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The lawsuit was launched by a company named Larrikin Music, who had purchased the rights to the Kookaburra song in 1990, following the death of its original creator Marion Sinclair – a music teacher, who wrote the song in 1934 for use at a Girl Guide jamboree.

Here are some media links:

• http://news.ninemsn.com.au/entertainment/1008582/spicks-and-specks-silent-after-down-under-ruling
• http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts/larrikin-music-publishing-snares-land-down-under-royalties/story-e6frg8n6-1225826893478

I have been asked what I think of this.

The fact is that copyright law is very clear on the rules concerning the use of other people’s copyright works.  Colin Hay, the lead singer of Men at Work, has confirmed that the flute riff was a homage from “Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree”. If Larrikin Music are the legal owners of the copyright, they have a case in law. The question is how much should they pay in royalties. To determine what is correct, we should consider the following:

1. The song “Land Down Under” was released by Men at Work in 1981. The creator of the original song, Marion Sinclair, never raised any complaints when she was alive. The song was very popular, and no doubt if she felt that it infringed on her rights, she would have said something.

2. It took 20 years for any members of the public to find a connection between both songs. Indeed, Larrikin Music only became aware when it was mentioned on the ABC TV music game show “Spicks and Specs” in 2008 , so one could hardly argue that the connection between the songs was obvious or significant.

3. The copyright was purchased by Larrikin Music in 1990, from the South Australian public trustee, following the death of Sinclair in 1988. According to media reports, they paid several thousand dollars for the song and now Larrikin music have suggested that they want to be paid between 40-60% of the royalites on Men At Work’s song in compensation. This certainly reeks of cheap opportunism.

4. Marion Sinclair did not enforce her copyright on the song, effectively letting it be sung without restrictions, leading to the song to come to be known in Australian society like a traditional ‘Aussie folk song’. It is sung regularly by children in schools who have never been asked to pay for royalties.

For these reasons, it is my opinion that Men at Work did infringe on the copyright, but any royalties should be limited to a token payment.

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Detectives allegedly discovered large amounts of money had been stolen from accounts accessed at ATMs in Bankstown, Parramatta, Burwood, Chinatown and Haymarket in Sydney. It is assumed that these ATM had been fitted with sophisticated skimming devices that captured the magnetic strip of the cards and the PIN number entered on the keypad.

If you recognise them, please contact Wollongong Police on (02) 4226 7899 or Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000:

For more info, read the following articles:

• ATM Skimming Appeal: CCTV Footage Released
• Police Seek Three Men Over ATM Skimming

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May the new year of 2010 bring you financial security and satisfaction, and opportunities to pursue hobbies and relationships. The golden lesson that I have learnt over the last few years is that you, as a person, have more power to improve the lives and well-being of your friends, family and employer than any politician, banker or economist.

Let me recap briefly on the year that was 2009:

Global Financial Crisis

In the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis, Australia has so far avoided a recession thanks to solid demand for raw materials from China, a recovery in metals prices and a lower US dollar leading to cheaper imports. The Federal government’s $200 billion dollar stimulus package has also helped fuel a recovery in consumer and business spending.

As a result, the biggest risk to the Australian economy is interest rate rises. In addition to the $200 billion that the Government had to borrow, household debt has blown out to $1.2 trillion dollars, or $56,000 for every man, woman and child or 100.2% of GDP. A hike in interest rates, e.g. to manage inflation, would be devastating.

Nonetheless, our problems are nothing compared to the USA. Although they are out of recession, the US government is expected to run a budget deficit of US$1 trillion for fiscal year 2009, resulting in a total debt of $12.8 trillion dollars. This is largely due to the financing of the Iraq war, government bailouts of failing firms under the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP).

The US have no way in hell to pay back this money, the only way I can see them getting out of this debt problem is by devaluing their own currency by promoting inflation, which will make a lot of people around the world very unhappy.

Furthermore, as a result of bailing out financial firms, which were responsible for the reckless actions that led to the Global Financial Crisis, they have preserved these greedy corporate cultures which will no doubt survive to repeat history in the future.

ETS Defeated

The stupid Emissions Trading Scheme was defeated in the Australian senate, not because of its stupidity, but because of political infighting. The main casualty was Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull, who was replaced by Tony Abbott. I do not yet know what to make of Abbott.

Copenhagen summit

Although this received a lot of coverage, I consider it a minor event. Representatives from countries and scientific groups around the world met in Copenhagen and had a party with PowerPoint presentations and movies. Due to the diversity of opinions and lack of consensus about the problem, they reached a token agreement which lacked specifics.

Michael Jackson

The King of Pop died tragically and people suddenly remembered how much they really liked him. Pity it came too late. Say anything you want, but his Music and Dancing were revolutionary.

Nathan Rees Replaced As NSW Premier

The former garbo, after a very unproductive premiership, was replaced by some religious chick. I expect little to change apart from the news photos. State Rail is still a shambles and they still plan to sell off energy retailers for rock bottom prices to raise cash.

As always, I have a tone of half-done articles waiting to be completed. My new year’s resolution is to finish them off and post them.

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Wahid’s leadership and policies attracted much controversy amongst Indonesians. Eventually, he was alienated within his own party and removed from office in 2001.

During and after his presidency, he promoted religious and ethnic tolerance. He wrote a seminal article published in the Wall Street Journal on December 30, 2005 titled “Right Islam vs. Wrong Islam” in which he called on “people of good will of every faith and nation” to unite to defeat the ideology of religious hatred that underlies and animates terrorism. He advocated for relations with Israel. When the Iranian government held a Holocaust Denial Conference in 2006, President Wahid convened a counter conference in Bali to promote the true historical view.

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I must say that I am half impressed with the outcome – I was half expecting that the summit would be terminated by a walkout by disgruntled countries, but I am sure they realised that would be bad PR.

Instead, they have announced a non-binding declaration – a US-brokered deal with India, China, Brazil and South Africa - that they say will limit global warming to 2 degrees.

Here are a couple of links:

http://www.dnaindia.com/world/report_copenhagen-climate-summit-comes-to-an-end_1325458

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/climate-draft-accord-agreed-20091218-l1jo.html

I am trying to work the meaning and impact of the declaration. My understanding is that they have a few pledges from countries to achieve certain drops in CO₂ emissions by 2020, but the specific figures have not been disclosed.

Also, they may impose additional tax air and sea travel to raise billions of dollars yearly to assist island nations who believe that they are at risk of being submerged.

Naturally, most opposition and criticism is coming from countries that don’t thing the measures go far enough, and other countries who do not want to harm their economies atoning for the sins of the developed world.

More to come as things are clarified in the media.

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1. ClimateGate: What It Means ‘ClimateGate’ is the name given to the controversy surrounding the leaking...

There has been some coverage in the Australian mainstream media, but most of it has completely ignored the meat of the issue, and instead focussed on ’computer hacking’ or how it could impede the Copenhagen climate summit. The most thorough coverage has been in the Australian newspaper and the blogs of News Ltd. columnists Andrew Bolt and Tim Blair.

For those of you that are unfamiliar, emails contained in these archives strongly suggest that academics at CRU have prepetrated widescale scientific fraud and engaged in highly unprofessional, if not criminal conduct. Furthermore, it casts a strong shadow of suspicion and doubt on their conclusions of future global climate catastrophe.

These practices include:

• Suppressing the views of dissenting scientists
• Mathematically manipulating climate data to hide features of the curve that disagree with alarmist opinions
• Knowingly incorporating poor quality, unreliable data into their research
• Subverting the peer review process
• Withholding and destroying information in response to Freedom of Information requests

I have no doubt that ClimateGate played a significant role in increasing opposition to the Australian ETS legislation and the fall of Opposition Leader  Malcolm Turnbull.

Plenty of great posts have been written that explain the content of these emails and surrounding issues in depth, so I will just include the links:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/11/global_warming_fraud_and_the_f.html

http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2009/11/20/climate-cuttings-33.html

http://biggovernment.com/2009/11/23/media-missing-the-plot-on-climate-gate-its-the-fraud-stupid/

http://uddebatt.wordpress.com/2009/11/26/climate-gate-%E2%80%93-all-the-manipulations-and-lies-revealed-15/

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703939404574566124250205490.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_opinion

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/25/climategate-hide-the-decline-codified/

http://fascistsoup.com/2009/11/25/more-on-the-climategate-source-code/

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2. Emissions Trading Scheme Set To Increase Food And Grocery Prices By 7% The Food and Grocery Council, together with large Australian retailers...

Sorry for being incommunicando for the last few weeks. My mother was in the final stages of metastatic breast cancer and she finally passed away earlier this month. I plan to resume posts very shortly.

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Copper doorhandles may help prevent the spread of germs. The antimicrobial effects of copper have been known for thousands of years, but recent studies have shown that the antibiotic-resistant superbug MRSA (Golden Staph) that is commonly found in hospitals, cannot survive on copper surfaces for more than 90 minutes:

• Could a copper door handle help to beat MRSA?
• Copper alloy hardware is naturally antibacterial:
• Putting copper into action: copper-impregnated products with potent biocidal activities

In contrast, the more common stainless steel surfaces allow germs to survive for days, and can only be effectively cleaned using antiseptics, which need to be frequently reapplied and can cause allergic reactions in some people.

This means that reducing the spread of germs around our homes and offices may be as simple as installing copper doorhandles, and copper versions of other fittings with frequent human contact like taps, faucets, push plates and elevator buttons. The copper-containing alloys brass and bronze are also effective, but take longer to kill germs.

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Barack Obama might have grand plans for his own vision of peace, but he has not made any sort of measurable achievement that deserves this kind of recognition.

In my opinion, the Nobel Prize for Peace completely lost all credibility long ago, judging from the long list of recent questionable [undeserving] recipients: Al Gore, Jimmy Carter, Kofi Annan, Yasser Arafat, Mikhail Gorbachev, Henry Kissinger & Le Duc Tho.

My advice to the Nobel Committee: stick to prizes for solid science.

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I first noticed this in the year 2000, when the GST was introduced by the Howard government. I was a university student, and the cost of a single textbook had broken the $100 barrier. It seemed that book prices had virtually doubled overnight. When I asked the manager, I was told that the introduction of the 10% GST and the new accounting procedures added a lot of overhead.

I think that’s only a small part of the explanation:

In Australia, four chain bookstores dominate retail book sales: Dymocks, Angus & Robertson, Borders & the Co-op Bookshop. They are traditional walk-in bookshops with large displays, elaborate decorations and many staff. Online book retailing in Australia has not yet reached the mainstream as it is in the USA and Europe.

Also, Australia has controversial laws preventing parallel importation – stores are not allowed to legally sell a cheaply imported book published overseas if the same book has also been published locally. There have been calls to change these laws to allow parallel importation,  but I doubt it will reduce prices significantly.

Despite this, there are still many things you can do to avoid overspending on books. Here is a list:

1. Borrow from a Library

Try and borrow the book from your local library. If your library doesn’t have it, you can request an interlibrary loan whereby your library will try and obtain it from another library in Australia or abroad. This commonly incurs a nominal fee, anywhere between $1-$10 dollars. If you are a university student or staff member, interlibrary loans can even be free.

You can quickly find out if a book is available in an Australian library by searching the Libraries Australia database, hosted on on the National Library of Australia website. If you want to check overseas library catalogues, they have a list of foreign library websites.

Borrowing, of course, may not be a viable option if you need the book immediately and/or have to refer to the book again and again.

2. Buy Books From Overseas Online Retailers

Amazon has been around for a long time, but they have no Australian presence, so most people usually go to the Amazon USA website. Unfortunately, they charge a lot for shipping to Australia, so it’s only economical if you have to buy a few books, or combine purchases with someone else.

A better alternative I discovered is BookDepository. They are located in the UK, but all of their prices include shipping to anywhere in the world. Even after currency conversion from British Pounds into Australia dollars, they come up cheaper than buying locally.

3. Buy Electronic Versions of Books (eBooks)

I don’t have that much space on my bookshelf. It really sucks when I buy a book, finish it and then have to stash it somewhere. Also, I am an impatient person and when I order books, I really hate waiting for them to arrive.

For this reason, I prefer eBooks. I don’t mean those cheap and shabby amateur self-published PDF eBooks that litter the internet, but mainstream books published by big name publishers like Random House, Harper Collins and others.

When you buy an eBook online, you download it as a file, most often in Adobe eBook and Microsoft Reader formats. Clients for these formats are freely downloadable.

If you are comfortable reading books on your computer monitor (today’s flatscreen LCD displays are much more gentle on the eyes), this may be a viable option. You can search the net to see if your desired book is available as an eBook – it’s a simple matter of going to your favourite search engine and specifying the title with the added word ”eBook” as the search term.

The main drawbacks of commercial eBooks is that you cannot resell them or give them away after you have finished with them – they are licensed to only be used by you. Each computer that you use to read an eBook must be ‘activated’ or ‘registered’ to prevent unauthorised sharing and illegal copying of eBooks. e.g. If someone else makes a copy of your eBook and opens it on his or her computer, it will refuse unless they also have obtained a licence. At the moment, Microsoft Reader lets you activate up to 6 computers, i.e. you can read an eBook that you have purchased on 6 different computers.

There are a number of websites that sell eBooks, but I have found Diesel eBooks to be the best. Of all the sites I have checked, they seem to have the biggest range of eBooks and for 3 of my recent purchases, they also had the lowest price.

4. Download Public Domain Books From Project Gutenberg

In most countries, copyrighted books enter the public domain between 50-70 years after the death of the author, depending on the copyright law in the country of publication. This means that if the book you were after was written before 1969, Project Gutenberg may have it.

Project Gutenberg describes itself as ”a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to encourage the creation
and distribution of eBooks.” It was founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart and is the oldest digital library.

All the works on the site are in the public domain, or are published with permission of the copyright holders. The bulk of Project Gutenberg’s eBooks are available in plain ASCII text and HTML formats, though some are in PDF format. Unlike the commercial eBooks mentioned in point 3, these files are unprotected and can be opened on any computer.

Some noteworthy examples are: Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius and Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell.

The main USA site is http://www.gutenberg.org/

Project Gutenberg also has sister sites located in other countries. As copyright law differs between countries, the list of books in the public domain also differs. If you are looking for books written in English, it is worth checking the catalog of Project Gutenberg Australia and Project Gutenberg Canada if you can’t find them on the USA site.

Feel free to leave a comment on any tips you may have for saving money on books.

Fine print: If you have time, always shop around for the best price. Links in this post to online bookstores contain affiliate codes. If you click on them, I may receive a commission if you make a purchase. This goes straight into maintaining and developing Here’s Trouble.

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