Australian Supreme Court Looks At Copyright Law

from the can-we-hope-for-a-sensible-decision? dept

The Supreme Court in Australia is now taking a look at their version of the DMCA to see if people have the right to modify hardware they've bought or to make backup copies of digital media they purchased. In the old, pre-digital world, when you bought a product, it was yours to do whatever you wanted with it. However, thanks to recent law changes, any product that involves a digital component seems much closer to a rental agreement, where the company that "sold" you the product retains some sort of rights. For obvious reasons, many people think this is unfair. In this particular case, Sony went after a mod-chip trader, claiming that the mod-chips he offered for the Playstation violated copyright law by letting users play copied games, thereby violating anti-circumvention rules in Australian law. It really becomes a question of whether or not certain companies have the right to have their business models protected by regulations, rather than forcing them to keep up with the changing marketplace.

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