CAL is also trying to make some bullshit argument about teacher directed browsing being a copyright violation. Bullshit arguments with little chance of success are quite common when there is enough money at stake. I doubt the administrative judge will fall for it, but if he does I doubt any bad decision made by the administrative judge will be binding in other contexts.

CAL is effectively just a weird way for Australia to susidize Australian authors. They do some surveys, the government is charged based on the results, and Australian authors get some money. I think they just pretend that none of the materials copied are from non-australian authors. The fact that they don’t pay non-australian authors, effectively means that the government granted itself imunity to public school copyright infringement and then subsidizes australian authors based on a copyright-related metric. They could subsidize australian authors based on surveys of the students’ lunch selections if they wanted to, it doesn’t nessesarily mean that there is an valid IP right involved in whatever metric they use.

This is the biggest problem for Swarthmore’s student group Free Culture. We can’t seem to make this stuff interesting. As a consequence, we can’t make anyone else care and we end up with this isolated group of dedicated people doing their own thing. And then our own members get bored and leave (as is sort of happening to me), even though FC’s issues may be the most important around.

Then there are the matters like the RIAA suing students over music, which people could be interested in. But if you feel your position needs to be nuanced (I’m not completely comfortable saying that downloaders are “in the right”), you end up even more dull (or worse).

It’s a lot harder than “Coke murders union leaders!” (By the way, Coca Cola has a full-page ad in the Phoenix today. That’s sort of cool.)

“The collective impression I get is of a slow form of economic and cultural suicide in which liberal democratic societies destroy the legal infrastructures of the open society while businesses invested in the production and dissemination of popular culture foul their own revenue streams in pursuit of the diminishing returns they can squeeze from untapped sources. ”

It’s not suicide, it’s certain factions parasitizing the rest of society. Most people aren’t aware of what’s being done. At best, they are misinformed that they’re protecting something important to society.

One thing being at Swarthmore has taught me is that the spirit moves certain Quakers rather a lot…

Because this story is dull, dull, dull. You say the words “Copyright Agency” and “in Australia”, and My Eyes Glaze Over. Sure, it’s important. Sure, it’s nasty. But you wonder why people don’t care? Because it involves bureaucracy, and legal jargon, and other people’s money halfway around the world. It took me 24 hours to comment, and that’s only because no one else did. (I’d make a bad Quaker; I should only comment when the spirit truly moves me.)