• The Nine Network had paid $450,000 towards the Council of the City of Sydney’s fireworks display to welcome the new millennium. The Nine Network tried to restrain the ABC from broadcasting in Australia anything featuring the fireworks, the procession of lanterns on Sydney Harbour and decorations on the Harbour Bridge.
  • Held, Nine’s contention that the display and parade were dramatic works was not strong.
  • The schedule of the fireworks display would not be such a work, since the reduction to material form was fraught with difficulties as to whether the schedule would in practice be adhered according to the planned sequence.
    • “It is, one would think, common place in at least a half of the present decade that firework shows with music are planned. It has never been suggested to my knowledge, and there is no reported case in which the matter has been subjected to legal analysis which has suggested that copyright subsists in a fireworks show set to music just because the sequence of events is scripted. That does not mean that copyright might not exist. It may merely be the result either of difficulties of enforcing the non filming of such events or it may be that no one has thought deeply about the issue. At the heart of the problem may well be that copyright is a monopolistic right existing not to protect ideas as such but the physical manifestation of some original literary, artistic or dramatic work.”
  • (Also, the ABC could probably have gone ahead as fair dealing for reporting the news.)