copyright law

The latest Part of the Australian Intellectual Property Journal includes three interesting articles. The first article is by Dan Hunter and discusses the recent Australian Law Reform Commission report proposing a fair use defence to copyright infringement in Australia, examining the experience of fair use cases in the United States and drawing lessons from the jurisprudential history. The second article, by Kimberlee Weatherall, analyses and contextualises the conclusions of the Australian Law Reform Commission regarding the retransmission scheme and assorted broadcast exceptions, arguing that more attention should be paid to cultural policies in thinking about copyright reform. The final article comes from Bob Wright and argues that the Australian government should amend the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) in order to introduce United States-style fair use provisions as an additional open-ended exception to copyright sitting below, and integrated with, the current fair dealing exceptions.