I heard it said a few times on News Radio yesterday that the new copyright laws are designed to bring existing copyright protection to the digital realm. I'm concerned that this is a dangerous half-truth. In one sense, the existing copyright laws went to great lengths to be neutral regarding the medium of expression, and thus all works expressed in a pure digital format were already afforded copyright protection. After all, computer software is about as digital as it gets, and it's had the explicit protection of copyright for years.

So what is meant by this claim that existing copyright is being extended into the digital realm? Well, when the "medium of expression" for a digital work is a computer network, then copying the work becomes an essential part of the process. Information is transferred from end to end in a computer network by a process of copying and forwarding. In most cases, no intermediate copies are kept, and so the process is effectively the same as if it were embodied in some physical medium which is passed from one end of the network to the other. It is possible to keep intermediate copies in some cases, and this practice has been explicitly disallowed in the case of "caching web proxies". This ruling will have a negative impact on network performance generally in Australia, as caching web proxies were designed to increase efficiency. I have not seen any comments made on the copies of web pages normally kept by a browser on a person's own computer.

But the real danger in this law comes from the fact that it actually increases the amount of control that manufacturers of devices and digital media have over consumers. This happens as a result of the "anti-circumvention" clauses which are ostensibly there to outlaw illegal copying devices. Manufacturers can incorporate technological limitations into their devices to help prevent unlicensed material from being played. Unfortunately, these same limitations can be used to exercise greater control over the marketplace. Two already-existing examples of this are Sony Playstation games, and DVDs. Both of these systems use a form of "region coding", so that only the player devices manufactured for a particular region will play games or movies produced for that region. Thus, if there is a Playstation game that was only released in the Japan market, and you happen to want to play it, going and buying it in Japan won't work because your Australian Playstation will reject it. There is absolutely no breach of copyright here: it's a legitimate purchase of an authorised copy; the limitation is a factor of the manufacturer's desire to have greater control of the marketplace. There are Playstation modifications available which would circumvent this limitation, but they are now illegal because the same modification also makes it possible to play illegally copied games.

This is the real danger of these new laws. They have the ability to take away rights we thought we had by making it illegal to circumvent "protection schemes" imposed by manufacturers regardless of why we are circumventing it. I would have no argument with a law that made it illegal to circumvent a protection scheme for the purposes of breaching copyright. We presently have the right to tape record any television or radio broadcast and make personal use of that recording in certain ways. This activity is explicitly allowed by existing copyright laws. What if a digital broadcaster of the near future sets a flag in a broadcast that says "do not record me", and the manufacturer of a digital recording device honours that flag? We will find that broadcasters (in cahoots with the manufacturers) can arbitrarily tell us what we can and cannot record for our own use. Alternatively, imagine that you are allowed to record a program for later viewing, but a technological measure prevents you from fast-forwarding through advertisements. Copyright law allows us to copy a certain portion of a work under the principle of "fair dealing" for certain purposes, such as study or review. Technological constraints can make no distinction as to whether any particular act of copying is "fair" or not -- only a court can decide that. Yet such technological restrictions would take from us all rights to make copies, and then make it illegal to attempt to get our rights back by circumventing the block.

I would appreciate it if you would dedicate some of your excellent "net news" and technology coverage to investigating these issues, as they will only increase in importance from now on. I see this law as primarily extending the control that corporations can have over my media experience, and I'm not at all keen on it.

Regards,
TFBW

[By the way, there is no copyright on this email. You may copy and re-use with impunity.]