Archive for June 29th, 2017

Day 68: Good Tunes by Tom Small (CC BY-SA 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/66SRWu

Federal Court of Appeal Deals Music Labels Major Defeat By Upholding Tariff 8 Internet Streaming Decision

Few Copyright Board of Canada decisions have elicited as much anger from the music industry as the 2014 Tariff 8 decision. The decision relied on commercial radio rates as the barometer, which seemed appropriate given the similarities between Internet streaming services that do not allow users to select specific songs and commercial radio stations that play a regular music rotation. Music Canada and its allies disagreed, launching a major campaign against the decision, which it said resulted in 10 percent of nothing. The industry was particularly upset that the rates were lower than the U.S. (due to international copyright obligations, the Canadian repertoire during the period of the tariff was about the half as large as the U.S. one). The industry appealed the decision with considerable fanfare, promoting the many groups that joined in the action.

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June 29, 2017 3 comments News
Google Internet Censorship by Dr Les (Leszek - Leslie) Sachs (CC BY 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/ai6w7F

No Monitoring & No Liability: What the Supreme Court’s Google v. Equustek Decision Does Not Do

The release of the Supreme Court of Canada’s Google v. Equustek decision attracted global attention with many rightly focused on the implications of global takedown orders for freedom of speech online (my post on the case here, Daphne Keller, EFF, Howard Knopf, Techdirt). The decision raises serious concerns as it invites courts around the world to issue global takedown orders that will likely lead to increased incidents of legal conflicts. That could vest enormous power in the hands of intermediaries such as Google, which will either remove links to content that is lawful in some countries or pick and choose among the orders they are willing to follow.

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June 29, 2017 4 comments News