[Ecommerce] Australian students might have to pay for internet browsing?

[Manon Ress]

http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,18288580%5E15343%5E%
5Enbv%5E15306-15318,00.html

Copyright makes web a turn-off
Simon Hayes
FEBRUARY 28, 2006
SCHOOLS have warned they will have to turn off the internet if a move
by the nation's copyright collection society forces them to pay a fee
every time a teacher instructs students to browse a website.

Teachers said students in rural areas would bear the brunt of cuts if
the Copyright Agency was successful in adding internet browsing
charges to the $31 million in photocopying fees it rakes in from
schools.
The agency calculates the total due by randomly sampling schools each
year for materials they copy, and extrapolating the results.

The battle between the schools and the agency will go to the Federal
Court over its attempts to make schools pay for asking students to
use the web.

Negotiations between the Ministerial Council on Education Employment,
Training and Youth Affairs, representing the schools, and the agency
have broken down over plans to change the scheme to include a
question in the survey on whether teachers direct students to use the
internet.

"If it turned out we'd have to pay them, we'd turn the internet off
in schools," the council's national copyright director Delia Browne
said.

"We couldn't afford it; it would not be sustainable. How on earth are
we going to deliver education in the 21st century? How are taxpayers
going to afford this."

The move has teachers up in arms, with some warning "ludicrous"
charges for using websites would increase the gap between haves and
have-nots.

"Kids in rural areas, particularly, depend on websites," said Sui-
Linn White, creative and performing arts head teacher at a Sydney
school.

"There's a whole section of the NSW Art Gallery website aimed at
education, and teachers in rural areas depend on sites like that."

The Copyright Tribunal held three days of hearings on the issue in
September 2005, but it is now expected the matter will be heard in
the Federal Court later this year.

Agency chief executive Michael Fraser said schools paid only $10 per
student per year for photocopying.

"For less than the cost of maintaining the grounds, emptying the
garbage bins and managing the tuckshop you can access all the
material you want and make photocopies," he said.

"It would be tragic if schools had to shut down the internet, we
don't want that. "What they pay will be for the tribunal to determine."

The Australian


************************************************
Manon Anne Ress
manon.ress@cptech.org,
www.cptech.org

Consumer Project on Technology
1621 Connecticut Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20009 USA
Tel.:  +1.202.332.2670, Ext 16 Fax: +1.202.332.2673

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Tel: +41 22 791 6727

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