During the copyright reform process leading up Bill C-32 (the Copyright Modernization Act), some proponents of reform had advocated broadening the Copyright Act’s fair dealing exception to a US style fair use regime. This was opposed by a wide spectrum of the Canadian creative community. Eventually the proposal was not adopted when Bill C-11 was finally proclaimed into force. See, Barry Sookman and Dan Glover, Why Canada Should Not Adopt Fair Use: A joint submission to the Copyright Consultation
Archive for the ‘Fair Use’ category
Courts busy with copyright: Meltwater UKSC, Viacom v YouTube, UMG v Escape, Cariou v Prince
April 29th, 2013It was another busy two weeks in copyright with courts in the UK and US canvassing whether browsing a work, hosting a user generated content site, and creating appropriation art, infringes copyright. The opinions of the three courts (finding no liability in each case) on copyright policy was perhaps as interesting as the holdings themselves. On top of that, a U.S. appeals court ruled that the DMCA hosting exception does not apply to pre-1972 sound recordings.
A Reply to William Patry
March 19th, 2012The following is a reply to William Patry’s lengthy response to my blog of March 16. Both the blog and Mr. Patry’s response may be found here. Given the length of my reply, for ease of reading, I am posting my reply here and inserting a cross-reference to this page in the comments section of the March 16 blog.
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Mr. Patry,
I have the greatest respect for your knowledge and experience, and for your contributions to the copyright debate, both through your texts and through your lively blog. However, I sense a significant internal contradiction in your comment to my blogs that I would like to explore.
Misleading Parliament? Really?
March 16th, 2012Early this week, I opened a lengthy response in Howard Knopf’s blog to my recent post in this blog. Never one to mince his words, Mr. Knopf suggests with sound and fury that I have sought to “mislead Parliament” by posting on the issue of the educational fair dealing provision. Although the House of Commons Committee on Copyright has completed its clause-by-clause review of Bill C-11 without touching this provision, there are certain statements in Mr. Knopf’s blog that need to be addressed.
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