{"id":4808,"date":"2016-05-23T00:10:21","date_gmt":"2016-05-22T14:10:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/?p=4808"},"modified":"2016-12-16T16:55:30","modified_gmt":"2016-12-16T05:55:30","slug":"copy-not-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/2016\/05\/copy-not-right\/","title":{"rendered":"Copy (Not) Right"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last year, the Australian government asked the Productivity Commission to review intellectual property rights in Australia. The Commission\u2019s draft report<\/a> was recently released, and although I haven\u2019t read all 587 pages of it, I have read the sections that concern the book publishing industry. The title, Copy (Not) Right<\/em>, pretty much sums up the Commission\u2019s attitude towards copyright. As the Australian Society of Authors reports<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cThey believe copyright law is an impediment to the consumer and should be curtailed. They have gone about their task with dedication, cynicism and resentment towards the arts across the board, but none more so than towards books and authors.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Commission makes three main recommendations about books. Firstly, the length of time that copyright exists should be drastically reduced. Secondly, Australian territorial copyright should be abolished and parallel importation of books introduced. Thirdly, the current system of \u2018fair dealing\u2019 should be replaced with the US system of \u2018fair use\u2019.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve previously written<\/a> about how destructive the introduction of parallel importation would be for the Australian book industry. The implementation of a \u2018fair use\u2019 system would also cause significant problems for copyright holders<\/a>. The current system of \u2018fair dealing\u2019 means that Australian copyright owners are paid if their work is used, with a number of sensible exceptions (for example, people are free to use copyrighted material for reviews, research, study, satire or parody, news reporting and legal advice). A \u2018fair use\u2019 system would mean that anyone could use any copyrighted material for free, without permission, provided the use was \u2018fair\u2019 \u2013 with the definition of \u2018fair\u2019 in each case decided by the courts. This would be great news for lawyers, but not so great for impoverished authors trying to stop unauthorised and unpaid use of their work.<\/p>\n

However, it\u2019s the Commission\u2019s recommendation about term of copyright that\u2019s really mind-boggling. Currently, copyright exists for seventy years after the death of the creator. (Personally, I think that\u2019s too long, but I didn\u2019t make that decision \u2013 it was made by US legislators, supposedly because Disney wanted to keep control of Mickey Mouse<\/a>, and it was then agreed to by Australian legislators as part of a US-Australian trade agreement.) The Commission wants copyright to be fifteen to twenty-five years from creation. That\u2019s right, fifteen years<\/em>. That means that in a few years, I\u2019ll have to give up all my rights to the novels I\u2019ve written so far. I won\u2019t be able to earn any money from them or control who publishes them. Not surprisingly, Australian authors are a bit upset about this. Jackie French has written<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cFor 25 years I have worked as an author, supporting my family.
\nInnocently, I had assumed that the royalties from these books would continue to support my husband and myself in our old age.
\nNow, in my sixties, I have been told by the ill-named \u2018Productivity Commission\u2019 that \u2018Writers rarely write for financial reasons,\u2019 and I may only own my work for 15 years.
\nIf I had spent my time renovating houses, or investing in shares, I’d own them. So would my heirs. If you built a bicycle or a house, would you give it to anyone who cares to grab it, in 15 years\u2019 time?
\nDoes Thomas Keneally have no moral right to ‘Bring Larks and Heroes’? Does Mem Fox no longer have a right to ‘Possum Magic’ nor I to ‘Diary of a Wombat’?
\nWill Malcolm Turnbull give away his investments when he has owned them for 15 years?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As Richard Flanagan said<\/a> in his keynote speech at the Australian Book Industry Awards last week:<\/p>\n

\u201cSo Mem Fox has no rights in ‘Possum Magic’. Stephanie Alexander has no rights in ‘A Cook\u2019s Companion’. Elizabeth Harrower has no rights in ‘The Watch Tower’. John Coetzee has no rights in his Booker winning ‘Life and Times of Michael K’. Nor Peter Carey to ‘The Kelly Gang’, nor Tim Winton to ‘Cloudstreet’. Anyone can make money from these books except the one who wrote it.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How can the Commission possibly think that this will improve \u201cproductivity\u201d in the book industry? Why would an author or publisher want to continue to produce books under these conditions? What about an author writing a long-running series? By the time she\u2019d written the fifth book, the first could be out of copyright. And too bad for an author whose book is made into a film fifteen years after initial publication \u2013 the author won\u2019t see a cent of the profits from the film sales, nor would she earn any royalties when the film tie-in book hits the bestseller lists. <\/p>\n

I re-read this section of the report in an attempt to understand the Commission\u2019s reasoning, but my most generous interpretation is that they simply don\u2019t understand how the book industry works. For instance, they claim on page 114 that for books, \u201cby 2 years [after initial publication], 90 per cent of originals are out of print\u201d. Really? My first Australian novel was far from a bestseller, but it\u2019s still in print nine years later, available in both paperback and as an e-book, and that\u2019s hardly unusual. <\/p>\n

The Commission also blithely suggests that any negative impact on the Australian publishing industry as a result of these changes \u201cwould be addressed by ensuring that direct subsidies aimed at encouraging Australian writing \u2014 literary prizes, support from the Australia Council, and funding from the Education and Public Lending Rights schemes \u2014 continue to target the cultural value of Australian books\u201d. All those Australian literary organisations and writers reeling from Black Friday<\/a>\u2019s funding cuts may manage a hollow laugh at that. <\/p>\n

There is still some hope for Australians who love books. Just remember, there\u2019s a federal election in July.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last year, the Australian government asked the Productivity Commission to review intellectual property rights in Australia. The Commission\u2019s draft report was recently released, and although I haven\u2019t read all 587 pages of it, I have read the sections that concern the book publishing industry. The title, Copy (Not) Right, pretty much sums up the Commission\u2019s … Continue reading Copy (Not) Right<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-this-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4808"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4808\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5034,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4808\/revisions\/5034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michellecooper-writer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}