Archive for the ‘c-32’ category

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Throne Speech promises swift passage of copyright amendments

June 3rd, 2011

The Throne Speech delivered earlier today promises “swift passage of copyright legislation that balances the needs of creators and users.”  With a majority Government, the fourth try to amend the Copyright Act since 2005 will likely succeed where Bills C-60 (2005), C-61 (2008), and C-32 (2010) did not.

The copyright reforms are a long time coming. Canada has acknowledged since 1997 that it needs to adapt its laws to address digital technologies and the Internet. That year it signed the 1996 WIPO Treaties. Since then, at least 12 government, department, and committee reports have studied and made recommendations for reform to address digital issues.[1] So have Canadian businesses.[2]

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Posted in Copyright, c-32, copyright reform

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C-32 and the BlackBerry PlayBook: A reply to Michael Geist

April 25th, 2011

Michael Geist’s recent blog post “The PlayBook Tax: Why the Conservative’s Copyright Plans Create a Hidden Cost for RIM’s PlayBook” makes the claim that “the Conservative plan for copyright reform (as found in Bill C-32) establishes a significant barrier that could force many consumers to pay hundreds in additional costs in order to switch their content from existing devices” to RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook. He calls this a “PlayBook tax” and claims switching costs apply to “any digital content with a digital lock”.

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Posted in Copyright, DRMs, Libraries, TPMs, c-32, copyright reform, geist

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The Liberal Digital Canada Plan and Copyright

April 11th, 2011

Earlier today, Marc Garneau and guest commentators Michael Geist and Steve Anderson had a live online chat about the Liberal Digital Canada Plan.  A transcription of the chat is available here.

The Liberal Digital Plan says the following about copyright:

Fair balance Between Creators and Consumers.

Digital technology offers many new opportunities, but enjoying content without compensating its creators shouldn’t be among them. At the same time, consumers should have freedom for personal use of digital content they rightfully possess. Liberals have worked to pass effective copyright legislation, including a private copying compensation fund instead of any new tax on consumers.

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Posted in ACTA, Copyright, Fair Dealing, TPMs, berne three step test, c-32, copyright reform, notice and notice

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Rethinking notice and notice after C-32

April 4th, 2011

Canada’s last three copyright bills, C-60, C-61 and C-32, attempted to curb illegal online file sharing by requiring ISPs to forward notices of claimed infringements to customers. Canada’s ISPs had advocated for this “notice and notice” process claiming it was effective. However, they never produced any empirical evidence or studies to back up their claims.

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Posted in Copyright, ISP Liability, Piracy, Three Strikes, c-32, copyright reform, notice and notice, p2p piracy

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C-60, C-61, C-32?

March 25th, 2011

We will likely know later today whether Bill C-32 will suffer the same fate as its predecessors. A vote of non-confidence will kill C-32.

* Its now official. Liberal non-confidence vote passes 156-145. That’s it for C-32 and other Bills such as lawful access and the amendments to PIPEDA.

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Posted in Copyright, c-32, copyright reform

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What art copyrights and sandwhiches have in common

March 21st, 2011

Here is a video included in a blog How copyright infringement is like stealing my sandwhich. It is by an artist “to put copyright infringement into terms the average person can understand: lunch”. It is an interesting perspective given the recent testimony of Margaret Atwood at the Parliamentary Committee on Bill C-32.

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Posted in Bill C-28, Piracy, c-32, copyright reform, p2p piracy

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Margaret Atwood at the Parliamentary Committee on Bill C-32

March 18th, 2011

Margaret Atwood appeared before the Parliamentary Committee reviewing Bill C-32 on March 10. Participating by teleconference she told the Committee why she was against expanding fair dealing to include education and why she thought doing so was unfair.

Howard Knopf, in a recent blog, To Margaret Atwood: Copyright and Cars Cannot Conflate, accuses Ms Atwood of not understanding what fair dealing is. He further accuses her of getting basic facts about law and economics wrong when said that depriving creators of their rights to authorize the uses of their works  is akin to theft.  Mr. Knopf’s accusations are both unfair and unfounded.

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Posted in Bill C-28, Fair Dealing, c-32, copyright reform, fair dealing for education

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Are Canada’s copyright laws friendly or unfriendly towards wealth destroyers according to Prof. Geist?

March 9th, 2011

In the last few weeks Prof. Geist has been writing, blogging, tweeting, speaking and even testifying to a Parliamentary Committee about the IsoHunt case and whether there is a need for an amendment to the Copyright Act to create a new cause of action to make online pirate sites and services liable for enabling copyright infringement. His ostensible claim is that representatives of the recording industry secretly filed a copyright infringement claim against IsoHunt three weeks before Bill C-32 was tabled in the House of Commons; kept the suit secret to improve their chances of getting copyright reforms needed to shut the site down – all the while not needing the amendments because they already have the legal tools necessary to put IsoHunt out of business. These claims were made here, here, here, here, here, here, and here, among others, and were widely disseminated and syndicated by Prof. Geist including here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

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Posted in Copyright, Piracy, authorization, c-32, copyright reform, enablement, geist, isohunt, p2p piracy

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iiNet court backs reasonableness of graduated response to stop illegal file sharing

March 8th, 2011

Last week the Australian Full Court released its decision in the landmark case Roadshow Films Pty Limited v iiNet Limited, [2011] FCAFC 23. The Australian appeals court by majority dismissed the appeal from the decision of the primary judge who had held that iiNet, an ISP in Australia that had not acted on any information provided to it by copyright owners, was not liable for authorizing the copyright infringement of its subscribers who had used its facilities to engage in unlicensed peer to peer file sharing.

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Posted in Copyright, Graduated Response, Piracy, Three Strikes, WIPO Treaties, authorization, c-32, communication to the public, copyright reform, geist, iiNet case, p2p piracy, wct, wppt

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Canada: online piracy a problem hurting artists, creators and the economy

February 28th, 2011

The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) today released a report that spotlighted Internet and physical markets that exemplify key challenges in the global struggle against piracy and counterfeiting. Not surprisingly, Canada-based IsoHunt was identified as a major piracy site which “recently ranked among the top 300 websites in global traffic and among the top 600 in U.S. traffic.”

The report follows on the heels of last week’s submission by the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) to the USTR recommending that Canada be maintained on the Special 301 Priority Watch List in 2011. The IIPA submission extensively analyzed the piracy and counterfeiting problems in Canada. The rational for its recommendation was summarized as follows:

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Posted in Copyright, Counterfeiting, Piracy, c-32, copyright reform, isohunt, p2p piracy

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