I'm not an agent and have no axe to grind with people who do it all themselves. I also do not deal with TRA.
That said, from dialogue with people in the industry and applicants I would agree that it clearly appears TRA can do a better job of making their own life, and yours, a lot easier.
I think they would defend their position by arguing that templates can cause homogeneity and make fraud harder to detect (weak argument, but still).
The issue is that where people choose to create a business by developing their own documents and selling their work - be they agents, TRA consultants or whoever - then they can claim the IP if they want to.
Forwarding information from "a friend of a friend" will still see you sitting in the target ring as the distributor of the "stolen" information if it wasn't yours to begin with.
Now for the technical bit about the content related to your own life. Please excuse the hair-splitting. ;-)
There are 3 things to consider:
* The piece of information (fact). * The words or images that express the information. * The material used and and the format with which the words are expressed.
Your own facts are yours to hold or give out as you wish, but if words used in a document are selected and expressed by someone else, in a format that they have developed or properly obtained, then the document belongs to them in terms of copyright or design, as does copyright on the words. If you have given words to them to use, ie they just lifted stuff off your CV and used it verbatuim, then you can still own those words (but maybe not the paper and format in which they are inserted).
Toe the line, says PMEd. So much for representative democracy... Toe the line, says PM August 09, 2005 PRIME Minister John Howard has...
You can check your own countries laws for IP, as in some places if you pay someone to write to something then you would own the finished work (only the words, not the template!)
If you really narked the real owner of the material then they could chase you in various ways, inclufing notifying DIMIA that you are in possession of their copyright material and might be trying to supply improperly obtained material in support of your application. It's a bit draconian to do that, but it is possible.
Although there are no gurantees that the owner would do that, and it might not be good for their business reputation if they did, someone who makes a living off doing just that work might act to defend their livelihood.
And who knows if DIMIA would even act on it?
If you have developed your own templates, then by all means go for your life.
For the recipients of your template, wherever the templates come from, the issue is to be careful in case "one size might not fit all".
All I am trying to say here is be careful recycling or using stuff that might not belong to you.
The anarchy and anonymity of the internet is one thing, and it is enjoyable, but inadvertently undermining someone's chances of migrating or setting out to ruin someone's business is not a good look.
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