Additions to the Australian Copyright Act, which now protects digital information under copyright law for the first time, have been widely described as ambiguous, with some industry representatives giving conflicting interpretations of what the law means.
Under the new legislation, introduced Sunday, only certain types of digital content caching is permitted by ISPs, according to Maurice Gonsalves, partner at law firm Mallesons Stephen Jaques.
However, "the legislation is ambiguous," Gonsalves said. "[It] isn't specific enough to know what type of caching is and what type isn't permitted."
"The legislation could have been much more precise, of course, but the government decided not to go down that route."
Industry heavyweights seem to be in agreement that ISPs are exempt under the new copyright law from infringements made by subscribers when transmitting certain Web pages.
However contention arises over the issue of deliberate copies of data being cached on ISP servers in order to speed up Internet access.
"Copyright owners have argued in the past that they should receive royalties for cached content in an ISP's server," Internet Industry Association (IIA) chief executive Peter Coroneos said.
However the IIA, which helped negotiate some of the amendments to the Act, argues that by caching content in this way ISPs are simply increasing Internet access efficiencies by speeding it up and that they don't generate extra revenue by doing this.
"[Such caching] would come under the exemption for the making of temporary copy," according to Coroneos.
If ISPs were required to pay royalties on cached content, not only would it be extremely difficult to determine who the copyright owner would be but it would pump up the cost of Internet access - something directly affecting the end user, Coroneos explained.
However, the Commonwealth Attorney-General Daryl Williams' Department claimed last week that deliberate copies of Internet information cached to speed up download times would not be exempt from the Copyright Amendment (Digital Agenda) Act.
Minister for Communications, IT & the Arts, Senator Richard Alston's office admitted it was a "grey area".
"It would depend on the particular circumstances and we acknowledge that it's a grey area," a spokesperson for Senator Alston said.
The discrepancy is something that isn't likely to be resolved until there's a test case and the courts have to interpret the legislation, according to Gonsalves.
"The expectation is that a code of conduct will develop in agreement between copyright owners and the ISP industry," Gonsalves said - placing emphasis on the fact that it'll be agreement rather than legislation.
Others perturbed by the Copyright Amendment Act include Nick Smith, copyright advisor for the Australian Libraries Copyright Committee.
Changes to the copyright Act restrict libraries, galleries and museums from accumulating a searchable database of national works.
To build up an electronic database has to be paid for with each item requires a license, Smith said.
"Everything libraries do in the digital environment involves contracts or copyright, or both," Smith added.
"It'll certainly make a difference for libraries to try and provide the services they want to provide in the digital environment," Smith said.
According to Smith libraries, galleries and museums are wary of digitising their collections because "there's not a lot you can do with them".
The National Gallery, for example, has tens of thousands of pieces of artwork in the vault that it can digitise it for preservation purposes only - it cannot be shown to the public.
"It's a real impediment in the way of digitising national collections," Smith said.
