Australian book publishers have welcomed the decision by the Australian Booksellers Association (ABA) to support territorial copyright for books.
The ABA’s recent submission to the Productivity Commission inquiry into the Copyright Act abandons the organisation’s previous position on this issue and now says: ‘The ABA considers the uncertainty delivered by the removal of territorial copyright to be of too great a risk to our developing independent publishing industry, particularly in light of the business models of the most successful of these publishers and their reliance on the value of territorial copyright.’
In the past, the ABA advocated the removal of the current rules that govern how books can be imported into Australia, which would have meant the abolition of Australia’s unique territorial copyright regime.
Australian Publishers Association (APA) President Murray St Leger said publishers would study the ABA’s proposals closely.
‘This is a constructive and valuable contribution to the Productivity Commission inquiry,’ Mr St Leger said. ‘We will look at it in detail and consider the implications for authors, publishers and readers but, at first glance, publishers certainly welcome the ABA’s changed position.
‘Publishers believe territorial copyright is essential to provide the security the industry needs to invest for the future, nurturing Australian authors, exporting the best of our culture and providing the extraordinarily wide range of books at competitive prices which Australians now enjoy,’ he added.
The ABA’s new position is reinforced by other independent booksellers and chains which have made submissions to the Productivity Commission supporting the retention of Australia’s territorial copyright.
Maree McCaskill, CEO of the APA said, ‘This shows that the whole of the book publishing supply chain, from authors, through agents, printers and now the vast majority of booksellers all understand the fundamental importance of territorial copyright for the future of this industry. Without it, there’s no incentive to invest and we become the dumping bin for the leftovers of overseas literary culture.’