tmuir
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CopyrightThere have been many discussions of copyright on this forum and I just did a little research on copyright laws in OZ.
The following applies to books, photos, works of art etc but does not apply to business logos, names etc as these are registered items and fall under a different set of rules.
Up until 2005 it was very simple in Australia.
If you wrote it or made it you owned the copyright and this lasted for 50 years after your death. The exception to this rules was if you published it anonymously copyright only lasts for 50 years from when published.
In 2005 Australia signed the free trade agreement with the USA.
As part of the deal Australia (Howard Government) agreed to bring our copyright inline with the USA which lasts for 70 years after death.
So in other words if a photo or book was published before 1954 and the author died no later than 1954 no copyright would exist and it is public domain.
But if the owner died in 1955 the copyright would not of expired when OZ signed the FTA and so copyright gets extended for another 20 years, so now for it to become public domain in OZ the owner of the copyright must of been dead for more than 70 years if owner died after 1955 or if he / she died in 1954 or earlier it is public domain.
Got that. 
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tmuir
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Oh I forgot to add schools are allowed to copy up to 10% of a book for teaching purposes or one article out of a journal without breaching copyrights.
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Chris
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Clear as mud!
I looked into the laws here once, but can't remember what they were. I remember something about being able to copy up to 10% (or maybe it was 5%) of a book.
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tmuir
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I thought that was what it was here too but it seems that only applies to schools in OZ.
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Chris
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I was reading about it in terms of uni work, so it might have only been for research/educational use.
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Cedge
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Tmuir...
You haven't gotten to the real attention getter.
"In a case where the copyright owner sustains the burden of proving, and the court finds, that infringement was committed willfully, the court in its discretion may increase the award of statutory damages to a sum of not more than $150,000."
(note that this has recently been defined as "per instance")
If the copyright has been registered with a country's copyright registry, the owner is also able to collect damages on loss of revenues or even loss of good will. This is what RIAA has been doing where even single individuals have illegally downloaded music. RIAA has even managed to have the "per instance" applied to the full count of downloads made from a server.
Meaning?.... A single image might be dowloaded thousands of times while displayed on a web site. The math is pretty simple but frightening.
My recent copyright discussion with Pendragon was not for entertainment harrasment. His "web designer" had put him in potentially real world legal jeapordy, especially since both of us were using our sites for commercial enterprise and the materials in question were registered. I was simply happy to have him comply with my copyrights and let things slide, but it could also have been handled rather differently had things gotten out of hand.
RIAA has found a particularly nasty approach to the problem. They threaten a huge dollar lawsuit and then offer to settle with the individual for a significantly lesser dollar value. It's usually enough to break most peoples bank accounts (10- 35 thousand bucks) but not enough to interest an attorney in defending the case on contingency. The poor schlub then has to go into debt to pay off RIAA. Again... the math is staggering when applied to thousands of poor schlubs.
And no... making a few changes to the original work doesn't give you a pass. That's called a derivitive work and is almost automatically considered a "willfull violation" of the original copyright.
Bottom line.... if you didn't create it... it's probably best to consider it "not for free use".
Steve
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MooseMan
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I work/have worked in the sound recording industry, and copyright issues can be summed up by thes very simple tenets:
1- "If it ain't yours, don't go claiming it is".
2- "If it ain't yours and you want to use/play/record/sample it, get permission"
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