“Indeed, owning a device capable of infringing copyright is enough to prove infringement. All owners of VCR recorders, CD/DVD burners, iPods, tape drives, perhaps even floppy disk drives and spare hard drives are culpable criminally under this code.”

in that context even microsoft themselves can be liable. as they provide the software (C+ programing, windows xp build in MP3 ripper/burner via MMP, etc) same with INTEL for providing computers and every other company that makes products which can be used to infringe copyrights in australia. even small business that resell computer parts/software can be held liable, and to top that companies and educational institutes who teach programing could be held liable even electricity companies for suppling the electricity to a product that can breach copyrights.

but thats going a bit far.

Paul

You do not apply for copyright in Australia, and there is no system of registration here. Nor are there any forms to fill in, or fees to be paid.
You do not need to publish your work, put a opyright notice on it, or do anything else before your work is covered by copyright—the protection is free and automatic, from the time a work is first written down or recorded in some way. For example, as soon as a poem is written, or a song is recorded, it is protected.

Although the documents rarely refer to the contents of a website, it is clear that all content on any website or webpage is automatically covered by copyright in Australia, whether a copyright notice has been added or not from the references.

What is disturbing about the Cooper judgment is that what was commonly interpreted as attribution or reference, a hyperlink, is now interpreted as an ‘authorization’ to infringement, and makes not only the author of the website – who may be an employee of a company, the owner of the website, and the ISP who hosts the website culpable under both civil and criminal law.
Because on-the-spot fines are defined for each instance (link), there is no need for a civil complaint.

Indeed, owning a device capable of infringing copyright is enough to prove infringement. All owners of VCR recorders, CD/DVD burners, iPods, tape drives, perhaps even floppy disk drives and spare hard drives are culpable criminally under this code.

The ACC itself states clearly that any of the factsheets available from their site in pdf format may be downloaded, and one copy printed out.
Clearly, if I download one of those files, then copy it to a diskette, CD, or flash key for someone else to read, I am liable for a fine.
In fact, my printer (which is out of paper again!) could be used as evidence of copyright infringement since it could print out more than one copy of the document.

In order to print out more than one copy legally, I would have to negotiate a contract with the ACC covering many arcanely-defined legal topics.

There are many other such issues which have not been adequately, sanely, or simply realistically dealt with in the amendments.
Why has there not been more comments from the experts on what how these restrictions will affect business, social interaction, and especially ecommerce and the free flow of information on the Web?

Paul