Three Strikes Archives

Graduated response and copyright: an idea that is right for the times

This is a copy of an article published in The Lawyers Weekly (January 2010) by Barry Sookman and Dan Glover.

In mid-2009, the Canadian government launched a nationwide consultation meant to canvass what amendments to the Copyright Act are necessary to support Canada’s participation in the global, digital economy, and to foster innovation, creativity, competition and investment.

There is no doubt that our copyright laws need amending. Amendments are required on a number of fronts. New exceptions are required to meet legitimate user expectations to access and use copyright content without infringement.…

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ITIF Report: Strategies for Reducing Digital Piracy

Earlier this month, The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) published a paper called Steal These Policies: Strategies for Reducing Digital Piracy. The aim of the paper is to advance a policy in which illegal sources of digital content is reduced while legal content becomes more accessible. The executive summary provides the following overview of the problem as follows:

“The rise of broadband Internet access and cheap storage, along with the growth of digital content, has enabled digital piracy to flourish around the world.…

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Getting the straight goods on ACTA, check your sources

There has been a lot written about what ACTA might finally look like. A good deal of it is intended to tarnish ACTA based on misleading interpretions of what is currently known. I discussed this in a recent post, Fear Mongering and Misinformation Used to Slag ACTA.

Another recent blog posting, Talking About Nerd Stuff: RE: Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, reviewed some of the anti-ACTA hype and came to the correct conclusion that simply relying on secondary and tertiary summaries of ACTA would give people a mistaken view about what is really known about the treaty.…

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Graduated Response Mapped out in UK Digital Economy Bill

The UK government continues to speed ahead with modernizing its copyright legislation to bring the UK into the 21st century. The latest development is the introduction the UK Digital Economy Bill.

Earlier this month the government published © the way ahead: A Copyright Strategy for the Digital Age. The report focused on the need to keep copyright consistent with public expectations and explored the desirability of making access to and use of works easier for consumers. It also recommended making orphan works easier to access and suggested extended collective licensing as a means of facilitating making works available to the public.…

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Fear Mongering and Misinformation Used to Slag ACTA

Last week saw a lot of digital ink spilled over speculation about what the Internet Chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is going to contain. Some opponents of ACTA including Prof. Geist helped to leak the contents of a two page confidential memorandum that contained a written account of an oral report on what was still being negotiated.[i]

Based on this two page preliminary document, ACTA opponents began a frenzied propaganda campaign against ACTA. Prof. Geist led the feverish attack writing articles, blogs, tweets, giving a speech in Washington, and press and radio interviews.…

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Lord Mandelson speech transcript on P2P copyright and creative industries

I recommend you read the speech by Lord Mandelson to the c&binet forum, 28 October 2009. http://bit.ly/1vmHXm

He makes some observations relevant to Canadian copyright reform about the importance of the creative industries and the need to create a proper legal framework to ensure they thrive. He also explains that the graduated response regime the UK is implementing is a carefully nuanced and procedurally fair process.

Why the creative industries matter

“I’m a big defender of an economy based on making things, which is why I often speak about manufacturing.…

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