[LINK] email ISNT banned

[Bruce Arnold]

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Quote from this morning's A-G's media release re email ...

>Contrary to alarmist media reports, sharing e-mail is not banned by law. 
>Amendments to the Copyright Act that came into effect today do not outlaw
>the practice of forwarding personal e-mails to other people.  That would
>be ridiculous.
>The Copyright Amendment (Digital Agenda) Act updates copyright law to
>ensure it provides the same protections in an electronic environment as
>exist in a hard copy environment.  For example, musicians whose music is
>distributed online without their permission will be able to take action to
>stop it, in the same way they can if pirate CDs are sold over the counter.
>Forwarding a personal e-mail is unlikely to breach copyright laws.  A
>court would need to find that the contents of the e-mail were an "original
>literary work".  For example, if the e-mail was simply a joke that
>everyone had been re-hashing for years, it is doubtful it would have the
>necessary originality to be protected by copyright.  Similarly, a casual
>exchange of personal information or office gossip would probably not be
>original enough to have copyright in it.

Settle down people
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