Kim Weatherall has a funny, although quite serious post on the implications of a fairly innocent behaviour under the proposed Copyright Amendment Bill of 2006.

I haven’t seen Telstra’s new ad myself, so I’ll leave it to Kim to provide the description:

You may have seen the ad (it showed last night [Sunday 2006-11-05] during Australian Idol, but I’ve seen it before): a good-looking girl having a great time at a live concert holds up her fabulous sexy slimline phone and records what’s going on. She sends it to her home computer, and a whole bunch of the concertgoers follow her home to continue the party at her place. Pan to fabulous large house with seriously rocking party.

It turns out that under the proposed new copyright law, said girl would have racked up about four criminal offences and a maximum of $26,400 in fines. Plus, there’s an opportunity for an on-the-spot fine of  $1320 if a police officer catches her at it.

Apparently under current law all of the same offences exist, but it has to be proved that you knowingly/intentionally breached those laws for it to become a serious consideration. (So, if your day job is a TV cameraman, or IP/Copyright Lawyer, you could be in serious hot water). The new laws, according to Kim, remove that requirement.

Hold the phone… (update) According to someone at work, the girl in the ad actually downloads the song from Bigpond Music on her mobile,  which lets her play it on her home PC too.  

That’s good - but she’d still be in breach of the licensing terms and possibly copyright act, because it’s a public performance.