Submission to Productivity Commission
January 2009
Joint submission of the Australian Digital Alliance, the Australian Libraries Copyright Committee and the Australian Library and Information Association. We thank the Productivity Commission for the opportunity to comment on the Issues Paper “Copyright Restrictions on the Parallel Importation of Books”
Cultural benefits of books
The Issues Paper queries the ‘precise nature of cultural benefits arising from books’. We submit that there are a few facets of the cultural benefits that should be considered.
We agree that it is important to our society to encourage the production of Australian books.
Copyright framework
A central feature of copyright law is that it provides creators with a number of rights relating to their work. The Copyright Act allows creators to control copying, communication, adaption, publishing and performance of their work. These rights continue for the life of the writer plus seventy years. In our submission, of equal, if not greater, importance is the counter-balance to these rights. There is a wide range of exceptions to copyright holders’ rights that aim to ensure adequate access to creative works because this is in the public interest. For example the exceptions that allow interlibrary loans and document delivery between libraries, ensure that people engaged in research or study in regional areas can gain access to materials in libraries across Australia.
The restrictions are not needed in order to provide creators with further incentive to create and innovate. As noted above, Australia already has provisions providing high levels of protection, in turn providing ample potential to commercially exploit works.
The restrictions are not needed in order to provide local publishers with incentive to invest in creative endeavour. It has been argued that the importation restrictions are necessary for publishers so there is a financial incentive for their investment in creative endeavour.
The restrictions should be considered as a competition issue, and not a copyright issue. Although situated in the Copyright Act, the parallel importation provisions are
not a good fit with the high level objectives of the Copyright Act and would be more properly examined as a matter of competition and restrictive trade practices policy.
Consistency
There is a lack of consistency in parallel importation provisions. For some subject matter like sound recordings, the restrictions have been lifted entirely, however there are still partial restrictions in respect of books, and the restrictions are still in place for other materials such as computer software. The partial restriction on books is a compromise position, with the resulting provision being quite convoluted, and we submit, unworkable.
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