The Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) review of Copyright and the Digital Economy will shortly draw to a close. The ALRC is due to provide its final report to government by 30 November 2013.

This review is of enormous importance to the entire Australian education sector. Universities, schools and TAFEs, as well as many other users groups, have unanimously supported the ALRC’s proposals to introduce a flexible fair use exception and to replace the educational statutory licences with voluntary licensing.

The Australian Law Reform Commission has recently (June 2013) released a discussion paper outlining proposals for reform of Australia's copyright system.  The two headline recommendation were: 

1.       The introduction of a fair use provision;

2.       Repealing some of Australia's ‘statutory licences’ and replacing them with ‘voluntary licences’.

Copyright law is complex, and it can be hard to visualise what the world would look like if it was reformed.  

Recently there has been a lot of concern regarding the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) preliminary proposals to update Australia’s copyright law for the digital age.  

For schools, the ALRC has made two headline proposals:

• the introduction of an open-ended, flexible exception for uses which are fair; and