An update on the Copyright Access Reforms

16.12.20

In August, the Federal Government announced proposed copyright reforms to finalise its response to the Productivity Commission’s 2016 Intellectual Property Arrangements report.

This week, the ASA attended roundtable meetings with the Office for the Arts and other industry bodies to understand the detail of the proposed reforms and to represent the interests of Australian writers and illustrators to Government.

The proposed reforms include:

• Introduce a limited liability scheme for use of orphan works
• Introduce a new fair dealing exception for quoting copyright material
• Amend library and archive exceptions 
• Amend education exceptions
• Streamline the government statutory licensing scheme 

Our initial assessment left us with concerns and following the briefings we’ve had with the Office for the Arts, we think the proposed recommendations go considerably further than we expected based on the last round of consultations in 2018. 

While the ASA supported some of the reforms, such as the introduction of a limited liability scheme for orphan works, we strongly objected to the proposed education exceptions, which would substantially undermine the operation of the educational statutory licence and reduce the licence fees payable to Copyright Agency for distribution to publishers, authors, and illustrators. Our educational statutory licence provides world-leading access to copyright works for our education section sector, even during remote learning this year. 

It was valuable to have the opportunity to put on the table the concerns of creators and to emphasise the importance of reform that does not chip away at the incomes of authors, notably by diminishing the scope of the educational statutory licence. 

We are expecting to hear back from the Government in January with the next round of discussion. We will update you with more information as the consultation with Government progresses.