[3] Prior to Australia's federation in 1901, a number of Australian Colonies, later states, had enacted copyright laws.
In part this was done to mitigate the inadequacy of the protection afforded to Australian authors by British copyright law.
The Australian Constitution gives the federal parliament power to make laws relating to copyright and intellectual property, concurrently with the states.
Section 51(xviii) of the Commonwealth Constitution provides that "the Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to, inter alia, copyright, patents of inventions and designs, and trademarks".
The scope of the imperial copyright system (by changes in the UK Act) was expanded to include architecture, sound recordings and motion pictures.
[6] During its deliberation the Franki Committee observed that because Australia was a net importer of copyrighted works it should be careful to not adopt too radical solutions.
On the other hand, as copyright in the nature of a monopoly, the law should ensure, as far as possible, that the rights conferred are not abused and that study, research and education are not unduly hampered.The Copyright Act 1968 and legal deposit legislation pertaining to each state[8] mandates that publishers of any kind must deposit copies of their publications in the National Library of Australia as well as in the state or territory library in their jurisdiction.
[9] On 17 February 2016, the federal legal deposit provisions were extended to cover electronic publications of all types.
[8] Most states and territories are as of 2020[update] reviewing or amending existing legislation to extend to digital publications as well.
[7] The Copyright Amendment Act 2006 made changes required by the US-Australia Free Trade Agreement.
Like the FTA language, the new anti-circumvention law is closely modelled on the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, although it is not identical.
The best known are the private copying exceptions, which follow on from proposals by former Attorney-General Philip Ruddock to allow people to record most television or radio program at home to watch at a later time with family or friends, and to format-shift their music (make copies from CDs onto personal computers and portable music players).
The other notable change made by the Act was to expand the provisions concerning criminal copyright infringement.
After concerns from user groups and the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs,[10] many strict liability offences that would have applied to non-commercial acts were removed from the final bill.
1) 2016[11] amended the Copyright Act 1968 on 17 February 2016,[12] by which the federal legal deposit provisions were extended to cover electronic publications of all types.
The Amendments changed the benchmark to "plus 70", which brought Australia into line with the United States of America, the European Union, and certain other jurisdictions, but is longer than the "plus 50" minimum required by the Berne Convention and still applicable in many other jurisdictions, including New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, and many other Commonwealth countries, as well as China, Japan, and South Korea.
The United States Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (1998) defines an entirely different rule based on the year of first publication in the USA.
The main exceptions to copyright infringement in Australia come under the general heading fair dealing.
This has, for example, been interpreted by US courts to allow for reasonable personal use of works, e.g. media-shifting, which would not necessarily be permitted under Australia's fair dealing laws.
[22] Two of the recommendations were specifically in response to the stricter copyright rules introduced as part of the Australia–United States Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA), while the most recent two, by the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) and the Productivity Commission (PC) were with reference to strengthening Australia's "digital economy".
[27] The bill was set to be reintroduced in mid-2007, as existing legislation did not provide protection for Indigenous communal moral rights.
[30] In the case of a photograph commissioned for a "private or domestic purpose", the copyright will be owned by the commissioner of the work.
The "private and domestic purposes" condition took effect on 30 July 1998, prior to this the copyright of all commissioned photographs was assigned to the commissioner.
In summary, the Committee recommended that the Crown be treated like any other employer (i.e., owner of material produced by its employees), and that for certain materials (legislation, government reports, commissions of inquiry reports) either copyright be removed, or a generous and generalised licence be granted for re-use.
[32] The "Carpets Case" was one of three Federal Court judgments in the 1990s involving the use of copyright law relating to Indigenous cultural and intellectual property (ICIP).
[26] In 1993, it was found that a number of designs by Aboriginal artists had been reproduced without permission on rugs made in Vietnam and marketed by the Perth-based company Indofurn Pty Ltd.[33][34] Banduk Marika, George Milpurrurru, Tim Payungka Tjapangarti, and five other artists or their estates moved to seek reparations under the Copyright Act 1968 and Trade Practices Act,[35][34] in a case that became known as the "carpets case".
[36] Officially it is referred to as Milpurrurru v Indofurn Pty Ltd.[37] In 1994,[38] after a trial lasting 14 days,[39] Justice John von Doussa in the Federal Court of Australia,[40] saying that the copyright infringements had been "plainly deliberate and calculated",[41] awarded damages of A$188,000 to the artists as a group, in line with their wishes, and ordered that the rugs be released to them.
This was the largest penalty awarded for copyright infringement against Australian artists up to that time, and included compensation for cultural damage stemming from the unauthorised use of sacred imagery,[35] and in particular the "cultural hurt suffered by the artists as a result of the company’s persistent denial of their copyright".
[39] Michael Blakeney (1995) noted that the Carpets Case had represented an improvement on an earlier case, Yumbulul v Reserve Bank of Australia[41] 1991, in which Galpu clan artist Terry Yumbulul's Morning Star Pole had been reproduced on the ten-dollar note,[40][42][43] in terms of protection of Aboriginal works and folklore.
[46] The Tribunal's key function is to determine remuneration payable under the licence schemes provided for under the Copyright Act, such as provisions that permit reproduction of certain copyright materials by educational institutions, institutions assisting persons with certain disabilities, and government agencies.