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The Copyright Pentalogy: Technological Neutrality

Last month, the University of Ottawa Press published The Copyright Pentalogy: How the Supreme Court of Canada Shook the Foundations of Canadian Copyright Law, an effort by many of Canada’s leading copyright scholars to begin the process of examining the long-term implications of the copyright pentalogy. As I’ve noted in previous posts, the book is available for purchase and is also available as a free download under a Creative Commons licence. The book can be downloaded in its entirety or each of the 14 chapters can be downloaded individually.

The book includes two articles on technological neutrality, whose inclusion as a foundational principle  of Canadian copyright was a landmark aspect of the copyright pentalogy.  The message from the Court is clear: copyright law should not stand in the way of technological progress and potentially impede the opportunities for greater access afforded by the Internet through the imposition of  additional fees or restrictive rules that create extra user costs. Viewed in this light, technological neutrality as a principle within Canadian copyright may have the same dramatic effects on the law as the articulation of users’ rights did in 2004.

Carys Craig opens the technological neutrality part with a critical assessment of the significance of the principle and its potential to guide future development of copyright law and policy in Canada. Craig’s chapter examines the various meanings that can be attached to technological neutrality, as a principle of both regulation and statutory interpretation. Craig offers a strong endorsement of technological neutrality as a guiding principle for Canadian copyright, arguing that its justification can be found in the oft-referenced need for balance in copyright. Her chapter emphasizes the importance of thinking of technological neutrality in a functional sense with the goal of shaping copyright norms that treat technologies in a roughly equivalent fashion in order to preserve the copyright balance in the digital environment.

Greg Hagen’s discussion of technological neutrality considers its potential application to contentious copyright policy issues. For example, Hagen argues that the principle of technological neutrality  can be used to create new exceptions to the prohibition on circumventing technological protection measures (TPMs, often referred to as “digital locks”) and to strike down some prohibitions (which make user rights subject to not circumventing a TPM) on the basis of a conflict with the rule of law. Hagen notes that anti-circumvention legislation favours incumbents over new market rivals, raising concerns about whether such rules meet the technological neutrality principle articulated by the Court. Indeed, Hagen suggests that courts should be empowered to establish new exceptions to the anti-circumvention rules in order to preserve technological neutrality.

2 Comments

  1. Steve MacDonald says:

    This is the type of update that I would like myself to be aware of. Thanks for sharing!

  2. Thank you!
    I’ve read a number of chapters and found them to be most helpful and relatively easy to understand, given the subject matter. Thanks for all your work in putting this together and for making it freely available.