User Rights Advocacy: The Australian Experience

Delia Browne, National Copyright Director for the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) Education Council, will share insights from the Australian experience with advocating for user rights during a copyright review.Australia has conducted two extensive copyright law reform inquiries – the Australian Law Reform Commission Inquiry into Copyright and the Digital Economy in 2012/13 and the Productivity Commission Inquiry into IP arrangement in 2016/17. Both reviews supported the introduction of a flexible fair use exception to replace the outdated fair dealing and other exceptions and a range of other recommendations including streamlining the education statutory licenses, introducing new exceptions to the anti-circumvention TPM provisions for libraries, archives, education and organizations supporting disability access, expanding safe harbours to educational institutions, etc.A raft of new legislation and regulations was introduced finally in 2017 with a whole more copyright law in the pipeline in 2018. Delia will discuss the recent 2017 copyright law reform amendments and the upcoming 2018 further consultations by government on flexible fair use or other flexible use models and what is still missing and needs to be fixed.She will also discuss what the Australian Education sector learnt from 2012 Canada copyright law reform and how Australia’s education sector responded to the rights holders’ attempts to discredit Canada’s 2012 copyright law reform in particular fair dealing for education.Delia Browne is the national copyright director of the National Copyright Unit (NCU), Copyright Advisory Group, COAG Education Council. Delia is a highly respected copyright lawyer and policy advocate. She is currently leading the advocacy for the introduction of flexible fair use and other education-related copyright law reform on behalf of the Schools and TAFE sector.She is the Education Sector Lead of Creative Commons Australia and works closely with Creative Commons, Open Society Institute and many other international organizations advocating OER and copyright law reform. She is one of the co-drafters of the Cape Town Declaration on Open Education and one of the co-founders and President of Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU) www.p2pu.org.