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I think therefore I license

Intellectual property and patent issues seem to be popping up all over the place at the moment. This article in the Sydney Morning Herald warns that even owning an iPod could land you in trouble:

"Owning an iPod, camera phone or a DVD recorder might be enough to land you in jail or lumbered with a large fine under the Federal Government's proposed new changes to the copyright laws, experts warn...... ....Under proposed new copyright laws, loading tracks onto a music player, which have been copied from a CD, would be classified as infringing copyright. This would apply even if that CD was legitimately purchased."
The Copyright Amendment Act must be raising concerns from those involved in education and who are aware of what is going on. Google have some concerns about this Act too. From ABC Science Online, a Google rep is quotes as saying:
"Google believes that the bill fails significantly to bring Australia's copyright act fully into the digital age,"
and goes on to champion the cause for us. Thats nice but at the same time what would happen if you want to download or remix something from YouTube. Fang has something to say about that. In the meantime, suppose you are offering some content you created to the world for free and want to support the operation of your website through (say) advertising. A read of this article may cause you to rethink that - scary stuff if it comes to fruition. Why bother selling laptops etc when a business model of that magnitude is on the horizon. Here's another one. Many learners of musical instruments use something called tablature to help them understand how to play songs. This is supposedly really useful if you can't read music and used to be available from many sites until quite recently when lawyers hit these sites with letters to stop the practice. I guess this is following the same path that online music itself took and will hopefully sort itself out in a sensible manner. I was once given some investment advice regarding mining - the only people you can guarantee will meet with success (and so should invest in) in something like a goldrush are the suppliers of the equipment. Following that concept, a career change into law may be quite profitable in this current 'boom'.

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