Broadcasting Legislation Amendment Bill 2007 aims to allow retransmission by National Indigenous TV Limited - Blake Dawson Waldron Lawyers
National Indigenous TV Ltd (NITV) was launched in 2005 to aggregate and distribute Indigenous Australian TV content as part of the Government's Backing Indigenous Ability package. At present, such content is made available via a narrowcasting service - Imparja's satellite channel 31. Ordinarily, unmodified retransmissions of broadcasts are exempt from the regulatory requirements of the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 (Cth) (BSA). However, under the existing laws, such exemptions do not cover narrowcasting.
The Broadcasting Legislation Amendment Bill 2007, introduced to the House of Representatives on 15 February 2007, seeks to amend the BSA in order to extend such exceptions to NITV. The Bill will also amend the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) to extend the statutory licence scheme for retransmission of free-to-air broadcasts to NITV programming. This will allow for the retransmission of NITV's content without infringing copyright as long as equitable remuneration is paid.
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