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Archive for Daryl Williams Attorney-General for Australia 1996 - 2003

Joint News Release

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Attorney-General
The Hon. Daryl Williams AM QC MP

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Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts
Senator the Hon. Richard Alston

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28 February 2001

CHEAPER BOOKS AND COMPUTER SOFTWARE

Australian consumers and small businesses can expect lower prices for books, periodical publications, printed music and computer software products as a result of legislation to be introduced into Parliament today, the Attorney-General, Daryl Williams, and the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Senator Richard Alston, said.

Monitoring by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) over the last ten years shows that Australian businesses have had to pay an average of 27 per cent more for packaged business software than their overseas competitors. Australia's small businesses also have to wait longer than their overseas counterparts for software.

Analysis by the ACCC found that consumers often pay too much for books and software. This Bill will help consumers, small business and the education sector by producing lower prices and greater opportunity to source and sell stock.

The Copyright Amendment (Parallel Importation) Bill 2001 will remove the existing restrictions on the parallel importation of computer software products (including popular applications for word processing, database management and graphical analysis, popular console and PC games, video arcade games and CD-ROMs).

It will also allow the importation of books, periodical publications such as journals and magazines, sheet music and electronic versions of these products. This means that Australian businesses will be able to import for commercial purposes copies of these products produced legitimately overseas, without obtaining the permission of the Australian copyright owner.

In contrast to the Coalition, Labor's Shadow Minister for Industry and Technology even acknowledged that Labor isn't interested in the interests of consumers of packaged software, including businesses;

"The Government is moving towards a policy - they've announced a policy; we'll see the legislation soon, I assume, that will take away the rights of the creators and try to just drive down the prices. It's entirely driven by consumer interest." [Sky News, 24/08/00)
Unlike the Labor party's `Use it or Lose it' policy, the Government's policy is not about benefiting foreign rightsholders by reimposing restrictions on CDs and maintaining import restrictions and monopoly distributions on books, software, computer games at the expense of Australian businesses and consumers.

Contrary to some of the claims made by opponents of the legislation the removal of parallel import restrictions will not lead to an increase in piracy. Australian produced software will still be fully protected under the Digital Copyright regime. Parallel imports are not pirated goods. They are genuine goods legally sold in the country of export with the permission of the copyright owner.

Allowing parallel importation does not mean that it will be legal to import pirate product. On the contrary, this Bill gives very substantial procedural assistance to copyright owners in civil actions by shifting to the defendant the onus of establishing that a parallel imported copy is not an infringing copy.

In addition, where a criminal action is brought for copyright piracy, the penalties for infringement of copyright are severe: the maximum liability for importation and sale of pirate goods is $60,500 and/or imprisonment of five years for each offence, while the maximum liability for a corporation is $302,500. Any infringing articles are also subject to forfeiture and destruction.