James O'Brien

My friend Kate and I went to the fortieth anniversary drinks for the Copyright Agency.

I hadn’t realised until both Brian Johns and Thomas Keneally spoke about the history of the organisation: that it all came from the fact in the early 70s in Australia universities were allowing students to photocopy books, but were not willing to compensate the authors for potential lost sales.

Forty years later, there’s the added complexity of electronic publishing. But despite this, the agency now collects millions of dollars of revenue each year which, in turn, goes back to the authors, which is a good thing.

The drinks were awfully good fun and I even got to meet someone I know from my online life, but had never met in real life. That was a really lovely and surprising part of the night. It was also great they had a cartoonist there, who did a really great cartoon of Kate and I.