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Copyright Issue Discriminates Against Neighbourhood Houses

The laws of educational copyright need to be extended to the neighbourhood house sector, according to the Nationals’ Education spokesman, Peter Hall.

By Peter Hall - 21st November 2005 - Back to News

The Gippsland MP raised the matter in Parliament this week following a visit to the Milpara Community House in Korumburra this month.

Mr Hall believes neighbourhood houses and learning centres are suffering because the laws of copyright enjoyed by other educational institutions, such as schools and technical and further education institutes, do not currently apply to them.

"Adult and community education (ACE) providers are not covered by the Department of Education and Training's licence with Copyright Agency Ltd," Mr Hall said in Parliament.

"That licence enables schools and TAFEs to copy up to 10 per cent of a publication for educational purposes. Strictly speaking others are not able to copy and distribute a single page of a publication for the purposes of education, or indeed for any other purpose at all.

"Neighbourhood houses and learning centres like Milpara in Korumburra deliver ACE programmes – for example, Milpara delivers an excellent adult literacy program and many of the people accessing these adult literacy programs are from groups that cannot afford new texts.

"It would be helpful if the providers were able to photocopy selected pages from an educational publication and use them for the purposes of delivering adult literacy and other educational programs, and they could do so if they were covered by the Department of Education and Training's licence with Copyright Agency Ltd."

Mr Hall has called on the Government to arrange for neighbourhood houses and learning centres to be included in the copyright licence of the Department of Education and Training "so that Milpara and other community houses can continue to deliver the excellent programs they deliver now."

Mr Hall also called on the Local Government Minister, who is responsible for neighbourhood houses, to have some of her departmental staff meet with the committee of management at Milpara to try to resolve other issues of concern.

These include the unsatisfactory level of administrative funding received by Milpara; the difficulty it experiences with applying the adult and community further education (ACFE) minimum charge policy; the unsatisfactory level of child care funding; and the urgent need for capital works funding to establish car parking facilities at the house.

Source: http://gippsland.com/

Published by: news@gippsland.com

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