Monday, October 20, 2008
Last week the Australian Institute of Criminology released its report on Intellectual property crime and enforcement in Australia, with some very interesting findings. I haven't had a chance to go through the whole report yet but I just wanted to make a general comment about this statement, which I find completely unsurprising (at p. 38):
Australia is, and has always been, since colonial times, an importer or 'user' nation of copyright-protected materials, so it came as no surprise to me that we were the second-largest illegal downloader of television shows. The fact that Australia is an 'importer nation' was picked up in the Spicer Committee's report and then later with regard to the intellectual property package of the AUSFTA. Back in the ye olde colonial days, the majority of our books were imported from the United Kingdom, with many UK publishers and then eventually some colonial publishers, producing specific 'colonial editions' for sale in Australia. As Martyn Lyons has noted in a chapter of the fantastic A History of the Book in Australia 1891 - 1945, Australia earned itself the reputation as being 'the jewel of Britain's book trade empire.' (see Martyn Lyons, 'Britain's Largest Export Market', in Lyons & Arnold (eds) A History of the Book in Australia 1891 - 1945, 2001, at p. 19).
Until about five years ago, a similar statement could be made regrding Australia's importation of international television shows, predominantly from the United States and, to a lesser extent, the United Kingdom (I think The Bill and Jane Austen miniseries adaptations would comprise a lot of that market!) And, just as in the colonies Australian readers had to pay a considerable amount more than their UK counterparts to purchase the latest fiction, Australians had to wait a long time to see new episodes of their favourite TV shows.
The West Wing is an excellent example - originally it was aired on the Nine Network, who changed the time and date of broadcast so often that many viewers began to resort to Amazon.com to get the latest series on DVD. Eventually (thankfully) it was picked up by the ABC and the sixth and seventh seasons were shown weekly until the end of the series.
With examples like this, it is really no surprise that Australians have turned to the Internet to catch their favourite shows just after they have been aired in the United States. This is not to suggest that I support this type of behaviour but it poses a challenge to the free-to-air networks in Australia to change their business models, and I know a number have. In an article published yesterday in the Sun-Herald newspaper (accessible of the Sydney Morning Herald website here) it is noted that shows such as House and the US version of Kath & Kim are appearing about one-three days after they appear in the States. Yet some very popular shows, for example, Heroes, are still taking over a fortnight to get to our screens, though that is still being described as 'fast-tracked'. Not fast enough, clearly.
An Envisional study found Australia was the second-largest downloader of online
pirated TV shows in the world (15.6%), behind the UK (18.5%) but ahead of the US
(7.3%). Australians were the leading downloaders of pirated TV programs on a per
capita basis. The report found that increased bandwidth take-up, technological
advances and a high demand for US-based TV shows are some of the reasons that
piracy has boomed. Seventy percent of the piracy occurs through BitTorrent (BT)
(Envisional 2004, BBC News 2005, Reuters 2005). The survey found that the top TV show downloads were 24, Stargate Atlantis, The Simpsons, Enterprise, Stargate
SG-1, OC, Smallville, Desperate Housewives, Battlestar Galactica and Lost (Idato
2005).
Australia is, and has always been, since colonial times, an importer or 'user' nation of copyright-protected materials, so it came as no surprise to me that we were the second-largest illegal downloader of television shows. The fact that Australia is an 'importer nation' was picked up in the Spicer Committee's report and then later with regard to the intellectual property package of the AUSFTA. Back in the ye olde colonial days, the majority of our books were imported from the United Kingdom, with many UK publishers and then eventually some colonial publishers, producing specific 'colonial editions' for sale in Australia. As Martyn Lyons has noted in a chapter of the fantastic A History of the Book in Australia 1891 - 1945, Australia earned itself the reputation as being 'the jewel of Britain's book trade empire.' (see Martyn Lyons, 'Britain's Largest Export Market', in Lyons & Arnold (eds) A History of the Book in Australia 1891 - 1945, 2001, at p. 19).
Until about five years ago, a similar statement could be made regrding Australia's importation of international television shows, predominantly from the United States and, to a lesser extent, the United Kingdom (I think The Bill and Jane Austen miniseries adaptations would comprise a lot of that market!) And, just as in the colonies Australian readers had to pay a considerable amount more than their UK counterparts to purchase the latest fiction, Australians had to wait a long time to see new episodes of their favourite TV shows.
The West Wing is an excellent example - originally it was aired on the Nine Network, who changed the time and date of broadcast so often that many viewers began to resort to Amazon.com to get the latest series on DVD. Eventually (thankfully) it was picked up by the ABC and the sixth and seventh seasons were shown weekly until the end of the series.
With examples like this, it is really no surprise that Australians have turned to the Internet to catch their favourite shows just after they have been aired in the United States. This is not to suggest that I support this type of behaviour but it poses a challenge to the free-to-air networks in Australia to change their business models, and I know a number have. In an article published yesterday in the Sun-Herald newspaper (accessible of the Sydney Morning Herald website here) it is noted that shows such as House and the US version of Kath & Kim are appearing about one-three days after they appear in the States. Yet some very popular shows, for example, Heroes, are still taking over a fortnight to get to our screens, though that is still being described as 'fast-tracked'. Not fast enough, clearly.
Labels: catherine, copyright, enforcement, infringement, piracy
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