Proposed changes to the Copyright Act by the ALRC indicate change to Fair Use Definition

With the Australian Law Reform Commission releasing their final paper into the "Copyright and the Digital Economy" inquiry, questions have been raised as to the changes to fair use in the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth).

The ALRC has proposed replacing specific exemptions in the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) with a broader fair use section, which would be flexible enough to allow for technology advances and an increased use of cloud services.

As mentioned in an article released by ZDNet, Google, eBay, and Optus had argued in submissions to the review that the current law is so restrictive that the act of caching, which internet service providers (ISPs) and search engines rely on, is not technically legal in Australia. But several organisations, including copyright groups such as the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT), argued in their submissions that the existing exceptions in the Act would cover activities such as caching, and that tech companies in Australia have not been stifled by the existing law.

"Sometimes a third party's use may seem merely to amount to facilitating another person's fair use; they will have no ulterior purpose themselves," the ALRC said.

"Applying fair use, the question then might be, is a third-party use of copyright material more likely to be fair than it otherwise would, if the use is simply for another person who would be entitled to make the same use?"

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