Copyright Seminars, Australian Copyright Council
The Melbourne Hotel, Perth, 27-28 May 2008

The Australian Copyright Council conducted a series of illuminating seminars which helped to shed light on the confused and confusing area of copyright as it pertains to digital media and new technologies. I certainly left with a much more informed perspective on the intricacies of copyright law.  Further useful information on this area is available at Smart Copying Australia.

I also left with a much better overview of looming legal battles. Key insights I derived from the sessions I attended included:

• Copyright is very much a grey area. It’s not just educators who are unsure. The law is scrambling to catch up with recent technological advances and many areas are simply untested in the courts.
• The law, by nature, is a conservative institution and there is inevitably growing tension between the law (with its careful preservation of the economic status quo) and social technologies (which, with their sharing and remixing practices, are based on a radically different paradigm).

For both of the above reasons, in years to come we’re going to see a series of court battles where details of the law will be clarified as the latent conflict between the law and new technologies is played out. The outcome is going to make a big difference to what we can and can’t do, and what we will and won’t attempt, with technologies in the future.