellectual Property Rights' is used to refer to a variety of rights in
intangibles, especially copyright, patent, trademarks and designs.
The U.S. Government has sought the agreement of the Australian government and
the Australian Parliament to the imposition on Australian law of the terms of
U.S. copyright and patent law. The justification provided for these changes is
that free trade requires harmonisation of Australian laws with those of the
U.S.A.
The changes would be to the significant advantage of copyright-owners and
patent-owners. These are overwhelmingly corporations, and overwhelmingly
corporations domiciled in the U.S.A.
The Australian Government is of course fully justified in seeking to break down
the high levels of U.S. protectionism, and to gain access to the U.S. market on
more reasonable terms for Australian agricultural and pastoral goods.
But, in doing so, the Australian Government must not hold to ransom the
country's burgeoning information industries, and the rights of its consumers
and citizens.
3.
Imposed Changes on Australian Law
It is not straightforward to extract from the documents the changes that
would be forced on Australian law. In order to gain a clear appreciation of
the impact, it is necessary to have a firm grasp of current laws, and then to
map the specific terms of the FTA onto those laws. The following is a
preliminary outline of what appear to be the key elements.
The key impositions on Australian copyright law appear to be
as follows:
- extensions to the life of copyright (17.4.4);
- ? extensions to the list of rights that make up copyright (17.5);
- extensions to the powers of copyright-owners that are concerned about
possible breaches of their rights:
- extensions to discovery processes available to (17.11.11);
- additional impositions on ISPs (17.11.29(a));
- extensions of warrants to extract information from ISPs, possibly without
judicial authority (17.11.29(b)(xi));
- extensions to the powers of injunction and seizure (17.11.9);
- provisions whose effect would appear to be higher financial liabilities
for infringers (17.11.6-8);
- creation of additional criminal offences (17.11.26);
- imposition of the term 'pirated' in a manner inappropriate to Australian
law (17.11.19);
- replacement of the 'Digital Agenda' extensions to copyright law by the
excessive, very widely cast, cumbersome and punitive U.S. DMCA requirements in
relation to:
- the use of 'circumvention devices' (17.11.7);
- 'rights management information' (17.11.8).
The key impositions on Australian patent law appear to be
as follows:
- extensions to ensure that process patents are approved (17.9.1)
- ? tight limitations on exclusions from patentability (17.9.2)
- ? limitations on revocation (17.9.5)
- ? limitations on compulsory licensing (17.9.7)
- ? changes in the prior publication rules (17.9.9)
- extensibility of the changes at the option of the U.S.A. (17.9.14)
The key impositions on Australian trademark law appear to
be as follows:
- extensions to geographical marks (17.2.1);
- extension to sounds and scents (17.2.2).
4.
The Need for I.P. Laws to be Justified
Copyright and patent laws are interventions into the natural order of
economic and social activities. They create monopolies, and invite the owners
of the monopolies to 'extract rents' from them, i.e. to exploit the law in
order to generate higher revenue than they would normally earn, and to impose
higher costs on competitors.
Considerable justification is needed for the meddling that is copyright, patent
and trademark law. In the past, moral and ethical justifications have not been
considered to be sufficient. The justification has been sought, and needs to
be sought, in economics: these laws exist only to encourage innovation, and to
do so by enhancing the scope for revenue flows to innovators.
The proper purpose of copyright and patent laws is emphatically not to create
advantages for one corporation over another, or strategic advantages for one
nation over another (although, depending on the nature of the meddling, that
can be their effect). The argument for them is solely that 'the economy as a
whole will work better that way, because there will be more innovation'.
5.
The Lack of an Economic Case For the Changes
No convincing evidence has been presented in support of the argument that
the digital era has undermined longstanding arrangements and that change is
needed to sustain the status quo. The U.S. music industry has invented all
manner of statistical arguments, which, when investigated, have been found
seriously wanting. The same goes for the U.S. proprietary software industry,
or at least for Microsoft. (Many other I.T. companies say that they see patent
law in particular as being to the serious detriment of innovation in the
industry).
Large corporations in mature industries tend to fight against technological
change when it is driven by more nimble newcomers. For example, entertainment
companies fought viciously against video-recording; but once they finally
adapted to the new technology they made massive profits from it.
Music companies' equally vicious resistance against peer-to-peer (P2P)
reticulation of recorded music is finally giving way to adoption of the
technology. The corporations were clearly told 10 years ago that they will be
able to achieve large turnover and high margins once they adopt a constructive
approach to the new opportunities. The early signs from leading initiatives
such as Apple's iTunes are that the pundits were right, and that consumers are
prepared to pay high prices for such services.
The equally vicious opposition by Microsoft to open source software is just as
ill-informed and unjustified. A healthy marketplace is emerging, based on
value-adding by companies to publicly-available code. This has great benefits
in terms not only of reduced costs to user organisations and consumers, but
also far earlier discovery of integrity and security problems, and hence
much-improved quality of software products.
The beneficiaries of the features of U.S. law that the U.S. Government wants to
impose on Australian law are large U.S. corporations, in particular the large
music and multi-media corporations generally, and Microsoft. But the case put
forward by these corporations has been based on misinformation. No
justification exists for the extensions to the monopoly rights that are being
proposed.
6.
The Economic Argument Against the Changes
Innovation is dependent on ready availability of information. Especially in
the booming digital information industries, innovation rarely occurs in some
'big bang' manner. Rather, it is almost entirely cumulative. Successive
small, step-wise refinements are made. Ideas are transported from one context
to another, and adapted to new situations.
Moreover, there is seldom a sole-originator of an innovation, because modern
industries are symbiotic. Manufacturers are dependent for many of their new
product features on:
- their suppliers - through new features in componentry that they
incorporate, and their questions and suggestions;
- their customers - through requests, and feedback on previous rounds of new
product features; and
- their competitors - through cross-fertilisation, based on observation of
one another's products, comments made by customers about competing products,
common suppliers, common consultants, educational institutions, research
laboratories, and employees moving from one company to another.
In short, innovation is seldom achieved by one organisation making a massive
breakthrough, but by many organisations and a great deal of ongoing
interaction. Rather than 'one person standing on the shoulders of giants',
most progress is achieved by hordes of busy elves.
Information economics shows that innovators can achieve returns even if they
only have quite limited monopoly rights. The prevention of mere imitation
without enhancement is justified; but that requires no more than minor
refinements to longstanding laws, the majority of which have already been
made.
Process patents are an especial concern. Since the Carter Administration,
patents have been an explicit weapon of U.S. international competitive
strategy. The U.S. Patents Office has lowered the threshhold of innovation
required of a patent application to the point that almost anything is approved.
The 'contribution' can now be a minor and obvious refinement, it may relate to
a mere 'business process' rather than an 'industrial process', and even vague
generic claims are accepted. Progress in eBusiness is being seriously harmed
by assertions of rights in fundamental ideas such as 'one-click shopping',
'reverse auctions', 'automated credit-checking' and even the notion of a
'hot-link'.
Innovation is also being seriously constrained by legal actions initiated by
corporations opposed to innovation. Copyright and patent laws provide large
copyright-owners and patent-owners with the ability to deflect the attention of
innovators from their work, to impose years of delays and very high legal
costs, and in some cases even to prevent innovation from taking place. There
is strong evidence of patent-owners in particular using their legal rights as
strategic weapons against competitors. An innovative Australian company
recently described patents as "a worthless must-have", because every innovative
company needs to have a small collection of them in order to counter-threaten
competitors when they seek to delay the implementation of innovative
products.
In short, the longstanding intention of copyright and patent law to stimulate
innovation is being frustrated by the manner in which it is being used by its
monopolist beneficiaries.
It is accordingly seriously against Australia's economic interest for copyright
and patent laws to be extended at all, let alone in the manner that the U.S. is
imposing on Australia through the terms of FTA 17.
7.
The Social and Cultural Argument Against the Changes
Australian society has had a long and strong dependence on open information
flows. This has been protected by an orientation towards open accessibility,
and significant qualifications on the rights of copyright-holders.
A first concern is that enhancements to the powers of copyright-holders
increase the incentive for organisations and individuals to exercise
proprietary power over software, over multi-media, and over information more
generally. This works against open source and open content thinking, increases
both the purchase costs and the transaction costs to software and information
consumers, and hence reduces the accessibility of software and information.
A further concern is that use of the draconian powers that the changes would
grant to copyright-owners would result in information suppression through
take-down notices. These are already having the effect in the U.S.A. of
causing ISPs to automatically remove the web-pages and even whole web-sites of
individuals and small companies, merely because they receive a threatening
letter from a lawyer purporting to be acting on behalf of some major
corporation.
It is important to note that the effect of the proposed changes would be even
more serious in Australia than they already are in the U.S.A. One reason is
that Americans enjoy a measure of protection because they have a Bill of Rights
entrenched in their Constitution which includes freedom of speech provisions.
A second reasons is that U.S. copyright law qualifies the rights of
copyright-holders with 'fair use' provisions that are much more substantial
than the Australian law's 'fair dealings' clauses. There appears to be nothing
in the FTA that requires strengthening of consumer protections, and hence
Australians would suffer the worst excesses of the U.S. legislation without
even the limited countermeasures that U.S. consumers have available to them.
The powers are also readily able to be used by corporations to oppress their
opponents, including not only their economic competitors but also their
economic and social critics. This can be achieved through threats of expensive
litigation, and of invocation of the criminal law. The credibility of that
oppressive behaviour would be greatly increased if the U.S.-dictated provisions
were implemented in Australian law.
These are not mere theoretical or speculative arguments. The DMCA provisions
have been used in the U.S.A. to seriously infringe the freedoms of a number of
people. These include Russian Dmitry Skylarov (who was gaoled for months, but
with the charges eventually withdrawn), Norwegian Jon Johansen (who was
subjected to many months of prosecution in his homeland, which was eventually
rejected by the courts, and who has been advised never to enter the U.S.A.),
and American Ed Felten (who was threatened with prosecution if he presented a
paper at a conference; a threat that was later withdrawn).
The obligations embodied in the FTA 17 requirements, if they were implemented,
would seriously harm the public interest in openness, and hence damage both
social processes and Australian culture.
8.
Conclusions
If the Australian Parliament were to comply with the terms of FTA Chapter
17, they would have to make changes to copyright and patent law that are
demonstrably against the interests of innovators, because they fundamentally
change the character of those laws from stimulative to protective.
Among the many unreasonable U.S. impositions are:
- extension of the already very long life of copyright by 20 years;
- enormously increased powers for copyright-owning corporations, enabling
them to disturb business, attack normal consumer practices, and suppress
information;
- draconian requirements of Internet Services Providers which would be
burdensome for those businesses, and intrusive into the activities of
businesses and consumers;
- issue of patents for mere descriptions of business processes, which is
completely at odds with the very notion of patents, and seriously constraining
on the conduct of business.
Copyright and patents are legislated monopolies. They enable owners to
prevent other organisations and individuals from being creative. Their sole
justification has been the stimulation of innovation by providing a window of
opportunity during which an innovator can exploit their ideas. The new
philosophy pursued by the U.S.A. in its own economic interests is that owners
of copyright should have greatly enhanced powers in order to make profits, and
thereby benefit the U.S. economy at the expense of the economies of other
countries.
There are well-established multilateral agreements in place concerning
copyright and patent. The Australian Government has agreed to undermine those
multilateral agreements by including within a bilateral trade agreement
fundamental changes to its laws.
Moreover, there are well-established multilateral processes in
place to enable debate about copyright, patents, trademark and design laws.
These involve consultations, and specialist negotiators. The Australian
Government has agreed to undermine those multilateral processes by overriding
them with an ad hoc, bilateral trade negotiation process.
The Australian Parliament must reject these changes to copyright and patent
law. They are economically, socially and culturally harmful to Australia.
They serve the interests of U.S. corporations, not Australians.
Resources
-
Electronic
Frontiers Australia (EFA) IP Section
-
Baker
& McKenzie Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre, UNSW Faculty of Law,
Sydney
-
Linux
Australia
-
Australian
Democrats
-
The
Greens
- Other Industry Associations:
- Professional Associations:
- the
Australian
Library and Information Association (ALIA) stated on 18 Dec 03 that "ALIA
asks you to oppose any commitment of Australia, in the trade negotiations with
the United States, which will impair the right of Australian governments to
legislate on intellectual property for the primary interests of Australians".
ALIA also made a
submission
to JSCT
- the
Australian
Computer Society stated on 3 May 2004 that "We are concerned about the
potential negative impacts on the Open Source sector as a result of the FTA's
provisions to harmonise Australia's copyright and patent laws with those of the
US. Should Australia adopt the US approach, the interoperability of data
formats would be made illegal and the consequences of copyright and patent
infringement would be escalated. The former would effectively exclude Open
Source developers from competing in the software marketplace. The latter would
severely limit the ability of small companies, as well medium and large
companies who do have cross-licensing agreements, from competing due to the
weight of compliance costs"
-
Australian
Interest
-
FTA
Exposes Government and Business To Risk, by Sue Bushell, in CIO Magazine of
25 March 2004, reporting on Brendan Scott's analysis
-
The
FTA clause that stifles creativity (Peter Martin, in The Sydney Morning
Herald of 14 April 2004), incl. "the prospect of an extra 20 years of copyright
protection would be worth about the same to a would-be author as an increase in
income of one third of 1 per cent" (attributed to Economics Nobel
prize-winners); and " In Australia a government-appointed committee
recommended against extending our copyright term as recently as four years ago.
It also recommended that no extension be introduced in the future "without a
prior thorough and independent review of the resulting costs and benefits".
The Government accepted both recommendations. But the Government has now
agreed to extend our copyright term"; and "Canada ... enjoys a free trade
agreement with the US and retains Australian-style copyright laws. Last week
it knocked back a bill that would have extended those laws".
-
'Copyright
protection 70 years after death does not encourage creativity' Online
Opinion, 25 Nov 03, by Emma Caine, Andrew Christie and Peter Eckersley
Key
Submissions to the JSCT
This section provides links to and quotations from
Submissions
to the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties (JSCT), in particular:
- Libraries:
- 20-
State
Library of Victoria, including "The Library would urge policy makers to
review the AUSTFA proposals in the light of the cultural, legal and historical
differences between Australia and the United States to ensure that the level
and costs of material currently available in the public domain are not reduced
in any way. Developments such as open source software and the creative commons
cooperative both in Australia and overseas also indicate that creators and
scholars in the education and cultural sectors do not support restrictive
copyright laws"
- 71 -
Australian
Libraries Copyright Committee / Australian Digital Alliance, including:
- "the importance of maintaining a balanced copyright regime is not properly
reflected in the draft text of Chapter 17 of the FTA. Chapter 17 creates
obligations to amend the Australian copyright regime in ways that will
ultimately reduce access to materials, increase costs for institutions which
provide public access to knowledge and curb innovation. This neglect is
disturbing and unsatisfactory given that a balanced intellectual property
[regime] forms the research and resource base upon which our knowledge and
creative industries, as well as many of the primary industries rely" (p. 1);
- "Although Australia and United States share a common law tradition, some
divergence has developed in recent years, marked by the emergence of powerful
U.S. copyright markets which have been extremely successful at legislative
lobbying. Consequently, the U.S. copyright regime sets one of the highest
standards of copyright protection in the world" (p. 3);
- and "Australia is a net importer of copyright materials from the U.S. by a
substantial margin; an extension of copyright term will, other things being
equal, lead to a reallocation of resources and adversely affect our balance of
trade. An extension of copyright term has serious consequences for libraries,
cultural and educational institutions in relation to raised costs of
maintaining access to information and increased costs associated with the
already formidable and resource-intensive task of tracing copyright owners and
requesting permissions. The groups of people who will be ultimately affected
include historians, scholars, teachers, writers, artists and researchers of all
kinds" (p. 4)
- 115 -
Council
of Australian Librarians (CAUL), including:
- "the carefully developed balance between the interest of copyright owners
and users will be destroyed and tipped firmly in favour of the owners. This
outcome will be to the disadvantage of writers, artists and filmmakers, as well
as the general public, who all depend on using copyright materials to create,
to learn and to participate in community life" (p. 2);
- "Moral rights provisions ... will be vulnerable to challenge under the
dispute provisions of the FTA. This will again jeopardise the interests of
Australian creators in favour of corporate media interests" (p. 2);
- "the impact on higher education in Australia will be to raise the cost of
compliance on an annual basis and increase the cost to research as researchers,
who traditionally 'stand on the shoulders of giants', will be required to pay
for information which would under current Australian law have come into the
public domain" (p. 2); and
- "costs will rise due to the necessity to pay copyright owners for an
additional 20 years. This cost will be paid by the universities, taking funds
from teaching and research to remit them substantially to overseas copyright
owners" (p. 2)
- 142 -
Australian
Library & Information Association (ALIA), including:
- "ALIA opposes adoption into Australian law of provision 17'.4.4 extension
of the copyright term, cited below, and asserts that to do so is contrary to
the interests of Australian creators and information users;" (p. 5);
- "Milton Friedman, and 17 other economists (including five Nobel prize
winners) ... found that the economic benefit of the extra 20 years to copyright
owners was less than one US cent a year for an individual work and was,
therefore, unsustainable as an economic argument for extension" (p. 5);
- "the Carnegie-Mellon study ... found that pursuing copyright permissions
for out-of-print or commercially unavailable works cost from $US150 to $US200"
(p. 5);
- "The extension of copyright terms is an extension of corporate monopoly.
It has no place in a free trade agreement, is anti-competitive and burdens
information consumers with escalating and unpredictable costs and legal
obligations. The drive of American copyright owners, expressed by one lobbyist
as extension of the copyright term for "infinity minus a day", is to use the
profit potential of cheap digital distribution to establish a new basis for
copyright law, one of reward for investment, with diminishing or no space for
public or free uses. This is completely against the public interest of any
country and it places no obligation on the copyright owner to continue to
invest or make the information available commercially" (p. 6);
- "to extend the copyright term. It would add to the cost of our
information, education and research, without providing commensurate benefits to
Australian creators and publishers" (p. 6);
- "ALIA urges caution in adopting the strict measures of the US Digital
Millennium Copyright Act regarding: the circumvention of technological measures
set out in article 17.4.7; the removal of rights management information set out
in article 17.4.8; and the enforcement provisions set out in 17.11" (p. 8)
- Universities:
- 63 -
University
of the Sunshine Coast, including "We are concerned about the impact of the
differences between the 'fair use' provisions in the US law and the 'fair
dealing' provisions in Australian law; [and] the extension of the term of
copyright ... the result will be to destroy the current balance between the
interests of copyright owners and users in favour of the owners. This will have
disadvantageous effects on the Australian education industry ... We are
concerned that the balance for copyright owners and users as expressed in the
Australian Copyright Amendment (Digital Agenda) Act 2000 will be lost" (p. 1)
- 103 -
Swinburne
University, including:
- "the commitment that has been made to 'harmonise' US and Australian
copyright law should be extended to the 'fair dealing' regime currently
applying in Australia" (p. 2);
- "The proposed extension of the term of copyright is unlikely to provide
any economic benefit for Australian scholarly authors, and will significantly
reduce material available in the public domain. This will produce a negative
net effect for educational copyright users" (p. 3); and
- "addition the university pays approximately $A600,000 per annum to
collecting societies to take advantage of the statutory educational licences
contained in Parts VA and VB of the Copyright Act. This additional cost is not
borne by US educational institutions which can undertake educational copying
for no payment under the US 'fair use' provisions" (p. 4)
- 117 -
Macquarie
University, including "the Higher Education sector in Australia stands to
have certain rights eroded with the implementation of the FTA in its current
form. In particular, the value of the 'fair dealing' provisions of the
Australian Copyright Act would be adversely affected" (p. 1)
- 129 -
National
Tertiary Education Union (NTEU), including "The NTEU's general view ... is
that [the FTA] will increase the costs borne by education institutions because
of changes to intellectual property" (2, p. 1); and "The immediate impact of
AUSETA when it comes into effect will be to increase the costs of tertiary
education libraries, information services, and academic units teaching film and
television courses. ... the problem caused by Australia's acceptance in
AUSFTA of the American copyright standard has not been mitigated to date by the
adoption of more liberal provisions, similar to those in the US, for copying
for research and educational purposes" (3-4, p. 1)
- the
Australian
Vice-Chancellor's Committee (AVCC) is also understood to oppose the
copyright changes contained in the FTA especially with regard to the extension
of term, ISP provisions, temporary copies and caching, and the use of
circumvention technology and services. It is understood that a late submission
was made to the JSCT
- Public Interest:
- 50 -
Electronic
Frontiers Australia (EFA), including "This pressure to extend copyright
duration clearly comes not from a desire to promote innovation and enhance our
nation's public domain, but rather from a corporate desire to enhance monopoly
profits. In practice, given that the extra 20 years would be enjoyed long after
the author's passing, it is large corporations that are most likely to benefit
from the change"; "Building upon public domain material is a rich source of
creativity and anything that serves to further limit the public domain also
serves to impede creativity"; "The vast bulk of copyrighted works earn income,
if any, for their creators in the years immediately following publication. ...
What contribution would Windows 95 make to the public domain in 2065?"; and
"Further expansions to the rights and powers of copyright and patent holders
are likely to impede innovation because they empower corporations with
entrenched interests in existing business models to restrict the development of
innovative processes and technologies. Rather than promoting the proper purpose
of intellectual property rights, these expansions serve instead to restrict
development, raise the costs of business and prop up outdated regimes"
- 67 -
Media
Entertainment & Arts Alliance, including "Australia is a net importer
of cultural goods and services - see Appendix 3. The extension of copyright
term is unlikely to benefit Australia creators in any meaningful way. It will,
however, impact adversely on creators of new works that are adaptations of
other works or incorporate archival material" (67, p. 18)
- 81 -
Brendan
Scott, including "It is very concerning that the FTA seeks to entrench ways
of doing things which are fast becoming outdated. They increase compliance
costs and push those costs onto smaller and smaller enterprises. Historically
market activity was primarily conducted by large organisations, which permitted
the aggregation of search and compliance costs. More recently there has been a
higher level of disaggregation and community participation than has been
evident in the past. We are in a state of transition at the moment and now is
exactly the wrong time to be entrenching particular ways of doing things,
especially where they are likely to be inappropriate to new modes of production"
- 93 -
Xamax
(this author)
- 105 -
Prof.
Ian Lowe, including "This proposed agreement should be rejected. It is
clearly not in Australia's interest, even if the only criterion applied is
short-term economic impact. When broader social, environmental and cultural
issues are considered, it is clearly a very bad deal for this country"
- 130 -
Australian
Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), including "The ACTU objects to the
acceptance of the US copyright standard of 70 years after the author's death or
completion of production in the case of audio-visual works. Australia is a net
importer of intellectual property from the US and this decision, by taking 20
years of works out of the public domain, will increase the costs borne by
libraries and education institutions" (33, p. 9)
- Software Industry:
- 85 -
Cybersource,
including "That strategic advantage [in open source software] held by Australia
is in danger under the proposed FTA. ... The proposed FTA would bind the
Australian Government to change our laws to restrictive and anti-competitive
legislation that benefit only entrenched corporations. By allowing software
patents, the proposed FTA will encourage monopolies and discourage competition.
Rather than leveling the playing field, the proposed FTA will make it much
harder for Australian companies such as ourselves to compete against American
corporations such as Microsoft ... We oppose the granting of software
patents. We are not alone in this. Many other software producers do as well,
including the world's second largest software corporation, Oracle Corporation.
The European Union recently voted against software patents. ... We believe
that existing copyright law is sufficient to protect software developers" (p.1)
- 93 -
Xamax
(this author)
- Governments:
- 91 -
Premier
of Victoria, including:
- "we believe that proposed provisions for audiovisual and intellectual
property could ... result in negative impacts" (12, p. 2);
- "the AUSFTA introduces significant new constraints on the ability of
Australian governments to maintain and adopt policy measures to support
audiovisual and cultural objectives (Chapters 10 and 11 and Annex 11-6). We are
concerned at the potential impact that this may have both on Australian
cultural objectives and on Australia's audiovisual industry' (15, p. 3); and
- "the AUSFTA would require Australia to adopt major elements of US
copyright and patent law, including longer copyright terms, new enforcement
provisions and new obligations for Internet Service Providers dealing with
allegedly infringing material on their systems and networks. While new
enforcement provisions would improve the ability of copyright holders to
enforce existing rights, it seems probable that Australia, as a net importer of
copyright material, would face net costs as a result of extended copyright
terms. We need a clearer view of those costs" (15, p. 3)
- 128 -
Department
of Premier & Cabinet Western Australia, including "Australia will be
required to align its intellectual property laws and practices more closely
with those of the United States, including increased obligations for Internet
Service Providers and increased enforcement provisions. This is a complex area
and Western Australia would welcome further information on the likely impact,
including costs, of the obligations under this chapter for Western Australian
businesses" (6.2, p. 4)
- Industry Associations beholden to US interests:
Created: 15 March 2004 -
Last Amended: 5 May 2004
by Roger Clarke
- Site Last Verified: 15 February 2009
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