Fair use coming to Australia?

My friend Morrie in Australia writes, "At last, it looks like they're going to make it legal to be able to copy CDs, videocasettes etc down here in Oz." He points to this Sydney Morning Herald article:

We are TV viewers, iPod owners, computer users - and most of us are criminals. Any Australian who has recorded Law & Order on Channel Ten while watching Desperate Housewives on Seven has broken the law. It is also illegal to tape a CD for the car stereo, copy songs onto an iPod or make a back-up copy of a computer program - although most of us ignore such laws and no one has ever been prosecuted in these circumstances.

Our creaky 35-year-old copyright laws are being further exposed by a wave of new consumer electronic products such as DVRs, or digital video recorders, that can be programmed weeks in advance at the touch of a button to record hundreds of hours of TV programs and films.

Unlike the US or some European countries, where laws are in place to allow copying for personal use - a clause known as "fair use" - Australians are subject to draconian laws, which are set to get even tougher as we fall into line with the US after the introduction of the US-Australia free trade agreement.

Under new US laws, which must be in place by 2007, anyone found selling or using software that breaks a copyright lock on encrypted CDs or DVDs faces a spell in jail.

It is this threat to liberty that has finally prompted the federal Attorney-General, Philip Ruddock, to review the law and consider a "fair use" clause that will bring the Australian public in from the cold. Fair use allows consumers who have bought a film or a piece of music to be able to transfer it to another medium for their own use.

"There's a reasonable argument for putting forward the opinion that when someone has bought something in one format and has acquired the copyright for it in that particular format, then there is a fair use for them to take it to another format," Ruddock told the Herald. ...