FC: The final word on Australian email forwarding restrictions?

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

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Here's the first politech message in this thread:
http://www.politechbot.com/p-01786.html
It seems the situation may not be as clear as the followup suggested:
http://www.politechbot.com/p-01789.html

-Declan

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From: Nick Smith <NSMITH () nla gov au>
To: "'declan () well com'" <declan () well com>
Subject: Australian email forwarding
Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 09:39:44 +1100

Declan

Re: Forwarding Australian email forwarding being illegal

Saw the repost of this issue on Politech. In fact the legal situation in
Australia is similar to most other places in the world. A forwarded email is
both a reproduction and a communication to the public (as the WIPO Treaties
refer to a transmission). Any email in which copyright subsists which is
forwarded without permission (express or implied) will be infringing
copyright in most jursidictions in the world, including the US (though the
in the US fair use *may* save the forwarder...).

So the Daily Telegraph article was a bit of a beat-up.

Regards

Nick
--
=========================================================
Nick Smith
Executive Officer  ::  Australian Digital Alliance
Copyright Advisor  ::  Australian Libraries Copyright Committee
PO Box E202   \\   Kingston ACT 2604
Ph: 02 6262 1273   \\   Fax: 02 6273 2545
Email: nsmith () nla gov au   \\   Web: www.digital.org.au
=========================================================

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Subject: Re: FC: Forwarding email without permission now illegal in Australia
To: declan () well com
From: "Josh Moyes" <josh.moyes () asic gov au>
Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2001 09:30:09 +1100

FYI - josh moyes.

Email forwarding law exempts personal messages, attorney-general says
SMH
March 5, 2001
http://www.smh.com.au/breaking/0103/05/A26800-2001Mar5.html

Federal Attorney-General Daryl Williams has moved to quell reports that
forwarding emails will be banned under a new federal law. But Mr Williams
has described as alarmist a Sydney newspaper report that forwarding
personal emails could attract penalties of up to $60,000. He said the new
Copyright Amendment Act, which came into effect today, will probably not
apply to personal emails. Mr Williams said a court would have to find that
the contents of the email were an original literary work. Instead, Mr
Williams said the law was designed to apply the same amount of copyright
protection to electronic media as it did to hard copy.

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