Archive for the ‘Copyright’ category

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P2P file sharing hurts music sales in Canada, study finds

February 2nd, 2012

Does P2P file sharing negatively affect legitimate music purchases in Canada? Does the availability of music for downloading from illegitimate P2P sources act as a substitute for legitimate music purchases? Would stronger copyright laws increase music purchases in Canada? Would it also increase artist incomes, industry employment and tax revenues in Canada?

The answers to all of these questions is yes according to a recent study published by Dr George Barker, the Director, Centre of Law and Economics, at ANU College of Law, Australian National University. What’s more, the study was done based on survey evidence conducted by Decima Research on behalf of Industry Canada.

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Posted in C-11, Copyright, Graduated Response, blocking orders, copyright reform

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Chief Justice asks: will accuracy and fairness be casualties of the social media era?

February 1st, 2012

The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada gave a speech yesterday at Carleton University. In it she questioned whether fairness and accuracy might be lost in the world of blogging, tweeting and the use of social networks. She said the media is essential to building public trust in the administration of justice.

For those of you who follow copyright law reform developments on certain blogs and social media sources you might find her speech will resonate with you.

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Posted in Copyright, copyright reform

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Bill C-11 to be law by April

January 31st, 2012

House Leader Peter Van Loan said Monday that the Government’s agenda includes passage of Bill C-11 by the end of April. The plan is that the bill to modernize the Copyright Act “must pass” by that time. Passage of Bill C-11 is intended to make good on the Throne Speech which promised “swift passage of copyright legislation that balances the needs of creators and users.”  Christmas gifts are always welcome, even in the spring.

If you want to catch up with current events regarding copyright, you might read Fen Hampson’s article Will the medium stop killing the message? in iPolitics and Terence Corcoran’s articles in the Financial Post: The Grey’s copyright wolves, The Internet’s collectivist blarney, and  No oil meets no copyright.

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Posted in C-11, Copyright, copyright reform

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Redefining copyright in the digital era

January 29th, 2012

Here is a copy of the article with the above title published in the January  20, 2012 edition of The Lawyers Weekly.

In early December, copyright lawyers from across the country descended on the Supreme Court to participate in a cluster of cases that may redefine the scope of copyright in the digital era.

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Posted in Copyright, Fair Dealing, communication to the public, fair dealing for education, infringment, intellectual property, public perofmance

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Do linking sites infringe copyright?

January 18th, 2012

A UK judged ruled on Friday that the 23 year operator of the TVShack.net linking website could be extradited to the US to face a trial for alleged criminal copyright infringement. In rendering the decision the UK court made some important findings about the scope of UK copyright law. They included the ruling that organizing and providing hyperlinks to infringing content from a linking website can infringe the making available right.

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Posted in Copyright, ISP Liability, ISP exceptions, Piracy, conflicts of law, cyberlockers, extradiction, infringment, jurisdiction, linking websites, making available right

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Copyright law 2011 –the year in review in Canada and around the world

January 13th, 2012

Yesterday, I gave a talk at the Law Society of Upper Canada’s 16th Annual Intellectual Property Law: The Year in Review program. My talk canvassed developments in copyright in 2011.  My slides are shown below. The associated paper prepared in collaboration with Glen Bloom, with the help of others, is available here.

My slides and/or the paper summarize the following copyright cases from Canada, the USA, UK and  Europe:

CANADA

Re: Sound v Motion Picture Theatre Association of Canada 2011 FCA 70

Reference re Broadcasting Act 2011 FCA 64

Crookes v. Newton 2011 SCC 47

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Posted in C-11, Copyright, Counterfeiting, Fair Dealing, Fair Use, Google Book Scanning, Internet defamation, Piracy, Presentations, Reproduction, Robertson case, authorization, communication to the public, conflicts of law, copyright reform, cyberlockers, fair dealing for education, human rights, hyperlinking liability, iiNet case, infringment, international law, jurisdiction, statutory damages, storage lockers

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Cyberlockers, social media sites and copyright liability

January 9th, 2012

2011 was the year US copyright law was put to the test confronting whether cyberlockers and social media sites are liable for infringements contributed to by these sites. Some sites, like myVidster (see here also) Megaupload, Hotfile, and MP3tunes suffered set backs or losses in the US courts. Others, like Visible Technologies the operator of the myxer.com social radio website and most recently Veoh Networks were more successful, at least so far.

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Posted in Copyright, DMCA safe harbor, ISP exceptions, Reproduction, copyright reform, cyberlockers, enablement, hosting liability, infringment

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France Animation v Robinson – a case comment

January 2nd, 2012

I just finished reading the fascinating reasons delivered by the Quebec Court of Appeal in the France Animation v Robinson, 2011 QCCA 1361 case. The main issue in the appeal was whether sketches and characters of the proposed TV series Robinson curiosity were infringed by the series Robinson sucro. The trial judge found infringement and the Court of Appeal upheld the judgment, in part.

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Posted in Copyright, Reproduction, human rights, idea expression dichotomy, infringment

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Canada is market for TPM trafficking and bittorrent indexing sites says USTR report

December 23rd, 2011

The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) issued a Special 301 Out-of-Cycle Review of Notorious Markets. In the review, the USTR identified markets that typify the problem of marketplaces that deal in goods and services that infringe on intellectual property rights and help to sustain global piracy and counterfeiting. Canada was listed in several of these markets.

According to the USTR “The scale and popularity of these markets can cause economic harm to U.S. and other IP right holders.  In addition, products sold at these markets may pose possible health and safety risks to consumers.”

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Posted in C-11, Copyright, DRMs, Piracy, TPMs, c-32, copyright reform

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Ninth Circuit sides with Veoh in UMG v Veoh appeal

December 21st, 2011

The Ninth Circuit released its decision in the UMG Recordings v Veoh Networks case yesterday. In affirming the decision of the District Court, the Ninth Circuit made three important rulings with respect to the scope of the DMCA hosting safe harbor:

  • The safe harbor can cover use by service providers of an automated process for transcoding and making files accessible.
  • Merely hosting copyrightable content with the general knowledge that one’s services could be used to share infringing material, is insufficient to meet the DMCA knowledge requirements that can lead to a loss of immunity if steps are not taken to takedown or disable access to infringing content.
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Posted in Copyright, contributory infringement, hosting safe harbor

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