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Australian authors are up in arms about a government review of the country's copyright laws.
According to the Guardian, in an impassioned response to the review, the Booker prize-winning author Peter Carey argued against making any changes.
"As long as we have a territorial copyright our publishers have a commercial argument to support Australian literature," he said. "They will battle for the sake of our readers and our writers, even if their owners have no personal commitment to the strange loves and needs of Australian readers, or the cultural integrity and future of the Australian nation."
As the law stands, Australian publishers have a window of 30 days to bring out an Australian edition of a book once it has been released anywhere in the world. If they do so, then Australian bookshops have to sell the Australian version, and can't import the book from overseas. This can mean that books are more expensive—and harder to get hold of—in Australia than they are elsewhere, but also allows the country's local publishing to flourish, rather than forcing it to compete with a flood of cheaper-priced editions from overseas.