The rights and wrongs of writers wronged by copyright

Ava Hubble, a freelance journalist, writes on Crikey:

Gus O'Donnell would be 100 this year. For years he worked to enable Australian writers, including freelance journalists, to be paid photocopy royalties. The royalties are still being paid, but with digital technology taking over, for how much longer? Journalists were among the first victims of digitisation. As a result of changes to Australia's copyright law, negotiated in 1998 between the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance and media proprietors, the rights for the use of journalists' work from a digital source were granted to publishers, not writers. In 1967 O'Donnell, a public servant and writer, joined the Australian Society of Authors and the next year was appointed to the society's management committee and given responsibility for copyright. He protested that the creators of material being copied were entitled to compensation for their loss of book sales. When the education establishment gave that idea the flick, a furious O'Donnell set up the Australian Copyright Council and instituted legal proceedings. He was also the driving force behind the establishment of Australia's Copyright Agency Limited. The council, founded in 1968, is primarily concerned with providing advice about copyright law and pursuing changes to the law in response to changing times, while the agency, established in 1974, pursues, collects and distributes royalty payments to writers and artists, including Aboriginal visual artists and recording artists. O'Donnell, then a senior officer at the Housing Department, used his office phone to lobby politicians about the exploitation of writers and artists. His correspondence with the likes of Gough Whitlam and Arthur Calwell is now at the National Library. Yet it took 12 years of litigation before Australian copyright law was amended to make it mandatory for educational institutions to pay a licence fee for the right to allow copyrighted material to be photocopied on their premises. Even so, high-level attempts to stymie the legislation continued. More court battles ensued until the cheat sheet was eventually ordered withdrawn and destroyed by Federal Court appeal judges. It wasn't until 1986 that the first photostat royalty cheques began to lob. But there was renewed controversy about the matter of Copyright Agency payments to publishers. A couple of years ago The Australian's Luke Slattery reported publishers were receiving CAL payments of about $76 million a year, while payments to writers were in the region of $9 million. It was noted in a headline that even CAL's administrative staff were receiving more money than the writers. Comment on Slattery's story included a letter to The Oz from literary agent Lyn Tranter. She advised that a contract she had then recently perused had stated that 100% of the royalties collected by CAL was to be paid to an international publisher. When she attempted, on behalf of the authors, to negotiate a 50-50 split she said the publisher threatened to drop the project. She suggested that writers are not being so well looked after by CAL and that although most of the agency's income continues to be collected from taxpayer-funded Australian education institutions, the lion's share goes to major publishers. Read the full story on Crikey's website Crikey is a lively daily news/comment digital publication to which I subscribe. Subscription Queries: Click here. A free trial sub is available. To submit a story for publication please email  boss@crikey.com.au.