Kim Weatherall provides terrific one-stop shopping for people following the deliberations in Australia over how the country will implement the anti-circumvention provisions required under the US-Australia Free Trade Agreement (FTA):

Ever since the FTA was signed off last year, and particularly since the whole fair use inquiry started, the copyright-obsessed have been wondering - when will the anti-circumvention laws be drafted, and how. Australia has until 1 Jan 2007 to bring into effect the anti-circumvention laws required by Article 17.4.7 of the FTA.

Anti-circumvention laws are the ones which make it illegal to 'circumvent' technological measures used by copyright owners to prevent infringement of copyright (although even that definition is controversial at the moment!). The most notorious example in the world is the US DMCA. Article 17.4.7 of the Australian FTA is modelled on the US DMCA.

Weatherall, associate director of the Intellectual Property Research Institute of Australia and a lecturer at Melbourne University, also helpfully provides her own primer on the "state of play" in Australia regarding digital copyright issues.

(Via Danny O'Brien @ miniLinks.)