Submission to the Australian Attorney-General's Department on Crown Copyright (21 February 2006)
The ALRC notes the two important themes that formed the basis of many of the CLRC’s recommendations: (a) ensuring that, as far as possible, government is on the same footing as other parties; and (b) promoting the widest possible access to government-owned material.
As outlined in its submission to the CLRC Inquiry, the ALRC wants to ensure that the information in its publications is widely disseminated throughout the community. In most of its publications, the ALRC chooses to use a copyright notice that includes the phrase, ‘You may download, display, print and reproduce this material in whole or part, subject to acknowledgment of the source, for your personal, non-commercial use or use within your organisation’.
However, the ALRC does not support the CLRC’s recommendations to:
- repeal the provisions relating to subsistence and ownership of Crown copyright in ss 176–179 of the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) (Recommendation 1); and
- abolish copyright in reports of statutory inquiries (Recommendation 4).
The ALRC considers that an important aspect of copyright protection is the ability of a copyright holder to retain control over the manner in which material is disseminated. As noted in the ALRC submission, without copyright protection a particular interest group lawfully would be able to reprint passages of an ALRC paper and claim it as its own. This may offend certain participants to an ALRC inquiry and discourage their participation in future inquiries. This is of particular concern as consultation with stakeholders and interested parties is one of the ALRC’s core functions. It also would be possible for a certain interest group—for example, one which has highly partisan or radical views that are inconsistent with the independent approach and reputation of the ALRC—to take parts of an ALRC paper out of context and publish these to support its own views. Copyright protections may not prevent this bad practice in the first instance, but they do give the ALRC the ability to redress such inappropriate uses of its material. Consistent with this view, the ALRC submitted that it would like to see further consideration of providing government with ownership of rights similar to the existing ‘moral’ rights.
While the ALRC questions the breadth of the ownership rights currently given to the Crown under the Copyright Act, the ALRC remains of the view that the Crown should retain ownership of copyright in executive material. The ALRC acknowledges that the government is bound to carry out its functions regardless of the profit incentive. However, in an environment in which government agencies are expected to operate on a cost recovery basis wherever appropriate, there are instances where the economic incentives of copyrights may be applicable to government bodies.
The ALRC also would like to highlight other suggestions made in its submission to the CLRC Inquiry that were not taken up in the Crown Copyright report. The ALRC would support proposals to allow for broader fair dealing exceptions to material produced by the executive, provided that such dealings maintained the integrity of the ALRC’s work by, at a minimum, appropriate attribution of authorship. This particularly would be the case in relation to teaching, scholarly and other non-commercial uses. The ALRC also would encourage further consideration of the issue of the payment of revenue from use of Crown copyrighted works. Consistent with the government policy of cost recovery activity, it may be appropriate for separate entities such as the ALRC to receive revenue generated from use of works it has created.
The ALRC is pleased to note that the CLRC report is consistent with a number of suggestions made by the ALRC in its submission—in particular, the establishment of a non-exhaustive list of entities included as part of the ‘Commonwealth and or a State’ to clarify which instrumentalities are considered to be part of the Crown for the purposes of the Copyright Act (Recommendation 9).
The ALRC also supports the recommendation to develop and implement comprehensive intellectual property management guidelines to promote best practice and assist agencies to meet their responsibilities (Recommendation 16). As noted in the ALRC’s submission, as a small government agency with modest resources and infrastructure, the cost of making agreements with service providers would increase if the provisions relating to subsistence and ownership of Crown copyright were altered. If the changes recommended by the CLRC were implemented, the ALRC and other similarly placed agencies would benefit from whole-of-government best practice guidelines for incorporating appropriate copyright provisions in service contracts.