On Thursday 15th June 2017, copyright officers
and librarians around Australia celebrated as the Copyright Amendment
(Disability Access and Other Measures) Bill passed through Senate. The legislation contains a number of well-overdue copyright
reforms which will:
- Enable people with a disability, and organisations assisting those with a disability (including educational institutions), to make format-appropriate, accessible copies of copyright works;
- Enable best practice preservation of library and archival materials (for example, making preservation copies of materials when they are purchased, rather than having to wait until they are lost, stolen or damaged);
- Streamline the onerous educational statutory licences to allow for more flexible uses of copyright material, including using copyright material in online exams;
- End perpetual copyright in unpublished works. This means that, on the 1 January 2019, millions of unpublished works (letters, diaries, recipes, theses) will enter the public domain and will be free for everyone to use.
In 2015, ALIA ran a hugely successful Cooking for Copyright campaign that lobbied for the end of perpetual copyright in unpublished works. As part of this campaign, unpublished recipes were made available online and library staff across Australia were encouraged to cook from the recipes and share the results using the #cookingforcopyright hashtag.
To celebrate the success of the legislative reform, ALIA are encouraging us to cook for copyright again on Monday 31st July. Dig out your favourite family recipe or find inspiration from the recipes published on the ALIA FAIR website, and share the deliciousness on Facebook and Twitter using the #cookingforcopyright and #LibrariesWA hashtags. What better way to celebrate this sweet copyright reform than with a morning tea!
