Archive for September 16th, 2009

UK Music Industry Preparing To Backdown on Three Strikes Proposals

The Times reports that the UK music industry is preparing to backdown from demands for a three-strikes and you're out system in the face of opposition from artists.  The Featured Artists Coalition calls the approach "grossly disproportionate."

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September 16, 2009 1 comment News

Conservative MPs Voice Support For Fee-For-Carriage

As the CRTC gears up for yet another round of hearings later this fall that will address the fee-for-carriage issue, the most recent batch of submitted comments contains what may constitute an interesting shift in policy by the Conservatives.  Earlier this year, the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage conducted extensive hearings on the future of local broadcasting.  Fee-for-carriage (ie. a requirement for broadcast distributors such as cable and satellite to pay for retransmission of over-the-air signals) figured prominently in the discussion.  The Conservative members of the committee issued a dissenting opinion in the final report and offered up the following:

this dissenting report must now indicate our most fervent and rigorous opposition to any potential fee for carriage system, either negotiated or imposed, that would have a detrimental effect on the consumer.  We believe it is fundamentally unfair to expect Canadian consumers to pay new and substantial charges each month to their cable or satellite distributor to reflect such a system. 

Fast forward several months later and Conservative MPs Ed Holder (London West), Laurie Hawn (Edmonton Centre), Bruce Stanton (Simcoe North), Patrick Brown (Barrie), Gord Brown (Leeds-Grenville), and Lois Brown (Newmarket-Aurora) have each submitted comments to the CRTC public hearing process on the issue.  Each MP sent roughly the same letter, suggesting that they all come from the same playbook.  The new message:

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September 16, 2009 21 comments News

Geczy’s Open Letter to the Entertainment Software Association of Canada

George Geczy, owner of Battlegoat Studios, an independent game software developer, with an open letter to the Entertainment Software Association of Canada on copyright reform.

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September 16, 2009 3 comments News

B.C. Court of Appeal Rules No Liability For Linking

The B.C. Court of Appeal has issued an important new ruling on the prospect of liability for linking to allegedly defamatory content.  Crookes v. Newton involved Wayne Crookes, who has filed several Internet defamation suits (including one against me) and Jon Newton, publisher of P2Pnet.net.  A divided court upheld a […]

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September 16, 2009 7 comments News