Eight weeks before the 2016 federal election, a turd dropped on prime minister Malcolm Turnbull’s doorstep. It came not from a rival politician or an opposition campaign but from the plush corridors of the Productivity Commission. In a draft report on intellectual property¹ with a chapter entitled ‘Copy(not) right’, commissioners Karen Chester and Jonathan Coppel recommended gutting Australia’s copyright laws.

In a bureaucratic tone straight out of a Chekhov short story, they proposed slashing the copyright term, on everything from novels to songs, from the current 70 years to a mere fifteen. They also recommended transplanting the litigious US system of ‘fair use’ to replace Australia’s ‘fair dealing’ scheme and suggested the removal of parallel importation restrictions on books.