I'm an Australian, based in the Washington, DC, area of the United States. I spend a lot of time there with Jasmine, Australia's best-known speedsolver of the Rubik's Cube. Prior to the US, Jasmine and I were based in London, UK. We have also lived previously in the United States and Australia.

I have worked for an Australian business rules and compliance company since 1999 in Australia, the US and the UK. I have also lectured in IT and Law related topics at King's College, London, and at The Australian National University.

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Hits since 1 Sep 2004

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Australian schools to pay copyright fees for using the web?

According to an article in Australian IT:

Schools have warned they will have to turn off the internet if a move by the nation's copyright collection society forces them to pay a fee every time a teacher instructs students to browse a website.

If this is true, it's pretty outrageous. Material is placed on the internet because it is meant to be public. If no one else has to pay for general internet use, why should schools?

Even if this were not the case, there is such a volume and diversity of material on the World Wide Web that it would be unreasonable to collect fees for all school web use and then disburse them to the quite limited author list maintained by a copyright collecting body.

I have not followed up this issue in detail -- I have just read the articles to which I am referring here -- but the supposed Australian proposal sounds quite bizarre based on what I have seen.

See also Boing Boing on this topic.