'Public rights' in copyright: What makes up Australia's public domain?

摘要

Previous studies have advocated a broader approach to the copyright public domain, but have rarely attempted to define this broader notion, or to enumerate what it would cover. Starting from the attempts to define or categorise that have been made, this article proposes a definition of the copyright public domain, as the public's ability to use works without seeking permission and on equal terms. It then examines how the definition can be used to justify a set of categories of "public rights" (15, as it turns out) that are sufficient to describe the copyright public domain in the Australian legal jurisdiction. They fit the proposed definition and, it is argued, are congruent with our intuitions of what a broader and more modern notion of the public domain should contain. To what extent both the definitions, and the categories, will be useful in analysis of public domain other than Australia's remains to be seen.