Wouldn't purchased music from iTMS be okay since the copyright resides in the digitally downloaded/purchased file and its agreed upon DRM?

Someone enlilghten me if possible.

iTMS is not yet available in Australia, all we have are Telstra's Bigpond Music WMA-only service and Destra Music's WMA-only service (which is just the online store that incorporates pretty much all the "physical" music stores in Australia - Sanity, HMV etc). It appears Destra allows transfer to music player in their DRM.
Telstra's DRM:
1) Your purchase of a Music File, authorises you, for your own personal use, to:
(a) download the Music File once, to one stand-alone personal computer;
(b) copy the Music File an unlimited number of times to up to two portable devices registered to you which operate with Microsoft Windows Media Player version 9;
(c) burn the Music File up to 3 times onto CD-R or CD-RW; and
(d) download up to two replacement Music Files at no additional charge if you have had problems installing the licence or if the original file on your stand-alone personal computer is lost or destroyed.

I would assume iTunes would offer the same (or better) if it ever gets here.

It's sad to hear that our friends in Australia don't live in a free country.

The Aussie's are rather laid back when it comes to being sensible about enforcing this type of situation. The law was probably put on the books before the iPod was a gleam in Steve J's eye and the politicians are too laid back to work out an amendment - especially with an election in the near future.

So the situation will be one where the cop on the beat has an iPod, or the judge, or someone on the jury. The iPod users there are wanting The Music Store to be available and some cleanup of the law might be needed before it is opened.

For right now the Aussies are going to use their iPods without fear - she'll be right, Jack.

Interesting. That the music industry guy says we own the plastic. A few years before this the RIAA with the help of spokesman Garth Brooks was complaining that we don't own the plastic. In an industry that moves at a snails pace while consumers move as fast as the charts they create, they always need a scape goat for their share holders. A number of years ago this proverbial goat was the used CD trade. Garth and the likes were pissed that they were not getting a second set of royalties for the discs sold at used cd stores. Thus claiming they were a violation of copy write law.
The truth be told, the laws that govern this were written in the early part of the 20th century and were amendments to the Piano Roll and Sheet Music laws. When the laws and industry standards were developed the biggest problem were "pirates". These ones were radio stations playing records instead of hosting live broadcasts. Government must look at the lobbying that is going on today through the will of the people and develop a modern copy-write practices that are strong and forward reaching.
Just incase you don't already know artists are typically given an advance (could be $10000 up - sounds like a lot eh? Not if four or five people have to live the next two years recording and waiting for their album to get on the release schedule) the recording budget, and promotion budget as a loan. That means the artist must pay back (although they are never physically given this money) to earn their royalties. Meaning the record companies bad right? Well what about those people that choose to download entire albums of the net? They are just as selfish as the record companies, because if you had bought that album you may have bought your new favorite artist the ability to record again.
That said, as far as I see it, the industry and government must define the terms and conditions of recorded music via laws and contracts (like software contracts) while keeping the idea of fair use alive (industry types - it sells as many records as it steels). This can become the guidelines so a consumer can understand whether they own the plastic or the right, and an industry can't suck and blow.

[rant] The Recording industry amazes me. It is the only indusrty that hates change and hates its users. It is the only industry I know that gets away with swindling its users. It is also the only industry I know of that seemingly does everything in its power to destroy itself on a daily basis. [/rant]

"when and if the majority of voters are law breakers, they will most likely be able to vote in people who will change the law to reflect reality."

So far this hasn't happened with file sharing, but it might in the future...

Laws that everyone ignores (e.g. the 55 MPH speed limit - arguably a good idea to save lives, fuel, etc.) tend to go away.

As others have pointed out, 60 million file sharers in the U.S. is a more people than the number who voted for the current president.

However, they're probably not the same group of people, and many of them may not yet be of voting age.

The law is unfortunately the same here in New Zealand although the government has proposed amendments to the Copyright Act to remedy the situation by allowing format shifting (note the mention of the iPod). Of course the RIANZ is staunchly opposed. Roll on iTMS South Pacific.

Looks like the Canadian and French equivalents of the RIAA have one more thing to learn from Australia …
In both countries, a levy on blank CDs (whether used for recording music or not …) as well as iPods and the like, is automatically perceived by the government and turned over to them. But in Australia, it’s even groovier (gravy-er ?)

I believe there is a major difference between file sharing, which is stealing unless you already own a copy of the files you are receiving, and copying a song from a CD to another device.

It is doubtful that it will ever be legal to steal like that unless a compulsory licensing law comes with it, too. If not, less music will be created, so even there the market wins.

Artist deserve compensation for their work, and the balance we need (IMNHO) is to also maintain fair use rights. A balance can be reached, I believe.

I also wanted to back up the Guest concerning the voting age of many, many of those 60 million file sharers. I believe that a significant percentage are not of voting age, and I wonder at how many of those left are politically active. The entitlement attitude of many (but certainly not all) pirates does not often go hand in hand with making the effort to vote.

Well, being an Australian, I feel less bad now about the songs on my iPod that I didn't buy on CD first, because, well, the only thing not illegal on it are a few JPEGs from my digital cam!

Seriously though, in any aspect of business that deals with consumers, the motto has always been "the customer is always right". Except in the music industry, where the motto is "the customer will do precisely what we want them to do and if they don't like it then stiff sh*t!".

The day the recording industry actually wakes up to the fact that this is a battle they've already lost 5 times over, and the only way they can ensure their longterm survival is to join in on the online-music-delivery game, the better for all. They can't beat the P2Ps, and any encryption or copy-control system will be nullified by talented, bored geeks within a week. Genuinely useful systems like the iTMS and iPod, which balance consumer need with copyright protection in a reasonable way, are they're only hope.

This legislation will never be pursued in Australia, its illogical, and willl either be overturned or just fade into obscurity, like many laws have before... for example back in the 50's or 60's a law was introduced in one of the states prohibiting people from wearing hot pants after 5pm or something. Of course no one has been prosecuted under this law for some decades.

I'm Australian. when the fabled 60gig iPod is released (if), I'll be buying one. And I won't be filling it up with contacts and voice recordings. Nudge nudge.

You have no idea how backwards Australia is when it comes to the internet and computer usage. The laws out there are outrageous, but don't count on the voters. Take note of some observations I made while I lived down under.

1. To Australians I have an accent. Fine. NOT ONCE during my time there (1 year) did ANYONE ask me "where are you from?" they all assumed I was a "bloody" yank. Funny cause I don't think I have heard that here back home. "Where are you from?" is more the style.

2. They are a uninformed uniform society. Anyone that wants to start a fight while visiting Australia (well Victoria at least) only has to ask this simple question: "Are there any schools in Victoria that do not require the school uniform?" This was an honest question, I was just curious, yet repeatedly I was attacked and insulted, for simply asking the question.

3. Check this out, I have a friend who works for a company that develops motion picture negatives. They use incredible complicated machines, and were looking at purchasing one from Australia. This machine, pride of Australian ingenuity was brought over, installed and demonstrated by the Australians. These Aussies boasted a wiring system that was far superior to anything else, cause they had labeled the wires with numbers at both ends. The funny part was that all the wire coatings were white.

It comes down very simply to a joke about them.
Q. What is the difference between a redneck and an Aussie.
A. The redneck will tell you "Hey, it's my way or the highway." An Australian cannot conceive of what a highway is.

After a while of this sort of treatment one does tend to want to have some fun with them. So I would buy them some rounds of beer at the pub and teach them a drinking song we have back home.

Ain't Australia wonderful
Ain't Australia great.
Ain't Australia beautiful
For all the fine mates.

Then I would leave, excusing myself early. Outside the pub I would wait for a rowdy bunch and mubble something like "Wow, those Kiwis (New Zealanders) at that one table sure are insulting singing Anustralia wonderul.

I watched some pretty good brawls that way.

The SMH article referred to may be incorrect.

I'm an Aussie living in Sydney - and a word of warning: In my opinion the SMH was once a distinguished invesgitative paper - but not any more.

I believe I am reliably informed that the owners of SMH also own a lot of Telstra which has a music store which can't sell songs for the iPod.

Since the Telstra service was released I've noticed several articles in the SMH about the iPod and/or Apple of a generally negative tone. There may have also been positive articles but I missed them.

Conspicuously absent in the article is any comment from a solicitor or barrister or judge that copying a CD you own for your own use is illegal. If any would go on record as saying it then that would surely have made a better paragraph.

The only points where the article does make this clain appear to be editorial (by the journalist).

Whilst I'm not a law grad - I'm certain this has already been tested in court when people were copying playstation CD's (Australian courts found it was legal - but the law is being changed so that if the copy also requires the decryption of copy protection mechanisms it'll be illegal, as mentioned in the article).

Since the music on your iPod is a copy of the music you have puchased it is legal as far as I am aware.

There were answers in the article given by politicians that give the impression that the law is unclear or denies this access - but the anser is never preceeded by the question asked - was the question asked about iTMS / downloading or was it about CD's?

The article appears to be to be written obscurely.

I'll leave it to you to ponder why.

Married an Aussie - actually a transplanted Scot - and lived there from '76 to '84. Must say that I had a grand time and never worried about being a bloody Yank - it was far better than being a bloody pommy bastard (with both terms used with some level of affection).

As for Aussie innovation - they are world class. Micro surgery was developed there. When we first moved to Perth there was a picture in the paper of US doctors over to learn how to do it. So many had come that the training was in a warehouse. Orthoscopic surgery - US football players came to Perth for it until it was available in the US. Sleep apnea? The cpap was invented there and the Australian company has a new automatic version for congestive heart failure that is so effective that one guy in the trials came off the heart transplant list.

For the "consumer" who loves sailing there is also the fact that an Aussie design - the one that took the America's Cup after 132 years of US dominance - is now the world standard. It was as innovative as the Mac was 20 years ago when compared to DOS PCs.

As for the people - i love them. When I started my little one man company I decided to only sell in Australia - which means I go there several times a year. Working with Aussies in the business world is a real pleasure - just as living in a typical Aussie neighborhood was. Sure they use uniforms for school and I support that policy as strong as I support a Mac over a PC. Kids that don't come from rich families are wearing the same clothes as the little rich kids. There is no turning noses up, or teasing, because a kid does not have the latest designer styles (including $200 sneakers and the like) in schools from elementary school through high school. The money saved can go to more important things, like getting a new G5 iMac instead of a Dell.

It also goes to saving for holidays, most of which were overseas from my experience. Aussies travel the world more than any group I know and are more aware of the world around them than most Yanks I know.

Sorry you missed all the pleasures of the country that I have enjoyed Road Warrior.

The Article is not incorrect. It's something most of us have known for some time but have been too lazy to bitch about it. Why? Because it's not being enforced, if it were to be enforced, you'd see a LOT of unhappy consumers!

You enforce it upon me? I'll be 40 times less likely to ever buy a cd from an artist again. Why? Because the music companies are pricks.

I am an Aussie. I own an iPod. Lets see if the government can stop ne from using my iPod, with music I have legally bought. I like my country, byt we have some STUPID laws!

I ran a company down there for a while and enjoyed it immensely. A problem I had initially was, that when calling a supplier, their phone would ring up to seventeen times before being answered. I had to really work at getting my Aussie workers to answer the phone on the first or second ring. The restuarants in Melbourne were the greatest. Ron.
PS.They probably have Vegemite on their iPods.

Quote

Guest wrote:
I ran a company down there for a while and enjoyed it immensely. A problem I had initially was, that when calling a supplier, their phone would ring up to seventeen times before being answered. I had to really work at getting my Aussie workers to answer the phone on the first or second ring. The restuarants in Melbourne were the greatest. Ron.
PS.They probably have Vegemite on their iPods.

I'm Australian, and regardless of the pros and cons of the country thrown around here(!), the copyright issues may be complicated by the Free Trade Agreement machinations going on at the moment.

Bush just signed for the US, but we've yet to sign; just yesterday the Labor opposition announced their position, calling for a number of amendments (41) that might make this onerous agreement slightly more palatable, particularly in the areas of our pharmaceutical benefits system, copyright, intellectual property, and local media content provisions... just to stir up a hornet's nest! : )

Anyway, regardless of personal opinions about the FTA, the point I wanted to bring up is that it's very likely that our copyright provisions will be up in the air, and looked at soon to align with the US -- IMNSH and not completely informed Opinion, that's BAD for us, copyright lifetimes will be extended well beyond our standards, for one.

Does that mean that CD's are cheaper in OZ compared to the rest of the world, since you can't to as much with them in OZ as anywhere else ? Surely there must be some benefit / refund to the consumer for the deminished useability ?

Right, as if.

I love living in Australia. We are convict stock, thus couldn't give a $#!% about laws as dumb as these. A fellow Aussie will invent a way around it first anyway...

<i>The key thing there is that many of those Aussies are voters, and when and if the majority of voters are law breakers...</i>

If you're over 18 in Australia, if you're not a voter, you're a law breaker. The vote is compulsory.

So, if you use transfer music from CD to your iPod *and* don't vote, you're breaking the law twice!

Not only is it presently illegal to transfer music from a CD you legally own to an iPod, the "Free Trade Agreement" will impose US DMCA rules in Australia. But WITHOUT the "fair use" and First Amendment protections enjoyed by Americans.

This legislation is currently under fierce debate in Australia's Senate.

The way it looks, folks there are about to be screwed by content owners.

Hey the law is stupid over here, but we also have a stupid Prime Minister who thinks running after George W and copying everything he does is great.

... He'll be thrown into prison ?

Australian are fun !

Hey I would own the case too (bargan)

this is like the atomist argument over space and distance (zeno's paradox)

go look it up you philosophy buffs

...is that Copyright Laws vary by country.

For example, in the USA, a song's copyright exists for 95 years after initial release, whereas in the UK, its only 50 years after initial release.

What this means is...that unless the UK Politicans cave in to pressure to change their copyright laws real soon...some of Elvis's songs will go public domain in the UK in January 2005

(and the Beatles starting in ... 2013?)

Here's one URL on the story:

http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=72dd7c479b2d5103

There's two things that make this all very interesting:

a) The "What if?" scenarios of international travel and the lack of national borders on the Internet. For example, if a USA citizen buys a legal public domain version in UK, can he bring it back to the USA without having to somehow pay a royalty?


b) The bottom-line blunt business assessment: copyrights have always expired, which means that the value of the copyright has always taken this into account.

What this means is that the entire "lost revenues" arguement we've been fed for years is a baldfaced lie. What it really is is the sound of sour grapes when they've not been able to rewrite the laws to reap additional undeserved revenue and profits.


In the end, we need to remember that the there's nothing stopping an existing copyright holder from continuing to publish the work after it goes public domain...[b]except that he will now have competition. [/b]

The rules of Capitalism say that the copyright holder has his chance (for 50+ years) to pay his expenses and to figure out how to provide his product the most efficiently. After that time period, if a new provider can deliver the product at a lower cost, so be it.

As this all relates to Australia, a very interesting test case would be to challenge the law with an iPod full of songs that clearly have shifted into the Public Domain by whatever definition exists within that country, for there then is no Copyright to build a case on.


-hh

Saw a couple of silver ones at CompUSA the other day. Will be heading Down Under within the month and, if someone wants me to get one for them I'll try. Will have to repay the actual cost and any duty/tax applies - no profit for me. You'll have the US plug, but adapters are cheap. Let me know if you want me to try - I'll only take one unit.

Hi Ken:

Glad to hear about that. I must admit I have never been to Perth but I hear they have a more sane attitude than the Victoria region. Thanks for reminding me about pommy bastards I forgot about that one.

I have no doubt that for some areas of research they are indeed world class, but certainly not for the example I gave, and most certainly they are world class for the sailors.

You point out a many good points about the uniform school system but that still did not answer my question. I was and still am looking for a simple yes/no answer to it, at least for Victoria. And while you are touting the benefits of the uniform school, which are all valid, you have not noted that shoes are still stolen from school children. The other thing that I find noteworthy is that this lack of choice (apparently) leads to a uninformed uniform society. Case in point, if you are ever in downtown Melbourne, try to find someone, male or female not wearing black. During my time there, I found one, which was incredible. Having only one type of school leads to a lack of diversity and a lack of choice. I have been to both types of schools (uniform and non) and find benefits to both. I think a country does a disservice to itself by only offering one option. Sometimes there is a need for a social herding, sometimes there is a need for individuals to shine. Having a population of both types of people makes a country more diverse and stronger. Same with the computer world. I sure support Macs, but I understand the need to have both. I think a world with only Macs or only MS would not be as good as having both.

On a final note, I did not miss out on the pleasures of that wonderful country. I discovered fortunately a wonderful secret about Australia and that is that as soon as you move about 100 km inland the people there are genuine salt of the earth.

I hope someday to visit Perth, it sounds like a good place.

Good on ya mate. Fair dinkum.

I doubt that this has changed since the days of vinyl and cassette(remember those?) What is the difference between recording an LP to tape for use in your Walkman and encoding a cd to mp3/aac for use in an iPod? The principle is the same is it not? Has there ever been a case here in Australia where an individual has been prosecuted for breach of copyright under these circumstances?

It is probably also still illegal to record TV shows on your VCR....

The Australian government can legally put incriminating files onto your computer and then arrest you over it anyhow (According to their law not actual Australian law).


All Australian laws contradict themselves any way.

Not worth saying more than the above. The average Yank is pretty uninformed about anything outside the USA and not very well informed about what is inside the USA. Thankfully there are a largish subset that have travelled and generally appreciate other countries and cultures. Australia is not the land of everything but it has a damn good lifestyle despite a few nonoptimal things such as our politicians, cultural cringe, lack of water, etc ...

Quote

Bryan wrote:
... file sharing, which is stealing unless you already own a copy of the files you are receiving ....

The article from the Sydney Morning Herald is accurate but we're not expecting the cops just yet; especially since recording off TV is also illegal.

Here's the rub. Australians would only be laid back in comparison to New Yorkers and most haven't seen a crocodile outside of a zoo. And about three quarters of the country's population have post secondary (high school) qualifications.

Also this country has the unenviable reputation of having one of the highest levels of unpaid overtime in the OECD.

Laid back…I don't think so.

Regarding ItunesMS the word that I've been getting is that Apple Australia has been in talks with those blood suckers er, um, record companies for some time but we keep getting bumped down the list behind the roll-out in Europe and Japan.

As for the government changing the law they're more interested in seeing where the sun shines from Bush's anatomy.

We're not laid back, just not important in the eyes of the northern hemisphere.

But then again outside of the south pacific and south east asia who really knows where this country really is anyway.

Anyway, my ipod kicks and I've been using macs for over eleven years and I'm far from laid back about NOT getting ItunesMS out here. But then again who really cares about Australians north of the equator anyway.

Quote

walterchillum wrote:
But then again who really cares about Australians north of the equator anyway.

"You point out a many good points about the uniform school system but that still did not answer my question. I was and still am looking for a simple yes/no answer to it, at least for Victoria. And while you are touting the benefits of the uniform school, which are all valid, you have not noted that shoes are still stolen from school children. The other thing that I find noteworthy is that this lack of choice (apparently) leads to a uninformed uniform society. Case in point, if you are ever in downtown Melbourne, try to find someone, male or female not wearing black. During my time there, I found one, which was incredible. Having only one type of school leads to a lack of diversity and a lack of choice. I have been to both types of schools (uniform and non) and find benefits to both. I think a country does a disservice to itself by only offering one option. Sometimes there is a need for a social herding, sometimes there is a need for individuals to shine. Having a population of both types of people makes a country more diverse and stronger."
No, I don't believe there is a government school that doesn't have a uniform.