<P> Infringement occurs where a person does an act falling within the copyright owner's exclusive rights, without the authorisation of the copyright owner (assuming that one of the exceptions does not apply). </P> <P> Before the 2004 Amendments, Australia used a "plus 50" rule to determine when a work entered the public domain . Put simply, a "work" (i.e. a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work) entered the public domain 50 years following the year of the creator's death, with exceptions . The 2006 Amendments changed the benchmark to "plus 70". This brought Australia into line with the United States of America, the European Union, and certain other jurisdictions; but is longer than the "plus 50" minimum required by the Berne Convention and still applied in many other jurisdictions, including New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Canada, and many other Commonwealth countries, as well as China, Japan, and South Korea . The extension to "plus 70" does not apply to crown copyright, to which the "plus 50" rule continues to apply . </P> <P> Similar to the foreign reciprocity clause in the European Union copyright law, the change to the "plus 70" rule is not retroactive, so that if copyright has expired before the coming into force of the amendment it is not revived . The result is that: </P> <Ul> <Li> Any work that was published in the lifetime of the author who died before 1 January 1955, is out of copyright . </Li> <Li> Any work that was published in the lifetime of the author who died after 31 December 1954, will be out of copyright 70 years after the author's death . </Li> </Ul>

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