Crispin Hull

A COMPUTER program called Word 5 was marketed in the late 1980s. Most copies of it state “”Copyright 1989” when called up by a computer. This means that Microsoft, the creator of Word 5 will get copyright protection for the program until 2039, that is for 50 years after the program’s creation. Yet it is now impossible to buy a copy of Word 5 in a computer shop.

This is generally true of computer programs. Within 18 months they are upgraded and within three or four years at the outside they are simply unobtainable. Why should the law prevent the copying of something which is otherwise unavailable and therefore has no commercial value?

Last week the Prices Surveillance Authority commendably recommended that restrictions in the Copyright Act on the importing of computer software should be abolished. It said computer software companies and their licensed agents in Australian were charging Australian consumers too much. Under the Copyright Act licensed importers can stop people from importing software in commercial quantities even if they have paid full copyright fees in the overseas country, usually the US. The PSA rightly said if this restriction were abolished there would be greater competition and price of software in Australia would more reasonably reflect US price plus freight, not US price plus freight plus add-on for the cosy little restrictive practice protected by the Copyright Act.
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BARRY MacKenzie’s expressive simile “”dry as a crow’s armpit” jumped to mind last week as I skipped through the Centre for Independent Studies’ latest publication: The Economic Theory of Crime.

“”Dries” were those left over after Mrs Thatcher had wrung all the “”wets” from her Cabinet. Now the are on the retreat as politicians have discovered voters like a little humanity. It was therefore refreshing to discover that some people are still able to propound such unremittingly dry theories as The Economic Theory of Crime. It subjects crime to the rigours of economic cost-benefit analysis with graphs of supply and demand and comes up with some intelligent debunking of the no-fault theories that blame crime on society, upbringing, pathological compulsion and anything else other than the criminals deliberate decision to engage in crime.
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We have to protect the government’s revenue, the hard-earned money of the honest tax-payer. That is why we have to match up information in the Land Titles Office, the Companies Office, the Departments of Social Security and Health and the Tax Office to see who is cheating.

If you are honest, you have nothing to worry about.

Well, there is something to worry about. Government surveillance is a subtly increasing method of general control of the population with shuddering implications for our liberty. Author Simon Davies has done Australians a great service with the publication last month of üBig Brother@ (Simon and Schuster) pointing some of this out.
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The Far South Coast of NSW is under threat from the development of “”ribbon suburbs” between existing hamlets, according to a book launched in Canberra yesterday.

The book, Bush and Beach, by Richard Nott, says the area’s mostly rural identity with its natural coastline, isolated beaches and large reserved or public land is under threat from a lack of a clear government planning strategy.

“”Local and state authorities have served the interests of the developers,” it says
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The ACT is giving high priority to attacking the high incidence of cancer-related deaths among women, the Minister for Health, Wayne Berry, said yesterday.

Mr Berry was commenting on a report in The Canberra Times yesterday comparing ACT and national figures published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. They show that the ACT has the highest female cancer death rate in Australia and that a higher percentage of women die of cancer than of other causes in the ACT than nationally across all age groups.

Mr Berry said that in this year’s Budget funded a joint program with the Commonwealth for the early detection of breast cancer. The ACT and Commonwealth would each contribute $1.81 million over the next two years.
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The ACT has the highest rate of female cancer deaths in Australia, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics figures issued last week.

The percentage of cancer deaths among females in the ACT is significantly higher than in the rest of Australia.

The statistics show that through all age groups, the ACT has a significantly higher percentage of female cancer deaths than the rest of Australia. They show that the male rate, on the other hand is about the same, except of the 25-44 group. Shown the figures, a leading ACT oncologist, Dr Richard Pembrey, said the figures warranted investigation. He called for a compulsory ACT cancer registry.
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The Opposition accused the Prime Minister, Paul Keating, yesterday of breaching Cabinet rules on declarations of interests with respect to his interest in a piggery company.

The Opposition spokesman on the arts, Senator Michael Baume, said the Australian Securities Commission was inquiring into Mr Keating’s piggery group. Mr Keating had paid $430,00 for a half interest in the company. The company itself reported that that share was worth $4.2 million only six weeks later. He asked would the Government have an inquiry into “”Mr Keating’s blatant breach of Cabinet rules by not advising the then Prime Minister, Mr Hawke, that he had acquired a half interest in the piggery group on May 15, 1991 while he was still Treasurer” despite the rule that substantial alterations of interests should be reported.
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Making Tuggeranong Homestead a Charles Bean centre of the Australian War Memorial was an attractive idea, but the memorial did not have the money for it, the director of the memorial, Brendon Kelson, said yesterday.

The ACT Government and the ACT House of Assembly Committee on Conservation, Heritage and Environment have been looking at the fate of the historic homestead over the past few weeks.

Charles Bean, war correspondent and author of The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-18, wrote at least four volumes of the 12-volume work at the homestead between 1919 and 1924, including The Story of Anzac. The history tells the story of war from the perspective of ordinary soldiers in the field, rather than the top brass, and made an essential contribution to the awakening of a national pride through the achievements of Australian soldiers.
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As the recession bites harder elsewhere, the inflow of interstate migrants to the ACT is increasing. Figures issued by the Australian Bureau of Statistics yesterday show that in 1991, interstate migration formed 45 per cent of the ACT’s population growth. In 1988 it was only 21 per cent. The natural increase fell from 64 per cent of the total in 1988 to 47 per cent of it in 1991. Overseas migration, which forms the balance fell from 32 per cent of total in 1988 to 12 per cent in 1991.

The ACT has been seen as a city of immigrants from the rest of Australia since its founding. That image was beginning to change as it was thought natural increase was making up a higher proportion of the total population increase. Yesterday’s statistics, however, show that the trend is the other way. They show that since 1988, Canberra had become even more a town of immigrants.
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Australia has become a surveillance society without virtually no public debate, according to author Simon Davies.

Mr Davies said yesterday that with present government surveillance, “”we already have the Australia Card, and worse. It is more sophisticated and efficient that the Australia Card could ever have been. We don’t have a card itself but we have data matching between departmental computers putting thousands of innocent people under suspicion and investigation.”

Mr Davies, a lecturer in law at the University of NSW, argues that Australians are far too complacent about invasions of privacy. He thinks the word privacy has become a dirty word and prefers to call a spade and spade. He refers to the collection of information by government as surveillance.
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