Dr Matthew Rimmer is a senior lecturer at the Faculty of Law at the Australian National University. His doctoral thesis was entitled The Pirate Bazaar: The Social Life of Copyright Law and he has published widely on copyright law – addressing such topics as copyright term extension, fair use and time-shifting, peer to peer networks, moral rights, and traditional knowledge.

He is a member of the Copyright and Intellectual Property Advisory Group of the Australian Library and Information Association. He is also a chief investigator on both ARC Discovery and Linkage Projects and is an authority on plant breeders' rights, agricultural patents, technology use agreements and genetic use restriction technologies as well as issues surrounding access to genetic resources, informed consent, and benefit-sharing.

Matthew Rimmer’s publications include Rip, Mix, Burn: The Politics Of Peer-to-peer And Copyright Law (with Kathy Bowrey) and The Dead Poets Society: The Copyright Term And The Public Domain.

Recent articles

Google stands accused of copyright infringement by two major American authors’ associations and a French newswire. But the tools the company provides have done more to promote global access to information than any other. Here, librarians, lawyers, legislators and thinkers discuss the rights and wrongs of an internet giant.

“A highly original and creative perspective on cyberspace law.”

Can a 73-year old Canadian farmer’s legal challenge to biotechnology giants succeed in altering global rules on patent law?

Siva Vaidhyanathan’s openDemocracy series on peer-to-peer networks raises vital questions about intellectual property in the digital age, but he falls prey to the unsubstantiated revolutionary rhetoric of the copyright-buster. If claims by peer-to-peer distributors that they are supporting free speech and contributing to knowledge want to find a sympathetic ear in the courtroom, then they have to mean it, says this legal expert.