By Randall Krause
A new Australian bill went into full-effect on January 1 of this year, which specifically allows Australian consumers who have purchased music on any recorded medium to re-record the same music onto another medium or device for convenience of private use -- that is, "space-shifting". Thus far, from what information I can find, "time-shifting" of Australian television and radio broadcasts is now permitted as well, but the legal ramifications with respect to Internet radio are still rather vague.
Personally, I am very disappointed by this new legislation. On the surface these provisions seem like great news since they expand the rights of music-users. But once again -- they also carry some remarkable limitations:
If the media on which the songs were originally recorded is protected in any way (for example, a copy-protected CD or a DRM-encoded multimedia file), then you still have the right to re-record it onto a different medium. But that right is suddenly usurped if you attempt in any way to defeat the protection measures in the recording. In other words, you have the freedom to legally backup your music collection, yet you can't backup your music collection because the sound-recording prevents you from doing so. Similar restrictions could, in theory, even preclude home-recording of HDTV, HD Radio, Sirius Radio, and XM Radio programs on receivers that honour specially-mandated broadcast flags. Hence, the very law that is designed to provide you freedoms is trumped by the other law that was intended to preemptively take away your freedoms.
The APRA discusses the issue in greater depth on their Website. They actually proposed levying a low-cost license fee (most likely upon the consumers themselves rather than the vendors of audio recording devices, as is done in the United States) to allow music-users to legally transfer their music-collection from one medium to another.
www.apra.com.au/news/indus...entBill.asp
This is yet another example of how the recording-industry continues to seize the fundamental fair-use rights of legitimate music consumers, all for their own commercial advantage.
A new Australian bill went into full-effect on January 1 of this year, which specifically allows Australian consumers who have purchased music on any recorded medium to re-record the same music onto another medium or device for convenience of private use -- that is, "space-shifting". Thus far, from what information I can find, "time-shifting" of Australian television and radio broadcasts is now permitted as well, but the legal ramifications with respect to Internet radio are still rather vague.
Personally, I am very disappointed by this new legislation. On the surface these provisions seem like great news since they expand the rights of music-users. But once again -- they also carry some remarkable limitations:
If the media on which the songs were originally recorded is protected in any way (for example, a copy-protected CD or a DRM-encoded multimedia file), then you still have the right to re-record it onto a different medium. But that right is suddenly usurped if you attempt in any way to defeat the protection measures in the recording. In other words, you have the freedom to legally backup your music collection, yet you can't backup your music collection because the sound-recording prevents you from doing so. Similar restrictions could, in theory, even preclude home-recording of HDTV, HD Radio, Sirius Radio, and XM Radio programs on receivers that honour specially-mandated broadcast flags. Hence, the very law that is designed to provide you freedoms is trumped by the other law that was intended to preemptively take away your freedoms.
The APRA discusses the issue in greater depth on their Website. They actually proposed levying a low-cost license fee (most likely upon the consumers themselves rather than the vendors of audio recording devices, as is done in the United States) to allow music-users to legally transfer their music-collection from one medium to another.
www.apra.com.au/news/indus...entBill.asp
This is yet another example of how the recording-industry continues to seize the fundamental fair-use rights of legitimate music consumers, all for their own commercial advantage.
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Chicago
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