I guess this is good news. It's not so much a victory for consumers, but an acknowledgement of common-sense and pragmatism. All this decision does is legalize behaviour which people have been doing any way for over 30 years, since the adoption of the analogue audio cassette recorder. Now that this useless legal absurdity is likely to be removed, it will be that much easier to justify the creation of more modern absurdities in intellectual property law.
With the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement, Australia is obliged to harmonize its intellectual property laws with the US. There was no way of justifying that harmonization only goes in one direction. - adopting US copyright doctrine in all its 21st century post-DMCA glory - while retaining counter-productive anachronisms which even the US had abandoned.
I have been wanting to link to something more official on this, but so far, all the information seems to be on this seems to be from the print media and other blogs commenting on it. As yet, there is nothing on the Department of Attorney-General's website. I will link to this official information when it appears.
Update: I have just found via Kim Weatherall that there is information about this on the Attorney-General Philip Ruddock's website
