Canada’s new copyright bill: what will it look like?

May 6th, 2010 by Barry Sookman 6 comments »

The media is reporting on what Canada’s new copyright bill will contain. This speculation was instigated by a blog posted yesterday by Prof. Geist in which he claimed to know what is in the bill. PMO Issues The Order: Canadian DMCA Bill Within Six Weeks.

Prof. Geist repeated his claim in press interviews which were published by the CBC,  National Post, Globe, and other publications.

Prof. Geist claims that he knows that the new yet to be introduced bill will mimic Bill c-61 and is reported in the National Post also to claim that it is so bad that, among other things, it would actually “do away with the notion of fair dealing” in Canada.

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Posted in Copyright, copyright reform, Fair Dealing

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Canada again named to USTR’s Priority Watch List for weak IP laws

April 30th, 2010 by Barry Sookman No comments »

The USTR just released its 2010 Special 301 Report. Canada has again been placed on the Priority Watch List along with Algeria, Argentina, Chile, China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Russia, Thailand, and Venezuela.

In placing Canada on this list, the USTR stated the following: 

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Posted in Copyright, copyright reform, Counterfeiting, intellectual property, Piracy, WIPO Treaties

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Canada called out for weak copyright laws by IFPI and at the Heritage Committee

April 30th, 2010 by Barry Sookman No comments »

Digital piracy remains one of the biggest obstacles for the recording industry. It is an especially significant problem here in Canada. A major contributor is weak copyright protection which limits the development of new business models for music in Canada. These are the conclusions of the IFPI which just published a report setting out a comprehensive picture of the key trends in today’s music business including key trends in Canada. It is also the opinion of representatives of the recording industry who appeared before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage last week.

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Posted in Copyright, copyright reform, Graduated Response, Piracy, Three Strikes, WIPO Treaties

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Graduated response: a least cost solution to reducing online copyright infringement

April 26th, 2010 by Barry Sookman No comments »

A new article, Three strikes law: a least cost solution to rampant online piracy, published  by Charn Wing Wan, argues that graduated response systems can be justified on economic grounds as a way of reducing transaction costs associated with enforcing online copyright infringement.

The abstract of the article states the following:

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Posted in Copyright, copyright reform, Graduated Response, Piracy, Three Strikes

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The Owens analysis of the Canadian copyright consultations: what are the implications?

April 21st, 2010 by Barry Sookman 3 comments »

Earlier this week, Richard Owens, the past chair of the board of directors of the University of Toronto Innovations Foundation, a member of the board and former Executive Director of the Centre for Innovation and Policy at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, and an adjunct professor of copyright and technology law at the University of Toronto, published a critical analysis of last summer’s copyright consultation. In his paper, Noises Heard: Canada’s Recent Online Copyright Consultation Process: Teachings and Cautions, he concluded that the consultation “was systematically abused by a clandestine group of mod-chip distributors, foreign websites administrators and international BitTorrent users”.  His focus was on the form letter wizard made available by the Canadian Coalition for Electronic Rights (CCER), a group whose very businesses depends on the ability to make illegal copies of software and to circumvent technological measures.

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Posted in Copyright, copyright reform, Fair Dealing, Piracy, Three Strikes, TPMs, WIPO Treaties

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Is graduated response necessary to protect human rights from online copyright infringement?

April 19th, 2010 by Barry Sookman 1 comment »

Last week, the Irish High Court released an important decision in the EMI Records & Ors -v- Eircom Ltd ,  [2010] IEHC 108 case. The court held that a settlement agreement between an Irish ISP, Eircom, and owners of copyright protected sound recordings and videos to implement a voluntary graduated response system was compatible with Irish data protection legislation. The ruling by Justice Charleton delivered on 16th April, 2010, is noteworthy not only because it found that collecting and using IP addresses for the purposes of sending out graduated response notices to subscribers does not violate data protection legislation. It is also noteworthy because the court recognized that the right to copyright is a human right protected by the Constitution of Ireland, 1937; and that the graduated response protocol was fully justified in light of the importance of copyright and the adverse effects of unauthorized online file sharing.

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Posted in Copyright, copyright reform, data protection, Graduated Response, human rights, Piracy, Three Strikes

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Levy debate sparks impassioned pleas in Parliament for copyright reform

April 15th, 2010 by Barry Sookman No comments »

Yesterday, the House of Commons voted in favour of a concurrence motion to support expanding the private copying levy to include “digital audio recording devices”. The Bloc Québecois, NPD and Liberal parties voted for the motion. The Conservatives voted against it.

As the vote was only a concurrence motion, it has no binding effect on Parliament. It only exhibits support for extending the levy to iPods and other digital audio recorders.

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Posted in Copyright, copyright reform

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Calling out misreporting about ACTA

April 14th, 2010 by Barry Sookman 4 comments »

As I have pointed out before on several occasions, there is a lot of inaccurate reporting about ACTA. In some cases, the misreporting is done by people who are intimately familiar with the actual text of the publically available draft treaty documents. In other cases, the misreporting results from relying on those widely disseminated inaccurate secondary sources. 

A case in point is recent article published by the Ottawa Citizen  and other Canwest newspapers such as the Montreal Gazette , Edmonton Journal, Calgary Herald, Windsor Star, and the Vancouver Sun dealing with ACTA. The article written by Vito Pilieci made a number of inaccurate statements about ACTA including the following statements: 

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Posted in ACTA, Counterfeiting, Piracy, WIPO Treaties

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More hype than facts about ACTA from its critics

April 13th, 2010 by Barry Sookman No comments »

The internet is lighting up again with opposition to the ACTA as negotiations on the trade agreement resume in New Zealand. Notwithstanding that much about the treaty is now known from well publicized leaks, its critics continue to try and slag it with misinformation and biased criticism.

Consider the following summary by Prof. Geist in yesterday’s Toronto Star article which was re-published in his blog this morning. Prof. Geist says:

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Posted in ACTA, Counterfeiting, Graduated Response, Piracy, Three Strikes, TPMs, WIPO Treaties

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Develop a prudent intellectual property policy by reading Shakespeare’s Hamlet, says judge

April 6th, 2010 by Barry Sookman 2 comments »

Its not often that modern day courts quote William Shakespeare for guidance in developing corporate intellectual property policies. Yet, that is exactly what US District Court Judge Gibson did in a recent case involving an employee/employer dispute, an acrimonious parting of the ways, and competition in the water-oil separating business.

In a decision released last week in Highland Tank & Mfg. Co v PS International, Inc. 2010 WL 1253887 (W.D.Pa. March 30, 2010), Judge Gibson quoted from Polonius’ speech in Hamlet providing this advice:

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Posted in intellectual property

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