A fair use project for Australia: Copyright law and creative freedom

This essay provides a critical assessment of the Fair Use Project based at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. In evaluating the efficacy of the Fair Use Project, it is worthwhile considering the litigation that the group has been involved in, and evaluating its performance. Part 1 outlines the history of the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, and the aims and objectives of the Fair Use Project. Part 2 considers the litigation in Shloss v. Sweeney over a biography concerning Lucia Joyce, the daughter of the avant-garde literary great, James Joyce. Part 3 examines the dispute over the Harry Potter Lexicon. Part 4 looks at the controversy over the Shepard Fairey poster of President Barack Obama, and the resulting debate with Associated Press. Part 5 of the essay considers the intervention of the Fair Use Project as an amicus curiae in the ‘Column case’. Part 6 explores the participation of the Fair Use Project as an amicus curiae in the litigation over 60 Years Later, an unauthorised literary sequel to J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. Part 7 of the essay investigates the role of the Fair Use project in disputes over copyright law and musical works. Part 8 investigates the role of the Fair Use Project as an advocate in disputes over copyright law, fair use, documentary films, and internet videos. The conclusion has main three arguments. First, it contends that Australia should establish a Fair Use Project to support creative artists in litigation over copyright exceptions. Second, it maintains that Australia should adopt a flexible, open-ended defence of fair use, and draw upon the rich jurisprudence in the United States on the fair use doctrine. Finally, this paper argues that support should be given at an international level to the proposal for a Treaty on Access to Knowledge.

The freedom to tinker: Patent law and experimental use

This article considers the origins and the development of the defence of experimental use in patent law - the ’freedom to tinker'. It explores the impact of such an exemption upon a number of important industries - such as agriculture, biotechnology, and pharmaceutical drugs. This article takes a comparative approach in its analysis of patent law and experimental use. It highlights the competing norms, and lack of harmonization between a number of jurisdictions - including the United States, the European Union, and Australia. Section 2 provides a critique of the development of the common law defence of experimental use in the United States. It considers a series of precedents - including Roche Products Inc v Bolar Pharmaceuticals, Madey v Duke University, Integra Lifesciences I Ltd v Merck KgaA, and Applera v MJ Research. Section 3 explores the operation of patent law and experimental use in European jurisdictions. It looks at a number of significant precedents in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, France, Italy, and Germany. Section 4 considers the policy debate in a number of forums over the defence of experimental use in Australia. It examines the controversy over Genetic Technologies Limited asking research organisations to obtain a licence in respect of its patents associated with non-coding DNA and genomic mapping. It also considers the inquiries of the Australian Law Reform Commission and the Advisory Council on Intellectual Property, as well as the impact of the TRIPS Agreement and the Australia-United States Free Trade Agreement. The conclusion contends that there is a need for a broad-based defence of experimental use for all the member states of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

No Right to Live? Malaysia’s Islam and Implications for Its Sexual Minority Storytellers

This chapter discusses the fast emerging challenges for Malay and Muslim sexual minority storytellers in the face of an aggressive state-sponsored Islamisation of a constitutionally secular Malaysia. I examine the case of Azwan Ismail, a gay Malay and Muslim Malaysian who took part in the local ‘It Gets Better’ project, and who suffered an onslaught of hostile comments from fellow Malay Muslims. Azwan’s experience makes one question how a message of discouraging suicidal tendencies among sexual minority youths can be so vehemently misperceived. Azwan’s existential challenges – stemming from the tension between his own constructions of self and those of others – (re)present a unique challenge in the long struggle for human rights. In my examination of the arising contradictions, I highlight the challenges for Azwan’s existential self – one who is deemed morally bankrupt by hostile audiences. The purist Sunni Islam agenda in a constitutionally secular Malaysia not only rejects the human rights of the sexual minorities in Malaysia but has also influenced, and is often a leading hostile voice in both regional and international blocs. This self-righteous, supremacist and authoritarian Islam discourages discourse and attacks all differing opinions. This resulting disabling environment for vulnerable, minority communities and their human rights manifests in State-endorsed discrimination, compulsory counselling, forced rehabilitation and criminalisation. It places the rights of the sexual minorities to live within such a society in doubt. In discussing the arising issues, I draw upon literature that investigates the way in which personal stories have traditionally been used to advance human rights. Included too, is the significance and implications of the work by social psychologists in explaining the loss of credibility of personal stories. I then advance an analytical framework that will allow storytelling as a very individual form of witnessing to reclaim and regain its ‘truth to power’.

Academic Freedom and University Autonomy

This chapter examines the law in relation to the doctrines of university autonomy and academic freedom, in the Australian context. It first considers some traditional misconceptions and surrounding these doctrines, which seem to have obscured the real nature of the relationship between universities and the state. It then examines some laws and legal instruments at an international, federal and State level which define and regulate these freedoms. It considers some contemporary controversies, to illustrate both the strengths and weaknesses surrounding how alleged infringements of academic freedom and independence have been managed. It concludes with a look at an important emerging challenge which has implications for how we might avoid and manage such controversies in the future.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership: Copyright Law, the Creative Industries, and Internet Freedom

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a highly secretive trade agreement being negotiated between the US and eleven Pacific Rim countries, including Australia. Having obtained a fast-track authority from the United States Congress, US President Barack Obama is keen to finalise the deal. However, he was unable to achieve a resolution of the deal at recent talks in Hawaii on the TPP. A number of chapters of the TPP will affect the creative artists, cultural industries and internet freedom — including the intellectual property chapter, the investment chapter, and the electronic commerce chapter. Legacy copyright industries have pushed for longer and stronger copyright protection throughout the Pacific Rim. In the wake of the Hawaii talks, Knowledge Ecology International leaked the latest version of the intellectual property chapter of the TPP. Jamie Love of Knowledge Ecology International commented upon the leaked text about copyright law: ‘In many sections of the text, the TPP would change global norms, restrict access to knowledge, create significant financial risks for persons using and sharing information, and, in some cases, impose new costs on persons producing new knowledge goods.’ The recent leaked text reveals a philosophical debate about the nature of intellectual property law. There are mixed messages in respect of the treatment of the public domain under copyright law. In one part of the agreement on internet service providers, there is text that says that the parties recognise the need for ‘promoting innovation and creativity,’ ‘facilitating the diffusion of information, knowledge, technology, culture, and the arts’, and ‘foster competition and open and efficient markets.’ A number of countries suggested ‘acknowledging the importance of the public domain.’ The United States and Japan opposed the recognition of the public domain in this text.

Pacific Journalism Review : Twenty years on the front line of regional identity and freedom

Pacific Journalism Review has consistently, at a good standard, honoured its 1994 founding goal: to be a credible peer-reviewed journal in the Asia-Pacific region, probing developments in journalism and media, and supporting journalism education. Global, it considers new media and social movements; ‘regional’, it promotes vernacular media, human freedoms and sustainable development. Asking how it developed, the method for this article was to research the archive, noting authors, subject matter, themes. The article concludes that one answer is the journal’s collegiate approach; hundreds of academics, journalists and others, have been invited to contribute. Second has been the dedication of its one principal editor, Professor David Robie, always somehow providing resources—at Port Moresby, Suva, and now Auckland—with a consistent editorial stance. Eclectic, not partisan, it has nevertheless been vigilant over rights, such as monitoring the Fiji coups d’etat. Watching through a media lens, it follows a ‘Pacific way’, handling hard information through understanding and consensus. It has 237 subscriptions indexed to seven databases. Open source, it receives more than 1000 site visits weekly. With ‘clientele’ mostly in Australia, New Zealand and ‘Oceania’, it extends much further afield. From 1994 to 2014, 701 articles and reviews were published, now more than 24 scholarly articles each year.

In the Shadow of Freedom : Life on board the oil tanker

The aim of this study was to look at the freedom of ordinary people as they construct it. The scope, however, was limited to contemporary Finnish sailors and their freedom discourses. The study belongs to the field of the anthropology of religions, which is part of comparative religion. Worldview, which is one of the key concepts in comparative religion, provided the broader theoretical basis of the study. The data consisted of 92 interviews with Finnish professional seafarers conducted in 1996, 1999, 2000 and 2005, field journals that were written during two periods of fieldwork in 1996 and 1999-2000, and correspondence with some of the seafarers during 1999-2005. The analysis process incorporated new rhetoric and metaphor theory. The thesis is in three parts. The first part discusses the methodological challenges of this type of ethnography, the second an ethnography of modern Finnish shipworld focuses on work, organization, hierarchy and gender, and the third part discusses the freedom concepts of seafarers. It was found that seafarers use two kinds of freedom discourse. The first is in line with the stereotypical Jack Tar, a free-roving sailor who is not bound to land and its mundane routines, and the second views shipworld as freedom from freedom, meaning one is not responsible for one s own actions because one is not free to make a choice. It was also found that seafarers are well aware of the stereotypical images that are attached to their profession: they not only deny them, but also utilize, reflect on and construct them.

A computerized methodology for structural synthesis of kinematic chains: Part 3 - application to the new case of 10-link, three- freedom chains

The unified computer program for structural synthesis and analysis developed in Part 1 has been employed to derive the new and complete collection of 97 10-link, three-freedom simple-jointed kinematic chains. The program shows that of these chains, 3 have total freedom, 70 have partial freedom and the remaining 24 have fractionated freedom and that the 97 chains yield a total of 676 distinct mechanisms.

Split-Freedom And Mvd-Intersection - A New Characterization Of Multivalued Dependencies Having Conflict-Free Covers

Sets of multivalued dependencies (MVDs) having conflict-free covers are important to the theory and design of relational databases [2,12,15,16]. Their desirable properties motivate the problem of testing a set M of MVDs for the existence of a confiict-free cover. In [8] Goodman and Tay have proposed an approach based on the possible equivalence of M to a single (acyclic) join dependency (JD). We remark that their characterization does not lend an insight into the nature of such sets of MVDs. Here, we use notions that are intrinsic to MVDs to develop a new characterization. Our approach proceeds in two stages. In the first stage, we use the notion of “split-free” sets of MVDs and obtain a characterization of sets M of MVDs having split-free covers. In the second, we use the notion of “intersection” of MVDs to arrive at a necessary and sufficient condition for a split-free set of MVDs to be conflict-free. Based on our characterizations, we also give polynomial-time algorithms for testing whether M has split-free and conflict-free covers. The highlight of our approach is the clear insight it provides into the nature of sets of MVDs having conflict-free covers. Less emphasis is given in this paper to the actual efficiency of the algorthms. Finally, as a bonus, we derive a desirable property of split-free sets of MVDs,thereby showing that they are interesting in their own right.

Freedom ride... I have a dream

A play in two parts on the subject of racism. Part One presents the story of the Montgomery bus boycott arising from the refusal of Rosa Parkes to give up her seat on a bus and leading to the rise of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part Two is set in contemporary Australia, in the household of a group of young people who re-create the sixties' Freedom Ride in order to heal the spirit of Auntie, an Aboriginal woman, who is the centre of their world.

Optimum design of a Lanchester damper for a viscously damped single degree of freedom system subjected to inertial excitation

The problem of designing an optimum Lanchester damper for a viscously damped single degree of freedom system subjected to inertial harmonic excitation is investigated. Two criteria are used for optimizing the performance of the damper: (i) minimum motion transmissibility; (ii) minimum force transmissibility. Explicit expressions are developed for determining the absorber parameters.

Analysis of two degrees of freedom systems through weighted mean square linearization approach

In this paper a study of the free, forced and self-excited vibrations of non-linear, two degrees of freedom systems is reported. The responses are obtained by linearizing the nonlinear equations using the weighted mean square linearization approach. The scope of this approach, in terms of the type of non-linearities the method can tackle, is also discussed.

The letters 1938-1945. The Grunwald's journey from oppression to freedom.

The bulk of the correspondence is between Susanne Sommer's parents, Max and Marga Grunwald, and their sponsors in the United States, Paul and Jean Lewinson. Also included are letters from Susanne Sommer's maternal grandparents prior to their deportation from Berlin in 1942 and from her paternal grandfather prior to and after his deportation from Stettin to a ghetto in Poland. A number of letters by Hugo Grunwald, Susanne Sommer's uncle, joined the British army after his immigration to England, are included as well.

Analysis of two degrees of freedom systems through weighted mean square linearization approach

In this paper a study of the free, forced and self-excited vibrations of non-linear, two degrees of freedom systems is reported. The responses are obtained by linearizing the nonlinear equations using the weighted mean square linearization approach. The scope of this approach, in terms of the type of non-linearities the method can tackle, is also discussed.

Contemplating Whitehead's freedom and discipline

This paper extends the previous application of Alfred Whitehead's educational ideas to the domain of enterprise education. In doing so, a unique approach to enterprise education is illustrated that links students to their reality whilst also connecting the curriculum to contemporary entrepreneurship theory. The paper reports upon past cycles of reflective practice related to the developing hic et nunc teaching and learning framework. Two specific findings of note have emerged. First, that student' learning outcomes are enhanced through the oscillating influence of freedom and discipline. However, in the absence of either factor, sub-optimal outcomes are seen to occur. That is, an imbalance between freedom and discipline has resulted in sub-optimal outcomes from either a lack of student interest or an inability to adequately apply acquired knowledge. Where gains have been made, the most obvious process has been through consultation with students. Second, that the students also play an important role in shaping the nature of the learning environments within which they interact. Both findings are of significant importance to all academics charged with the responsibility of developing enterprise education curriculum. The main implication of the paper is that in the absence of sound pedagogical practises, it is possible that enterprise programs may develop a tendency to reinforce past practises. The processes of constructive alignment and criterion-based assessment are argued to offer avenues through which students can influence the educational process. They also provide the educator with a reflective pathway through which continual improvements are constantly possible. This paper provides other academics with a window through which to view the ongoing development of a process that has been recognised nationally for teaching excellence and influenced many fine young entrepreneurs. The paper also draws attention to a set of core educational philosophies that have transferable value to any academic setting. It is noted that the task of developing a learner-centred curriculum for enterprise education has been an entrepreneurial endeavour in itself. Many mistakes have been made and many memorable achievements have been celebrated.