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Number 218: November 2001

ACTive ALIA convenor's column

The ALIA 2001 National Policy Congress
ACTive ALIA is seeking nominations from members to be the group representative to the ALIA 2001 National Policy Congress, which will be held in Canberra at Rydges Lakeside on Friday 7 and Saturday 8 December 2001. If you are interested in being our representative contact Roxanne Missingham, rmissingham@nla.gov.au, before close of business on Friday 9 November 2001.

Each endorsed ALIA group is entitled to nominate one representative who will have voting rights at the National Policy Congress. The National Policy Congress is an important consultative mechanism to ensure that members have input into the policy-making process of the Association. This is the second National Policy Congress. The inaugural Congress took place in May 2000. Information about it is at http://www.alia.org.au/governance/nac/2000/.

The agenda for the National Policy Congress is set by the Board of Directors. Under the theme 'Cohesion', this year's agenda aims to review the progress on recommendations from the 2000 Congress - which recommended the major structural changes implemented this year - and to identify and discuss practical and professional issues of significance to be addressed by the Association in 2002. Ian McCallum, a distinguished member of the Association, will be facilitating the Congress again this year.

The Congress may make recommendations to the Board of Directors and may form working groups, if necessary, to achieve matters of business arising from the Congress. Those groups not able to have a representative attend the Congress may vote by proxy. Individual members and representatives from other organisations may attend the Congress at their own expense but will not have voting rights.

Each nominated group representative will also be required to vote in the forthcoming election of one of the two directors to be elected by the National Policy Congress to the Board of Directors (the other director will be elected next year). This is normally undertaken by a postal ballot at the same time as elections for other directors. Ballot papers will be distributed in March and ballots will close on 15 April 2002. To exercise this vote, the nominated group representative must be a financial member.

You can find the framework for the National Policy Congress in Clause 12 of the ALIA Constitution: .

Librarians influence relationship between copyright and contract law
The issue of licences or contracts for electronic products overriding copyright has concerned librarians for some time. A recent forum held by the Copyright Law Review Committee shows how effective a lobby group the library sector has become.

The Copyright Law Review Committee had been given a reference by the Attorney-General to look into the relationship between copyright and contract law. The Attorney-General established this Committee in 1983 as a specialist advisory body to report to the Australian Government on specific copyright law issues referred to it from time to time.

In June 2001 the Committee published an Issues Paper on the relation-ship between copyright and contract law and called for written submissions to be made by 10 August 2001. The Committee received thirty one submissions in response to its Issues Paper. The submissions are at: http://law.gov.au/clrc/pres_ref/what_Committee_doing.htm

A number of those submissions were from libraries and library interest groups such the Australian Library and Information Association, the Council of Australian University Librarians, the Federal Libraries Information Network, the Australian Digital Alliance, the National Library of Australia and the Australian Libraries Copyright Committee.

After considering the submissions the Committee prepared a Discussion Paper for a forum with key interests that was held in Sydney on 4 October 2001. Each organisation that had made a submission was asked to send one representative. I am a member of the ALIA Copyright and Intellectual Property Committee and attended the forum on behalf of ALIA. ALIA's position in its submission was the contracts should not be able to contract out of the fair use and exemptions under the Copyright Act.

The Committee indicated in the Discussion Paper that it was considering: whether legislation should be amended in accordance with a sliding scale of exceptions; whether legislation should be amended to improve and standardise consumer protection; whether legislative amendment is likely to be 'self-enforcing' and have a significant effect on industry practice; and whether model licences or codes should be imposed or encouraged. The Committee sought views on how such mechanisms could work in practice.

Library sector representatives, such as Fides Lawton from CAUL and Margy Burn from the National Library of Australia, spoke very persuasively and with numerous effective examples. It was apparent that the arguments of Libraries and similar user organisations were helping to influence possible changes in policy and legislation.

Helen Roberts
ACTive ALIA convenor

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