wow. thanks so much for sharing this! very eye-opening.

i've already joined! haha

Thanks for the heads up :) been watching TED for a while, and this looks really interesting (will watch when I get back tonight) since I'm brainstorming ideas for my issues in intellectual property essay.

Don't hold your breath. The Australian Copyright Act is nowhere near as well drafted as it could have been to take into account modern technology.

We don't have one from the Dark Ages, in fact in many ways the CA as it stands since 2006 is apparently being studied by the UK with regards to how they might change theirs in future. In terms of being up to date with technology ... it tries.

Very interesting talk. I had much LOL at the Bush/Blair clip. One of the things I'd like to see develop from this a higher adoption rate of the Creative Commons license, which is currently still flying under the radar of almost all countries. It allows people to use the materials, but generally for non-commercial purposes. For people like us who are in fandoms, it's like being told that we too, can share in the lives of these fictional characters without fear of being hauled up for copyright violations.

You don't need to be making money from fan generated content to have infringed copyright; if you've infringed it, you've infringed it. Also some jurisdictions give weight to an artist's moral rights.

The problem with legislation is that it changes slowly, and certainly nowhere near as fast as technology. And btw, the Copyright Act was amended in 2006 under the previous government, though it's been criticised as being more of a 'tick box' event (ie, "we amended it two years ago, we don't have to look at the Copyright Act for at least another government term or more").

And I don't think anyone expects fan-created material will go away; the powers that be probably just want to clarify the law applying to it.

a clarification of the CA is probably what most people want.

HA. Good luck with THAT, since if you want /real/ clarification you need to understand not only the CA, but the latest common law developments which interpret the CA, and let's not forget all the wonderful international treaties and conventions that are all pushed by the United States since like it or not they are the most powerful nation when it comes to IP and they can make other countries follow their policy or refuse to do business with them that also apply.