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Text of Copyright Amendment Bill 2006
In stark contrast to American and British modding decisions and copyright law, Australia is set to amend its copyright laws to make it legal for consumers to purchase/use mod chips that circumvent anti-piracy technology (TPMs and DRM) built into game consoles when used to overcome region-coding measures that restrict the use of DVDs and games titles purchased legally in other regions. Most of the Copyright Amendment Bill 2006 passed through both houses of Parliament, will become law by January 1, 2007.
Dale’s Comment: This doesn’t really change the law in Australia because, as you can see from the related posts below, Australian courts had held that such modding did not breach Australian copyright and anti-circumvention laws. As far as I can tell, these amendments merely codify the existing case-law. These amendments may be important though because it was thought that Australia’s recent free-trade agreement with the United States may have resulted in copyright reform to explicitly overrule existing mod-chip case-law.
Sources: Gamasutra | P2PNet | News.com.au | Austrian IT | Kotaku | FAQ
