Copyright Law of Australia - Copyright Term

Copyright Term

Before the 2006 Amendments, Australia used a "plus 50" rule to determine when a work entered the public domain. Put simply, a "work" (i.e. a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work) entered the public domain 50 years following the year of the creator's death, with exceptions. The 2006 Amendments changed the benchmark to "plus 70". This brought Australia into line with the United States of America, the European Union and other regions, but longer than the "plus 50" minimum required by the Berne Convention. The extension to "plus 70" does not apply to crown copyright, to which the "plus 50" rule continues to apply.

Similar to the foreign reciprocity clause in the European Union copyright law, the change to the "plus 70" rule is not retroactive, so that if copyright has expired before the coming into force of the amendment it is not revived. The result is that:

  • Any work that was published in the lifetime of the author who died before 1 January 1957, is out of copyright.
  • Any work that was published in the lifetime of the author who died after 31 December 1956, will be out of copyright 70 years after the author's death.

Also any work that was published after the death of the author, will be out of copyright 70 years after the year of first publication. Unpublished works hold copyright indefinitely.

Photographs, sound recordings, films, and anonymous/pseudonymous works are copyright for 70 years from their first publication. Television and sound broadcasts are copyright for only fifty years after the year of their first broadcast (though the material contained in the broadcast may be separately copyrighted). Most other works are also dated from the first publication/broadcast/performance where this occurred after the author's death.

The period of 70 years is counted from the end of the relevant calendar year.

The United States Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (1998) defines an entirely different rule based on the year of first publication in the USA. Generally, anything published before 1923 is in the public domain. An interesting consequence of this for the Internet is that a work may be in the public domain in the US but not in Australia, or vice versa. It is important to note that except for the works falling under the "Rule of the shorter term", copyright does not depend on the country of origin, the country of publication, or the nationality of the author. A work published in the US by a British author may still be in the public domain in Australia if the author died more than 70 years ago or died before 1956, whichever is the shorter.

The duration of copyright has been criticized as a perversion of its purpose - copyright is intended to provide creators with financial incentive to create content, but the copyright does not expire until decades after the creator has died, limiting its use in derived works.

Read more about this topic:  Copyright Law Of Australia

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