Jan 1: "Auld Lang Syne and Australian Copyright Reform

December 13, 2006

On January 1, Australia's Copyright Amendment Bill 2006 will become law.

A mixed verdict for digital users, for sure.

Format shifting of music, newspapers and books will be legalized (or as they say in Australia (legalised).

That wil lmean that Australians will be able to move this digital content to portable media devices without fear of being busted.

But it will be illegal, and possibly infringing hehavior, to hack a technological protection measure to copy or format shift content. Even if you own this content. Already, advocates such as extremely knowledgeable digital tech rights blogger and Australian Dale Dietrich are quite uneasy about the breaches and the prosecutions they are likely to trigger.

Such breaches would include defeating Digital Rights Management protections to, "rip" protected content such as can be found on DVDs.

If the law sounds vague about what is to be allowed and what is not, well, it is. Read the text of this statute by clicking here.