One thing buried away in the Fact Sheet: Amateur radio Regulatory roles and responsibilities is:
Page 3: Further Information : Amateur call books.
We have advised the WIA to commence transitioning away from use of RRL data for call books.Use of RRL data is subject to terms and conditions, which place limitations on use of RRL data in derivative works.
The T&Cs state:
8. Where the Licensee is a natural person, this Licence does not permit you to reproduce or distribute the Licensee’s Client Information contained in the Register in any Derivative work authorised by this Licence.
If the WIA can't come to some agreement with the ACMA or come up with some workaround, it may be that the Callbook having been published for over 100 years may be no more.
From my experience of the Call Book, no great loss.
My callsign was listed as belonging to the previous holder for years after I obtained it.
The online database is easily accessed and up to date.
Can't say I've had that problem with all my callsign changes and moves over 40 years.
In addition to being a historical record, there is a huge amount of other stuff in the Callbook apart from the callsign register.
Yes, the data is usually available online from the WIA website, the ACMA's and many other sources, but there is something to be said for it all being in one place.
Some prefer to source information including books and magazines these days electronically, but I gather the WIA sell enough Callbooks to make the exercise worthwhile.
Perhaps the WIA needs to poll re continuing the Callbook in some form.
I am left wondering what has suddenly prompted the ACMA to adopt this position.
I can understand the historical aspect of it (indeed, I found a reference to my old 1970's NZ callsign in a book not so long ago).
Unless the ACMA's license condition's have recently changed or perhaps in spite of that, a guess as to why the change might be the more pronounced focus on privacy these days.
If privacy is the issue behind this, the ACMA themselves making the RRL data freely available for anyone to access (required to do so by their Act) may have raised an issue for them with the Privacy Commissioner.
Actually, point well made.
I guess like you, I'm at a loss to work out why.
To me it feels like a Commonwealth department following procedures to protect it's IP (Intellectual Property) and preparing to licence the use of that data.
They own the information and if another organisation is reproducing the information without paying a licence fee then they need to take steps to make sure it is not being reproduced (it doesn't matter that the ACMA have it freely available - reproduction of IP is now a serious earner for the owner).
I'm told there was a legal contract between the WIA and ACMA for Call Book publication.
Also that when the RASA published callsign data on their website, they were requested to remove it by the ACMA.
Which suggests things happening behind the scene ...
Maybe the agreement expired with the deed?