The protests against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement continue
to spread in cities across Europe. The protests began in Poland, where thousands
have taken to the streets and opposition politicians have worn Guy
Fawkes masks in protest against the country signing the agreement last
week. The scenes
from Poland are remarkable, demonstrating the widespread anger over
the decision to join ACTA.
This weekend the protests have spread beyond Poland, with hundreds
protesting in the Czech
Republic, Belgium,
and in cities across France including Paris, Lyon, and Bordeaux
(further Paris video
here). There have also been reports of smaller protests in London
and Dublin.
The ACTA protests appear to be spreading as there are plans for
protests next week in the Czech Republic,
the
Netherlands, Ireland, and Sweden. A full rundown of protest plans
can be found
here. The European Parliament is scheduled to vote on the
agreement later this year.
The reverberations from the SOPA fight continue to be felt in the U.S.
(excellent analysis from Benkler
and Downes)
and elsewhere (mounting Canadian
concern that Bill C-11 could be amended to adopt SOPA-like rules),
but it is the Anti-Counterfeiting
Trade Agreement that has captured increasing attention this week.
Several months after the majority of ACTA participants signed
the agreement, most European Union countries formally
signed the agreement yesterday (notable exclusions include Germany,
the Netherlands, Estonia, Cyprus and Slovakia).
This has generated a flurry of furious protest: thousands
have taken to the streets in protest in Poland, nearly 250,000
people have signed a petition
against the agreement, and a Member of the European Parliament has resigned
his position as rapporteur to scrutinize the agreement, concluding that
the entire review process is a "charade."
Some are characterizing ACTA as worse than SOPA, but the reality is
somewhat more complicated. From a substantive perspective, ACTA's
Internet provisions are plainly not as bad as those contemplated by
SOPA. Over the course of several years of public protest and pressure,
the Internet provisions were gradually watered down with the removal of
three strikes and you're out language. Other controversial provisions
on statutory damages and anti-camcording rules were made optional
rather than mandatory.
While the Internet provisions may not be as bad as SOPA, the remainder
of the agreement raises many significant concerns.
Countries such as
India have expressed
concern
that it conflicts with the TRIPS Agreement. Other elements of the
agreement increase the standards in the WIPO Internet Treaties and the
commercial scale definition at the WTO. The agreement adds new criminal
provisions, pressures ISPs to take greater action, and heightens border
measures. There remains ongoing debate as to whether the substance of
ACTA requires legislative change in many signatory countries (a
somewhat dated site on many ACTA issues here).
Beyond the substantive concerns, the ACTA process remains a major issue
as it sets a dangerous precedent for international IP agreements. For
years, the ACTA process was shrouded in secrecy, with only the
occasional leak bringing plans to light. Wikileaks cables confirmed
that the secrecy was viewed as a serious problem in many participant
countries. In fact, even as most countries supported greater
transparency and the release of draft texts, the U.S. steadfastly
refused, using transparency as a bargaining
chip
to extract concessions from other negotiating partners. In addition to
the transparency problems during the negotiations, the express
exclusion of many countries from the process raises real fears that
they will face increased pressure to meet ACTA standards in the years
ahead.
Given the ongoing concerns, the big question now is whether much can be
done. The majority of ACTA countries have signed the agreement, but it
will only take effect once five countries have formally implemented and
ratified it. That is not expected until at least May 2013, opening the
door to
stopping the agreement from taking effect. While there are global
initiatives such as the AccessNow
petition, much of the activity has shifted to specific countries or
regions:
Europe is home to the
most active anti-ACTA effort since there is still a possibility that
the European Parliament may reject the treaty. There remain serious
doubts about whether ACTA is consistent
with the EU Acquis. Learn more about what can be done at La Quadrature du Net, EDRI, the Open
Rights Group, and FFII.
In Canada, the
Department of Foreign Affairs is conducting an open
consultation on ACTA. Email your comments
to the department or write Consultations and Liaison Division (BSL),
Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), Foreign Affairs and
International Trade Canada, Lester B. Pearson Building, 125 Sussex
Drive, Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0G2. A March 2011 Standing Committee on
Canadian Heritage report recommended
limiting Canada's ACTA commitments.
In the U.S., much of the
focus is on whether ACTA must be approved by Congress. Senator Wyden
has raised
questions about the issue. KEI has extensive coverage of the U.S.
perspective on ACTA.
In Australia, the Joint
Standing Committee on Treaties is accepting
submissions on ACTA until January 27, 2012 (Kim Weatherall's
submission here). Australia tabled the agreement
in Parliament on November 21, 2011 and has taken the position the
agreement will not require any legislative changes. The Australia
Productivity Commission recommended
in 2010 that Australia not include IP provisions in trade agreements.
The New Zealand
government has posted information on ACTA on its website.
The dangers associated with ACTA are not limited to this particular
agreement. The agreement opens the door to further secretive
negotiations, such as the Trans Pacific Partnership, which contain
extensive IP provisions that extend beyond ACTA. The SOPA battle
was a big win for those concerned with balanced copyright and the open
Internet, but it is by no means the end of the fight.
For many years, the most prominent critic of the Canadian online music
market has been the industry itself. The Canadian Recording
Industry Association (now known as Music Canada) has consistently
argued that few would want to invest in Canada due to the state of our
copyright laws. For example, in 2009, CRIA President Graham
Henderson published an op-ed
that said our trading partners were racing ahead of Canada, which he
argued was a product of Canadian copyright law. A year later, Universal
Music Canada appeared
before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage and told MPs the
legal uncertainty meant that the investment was going to other
countries.
This week, the industry seemingly decided to change its tune. It
released a new
guide on licensing digital music in Canada that
identifies the key organizations that license music in Canada,
including the record labels and several copyright collectives. The
report highlights how there are services in Canada in all the major
segments, including digital downloads, non-interactive streaming,
on-demand streaming, and music videos.
There are two things particularly noteworthy about the report. The
first is that the industry is
suddenly promoting statistics that show Canada is actually a leader
when it comes to online music sales, noting that Canada is the 6th
largest market for recorded music in the world, ranking 6th for digital
sales and 7th for physical sales (it might have also noted the digital
sales have grown
faster
in Canada than the U.S. for the past five consecutive years). It also
cites new survey data confirming that young Canadians are music buyers,
which it says leads to the conclusion that Canada "is a digital
greenfield opportunity." This is huge shift from an industry
association that a few years ago likened
Canada to the HBO series Deadwood.
The second is that the guide provides further evidence of the creation
of a digital music market in Canada without digital lock legislation.
The guide points to download services such as iTunes, Hip Digital,
Puretracks, Archambault, HMV Digital, 7Digital; non-interactive
streaming services such as Galaxie Mobile and Slacker Radio; on-demand
streaming such as Rdio, BBM Music, and Zune Music Pass; and streaming
music videos such as YouTube and Vevo. Some of these services use
digital locks, some don't. The experience to date demonstrates that
establishing success online music services is a business issue, not a
legal one. The claim that a balanced approach to digital locks would
harm these businesses (when all these services have launched with no
legal protection for digital locks) is undermined by the industry's own
data, which points to an investment opportunity and the 6th ranked
market in the world.
My post
this week on the behind-the-scenes demands to make Bill C-11, the
current copyright bill, more like SOPA has attracted considerable
attention with mainstream (National
Post, La
Presse) and online media (Mashable, Wire
Report)
covering the story. The music industry alone is seeking over a dozen
changes to the bill, including website blocking, Internet termination
for alleged repeat infringers, and an expansion of the "enabler"
provision that is supposedly designed to target pirate sites.
Meanwhile, the Entertainment Software Association of Canada also wants
an expansion of the enabler provision along with further tightening of
the already-restrictive digital lock rules.
The concern with expanding the enabler provision is that overly broad
language could create increased legal risk for legitimate websites. As
a result, new online businesses may avoid investing in Canada for fear
of potential liability or costly lawsuits. My post
cited concerns about SOPA being used to target sites like Youtube and
the danger that that could spill over into Canada. Industry lawyer
Barry Sookman responds in the National Post
article, arguing that it is "inconceivable" and "not remotely
possible" that
the law could be used to shut down a mainstream site like Youtube.
Millions of Internet users certainly hope Sookman is right, yet recent experience
suggests that the content industry is open to using these kinds of
provisions in massive lawsuits against sites like Youtube. For example,
consider the ongoing Viacom lawsuit against Youtube/Google.
Viacom lost
at the trial level in 2010, but has appealed the decision. The
SOPA-style enabler provision under Bill C-11 that the content industry
is demanding would include six factors for a court to consider.
Contrast the Bill C-11 factors that a court may consider with Viacom's
claims in its appellate
brief:
whether the person expressly or
implicitly marketed or promoted the service as one that could be used
to enable acts of copyright infringement
"YouTube’s founders built an
integrated media entertainment business, in the district court’s words,
by “welcom[ing] copyright-infringing material being placed on their
website.” That copyrighted material was “attractive to users” and
“enhanced defendants’ income from advertisements,” enabling YouTube’s
founders to sell the business to Google for $1.65 billion."
whether the person had knowledge
that the service was used to enable a significant number of acts of
copyright infringement
"Almost immediately after
YouTube came online, YouTube became aware of widespread infringement on
its site. And it was the copyrighted videos—not home movies—that
people flocked to YouTube to see."
whether the service has
significant uses other than to enable acts of copyright infringement
"In their written presentation
to Google’s board and senior management, Google’s financial advisors
stated that 60 percent of YouTube’s views were “premium” —i.e.,
copyrighted—and only 10 percent of the premium videos were licensed."
the person’s ability, as part of
providing the service, to limit acts of copyright infringement, and any
action taken by the person to do so
"Dunton similarly put a stop to
efforts to implement software that would notify copyright owners when
infringing videos were uploaded. Even though a YouTube engineer
said
that implementing an automated anti-infringement tool to alert
copyright owners when suspected infringing content was uploaded
“isn’t
hard” and would “take another day or [weekend],” Dunton ordered
the
engineer to “forget about the email alerts stuff” because “we’re just
trying to cover our asses so we don’t get sued.”"
any benefits the person received
as a result of enabling the acts of copyright
infringement
"Unable to compete with
YouTube’s pirated content, in late 2006, Google bought YouTube for
$1.65 billion."
the economic viability of the
provision of the service if it were not used to enable acts of
copyright infringement
"As early as June of 2005,
YouTube’s Internet service provider complained that YouTube was
violating its user agreement by, YouTube founder Steve Chen believed,
“hosting copyrighted content.” But Chen resolved that YouTube was
“not
about to take down content because our ISP is giving us shit.”
And, in
emails with the other founders, he later remarked “we need to attract
traffic. . . . [T]he only reason why our traffic surged was due
to a
video of this type”—i.e., copyrighted and unauthorized"
This is obviously one side of the story and is an appeal from a
decision that ruled in Youtube's favour, concluding the site is
protected by the safe harbours
found in the DMCA. Moreover, the same kind of suit launched against
Veoh, another online video site, recently also failed (though it cost
the founder his company).
Yet reading the Viacom claims makes it clear that applying its
arguments to a SOPA-version of the Bill C-11 enabler clause (which
content groups want expanded to include operating or inducing
infringement) could create a huge chill in the investment and
technology community in Canada. Online video sites, cloud computing
sites, and other online services may look at the Bill C-11 and fear
that even a lawsuit could create massive costs, scare away investors,
and stifle new innovation. Indeed, a recent
study by Booz & Company
found this to be a very real problem, with a large majority of the
angel
investors and venture capitalists saying they will not put their money
in digital content intermediaries if governments pass tough new rules
allowing websites to be sued or fined for infringing digital content
posted by users. The U.S. has dropped SOPA, but now incredibly
Canada may consider the very provisions that causes investors to become
skittish.
The Business Coalition for Balanced
Copyright, which includes leading technology, telecom, retail, and
Internet companies, has already expressed concern with the Bill C-11
digital lock rules. Turning Bill C-11 into a Canadian SOPA would only
make matters worse, creating a legal framework that would harm Canadian
business and consumers.
Last week's Wikipedia-led blackout in protest of U.S. copyright
legislation called the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is being hailed by
some as the Internet Spring, the day that millions fought back against
restrictive legislative proposals that posed a serious threat to an
open Internet. The protests were derided by critics as a gimmick, but my weekly technology
law column (Toronto
Star version, homepage
version) notes it is hard to see how the
SOPA protest
can be fairly characterized as anything other than a stunning success.
Wikipedia reports that 162 million people viewed its blackout page
during the 24-hour protest period. By comparison, the most-watched
television program of 2011, the Super Bowl, attracted 111 million
viewers.
More impressive were the number of people who took
action. Eight
million Wikipedia visitors looked up contact information for their
elected representatives, seven million people signed a Google petition,
and Engine Advocacy reported that it was completing 2,000 phone calls
per second to local members of Congress.
The protest launched a political earthquake as previously supportive
politicians raced for the exits. According to ProPublica, the day
before the protest, 80 members of Congress supported the legislation
and 31 opposed. Two days later, there were only 63 supporters and 122
opposed.
The SOPA protest ranks as the largest online action to date, but it was
foreshadowed by similar developments around the world.
In 2007, tens of
thousands of Canadians used Facebook to register their concern with
impending copyright legislation (I launched one of the main groups
involved). In response, the government delayed
introducing the
legislation by six months, during which it added several provisions
aimed at pacifying the public criticism.
In 2009, thousands of people in New Zealand launched their own blackout
campaign against proposed "three strikes and you're out" copyright
legislation that would have led to Internet users losing access based
on three allegations of infringement. Users blacked out websites and
profiles on Facebook and Twitter. The New Zealand government responded
by withdrawing the legislation.
The similarities between the SOPA protest and digital activism in other
countries does not end there. In virtually all cases, opponents dismiss
protesters as pirates or pawns (or in the case of Canadian Heritage
Minister James Moore, "radical
extremists") who lack a genuine
understanding of the issues.
Yet the Motion Picture Association of America is happy to trot out
well-known movie stars with little copyright law familiarity since they
are guaranteed to garner attention. Moreover, during earlier SOPA
hearings, several politicians seemed to take pride in their lack of
technical knowledge and experience.
The MPAA called the protests "an abuse of power" by platforms that
serve as gateways to information, a particularly rich claim coming from
a group that once threatened to delay screening movies in Canada unless
it passed new copyright rules and still requires its customers to sit
through unskippable anti-piracy messages at the beginning of movies on
DVDs or at the theatre.
Most troubling were lobbyists who lamented the politicians' shifting
policy positions due to the popular protest, as if their own preferred
approach of spending millions on campaign contributions is somehow a
more democratic method of lawmaking.
It may be tempting for SOPA protesters to declare victory, but history
teaches that political wins are rarely absolute. The current
Canadian
legislation, Bill C-11, is much more balanced than the 2007 proposal,
but the digital lock provisions that sparked the initial protest remain
largely unchanged. In New Zealand, the government later introduced a
more balanced bill with greater safeguards, but the prospect of
terminating Internet access was not completely eliminated.
SOPA appears to be headed for the dustbin, but successor U.S.
legislation is sure to follow. A political consensus on anti-piracy
legislation will eventually emerge, but the day the Internet fought
back will remain the elephant in the room for years to come.
The Internet battle against SOPA and PIPA generated huge
interest in Canada with many Canadians turning their sites dark
(including Blogging Tories, Project Gutenberg Canada, and CIPPIC) in
support of the protest. In writing about the link between SOPA and
Canada, I noted
that the proposed legislation featured an aggressive jurisdictional
approach that could target Canadian websites. Moreover, I argued that
the same lobby groups promoting SOPA in the U.S. are behind the digital
lock rules in Bill C-11.
While SOPA may be dead (for now) in the U.S., lobby groups are likely
to intensify their efforts to export SOPA-like rules to other
countries. With Bill C-11 back on the legislative agenda at the end of
the month, Canada will be a prime target for SOPA style rules. In fact,
a close review of the unpublished submissions to the Bill C-32
legislative committee reveals that several groups have laid the
groundwork to add SOPA-like rules into Bill C-11, including blocking
websites and expanding the "enabler provision"to target a wider range
of websites. Given the reaction to SOPA in the U.S., where
millions contacted their elected representatives to object to rules
that threatened their Internet and digital rights, the political risks
inherent in embracing SOPA-like rules are significant. [UPDATE: I have
a second
post that examines how the proposed changes could be used to target
Youtube]
The music industry is unsurprisingly leading the way, demanding
a
series of changes that would make Bill C-11 look much more like SOPA.
For example, the industry wants language to similar to that found in
SOPA on blocking access to websites, demanding new provisions that
would "permit a court to make an order blocking a pirate site such as
The Pirate Bay to protect the Canadian marketplace from foreign pirate
sites." Section 102 of SOPA also envisioned blocking of websites:
A service provider shall take
technically feasible and reasonable measures designed to prevent access
by its subscribers located within the United States to the foreign
infringing site (or portion thereof) that is subject to the order,
including measures designed to prevent the domain name of the foreign
infringing site (or portion thereof) from resolving to that domain
name’s Internet Protocol address. Such actions shall be taken as
expeditiously as possible, but in any case within 5 days after being
served with a copy of the order, or within such time as the court may
order.
The music industry also wants Internet providers to be required to
adopt a
termination policy for subscribers that are alleged to be repeat
infringers. According to the industry document:
To incent service providers to cooperate in stemming piracy by
requiring them to adopt and reasonably implement a policy to prevent
the use of their services by repeat infringers and by conditioning the
availability of service provider exceptions on this being done.
This demand would move Canada toward the graduated response policy that
could result in loss of Internet service for Internet users. There is
no indication in the music
industry document of due process or even
proof of infringement.
Several lobby groups also want language similar to that found in the
infamous Section 103 of SOPA. That provision, which spoke of sites
"primarily designed or operated for the purpose of...offering goods or
services in a manner that engages in, enables, or facilitates"
infringement, raised fears that it could be used to shut down
mainstream sites such as YouTube.
According to the music industry document, Bill C-11's "enabler
provision" should be expanded to include "services that are primarily
operated to enable infringement or which induce infringement." Those
demands are echoed by the Entertainment Software Association of Canada,
which called on the government to "amend the enabling provision to
ensure that it applies to services that are "designed or operated"
primarily to enable acts of infringement." Both groups also want
statutory damages added to the enabler provision so that liability can
run into the millions of dollars for a target website.
Just as there are questions
whether SOPA is even needed in the U.S. (the takedown of Megaupload suggests
that current laws are effective), the same is true with the enabler
provision in Bill C-11, given that the music industry is already
suing IsoHunt, the Canadian-based torrent search site, using current
law. The expansion of the enabler provision to include sites that
operate to enable or induce infringement could extend far beyond
so-called "pirate sites", since many user generated content sites (such
as YouTube) and cloud-based service sites can be said to enable or
induce infringement, particularly in a country like Canada that does
not have a fair use provision.
As for the government's plans, C-11 committee member Dean Del Mastro
specifically referenced changes to the enabler provision in a recent interview
about potential changes and there are rumours that the U.S. government
is pushing the Canadian government to toughen the enabler provision
(while keeping the digital lock rules unchanged). That suggests that
just as the U.S. is moving away from SOPA in its own laws due to the
political uprising against it, the Canadian government may be headed
toward a similar quagmire as the U.S.-backed lobby groups lead it down
a politically risky path.
The CRTC has written
to Rogers Communications to advise that its investigation has concluded
that the company violated the Internet traffic management rules (better
known as net neutrality rules). The letter
notes:
Based on the preliminary results of
our ongoing investigation, Commission staff is of the belief that
Rogers Communications Inc. (“Rogers”) applies a technical ITMP to
unidentified traffic using default peer-to-peer (“P2P”) ports. On the
basis of our evidence to date, any traffic from an unidentified
time-sensitive application making use of P2P ports will be throttled
resulting in noticeable degradation of such traffic.
The CRTC notes that prior approval is required for degradation of time
sensitive traffic and gives Rogers two weeks to rebut the evidence or
become compliant with the law. The case highlights a newfound
willingness by the CRTC to investigate and enforce the net neutrality
rules with full research into the effect of Rogers' traffic shaping
practices. This represents a major step forward as it sends a
clear
message - after several years of doubt - that the CRTC is prepared to
enforce the net neutrality rules. Given the recent announcement
that Bell is abandoning traffic shaping, the question is whether Rogers
will follow suit or drag out the process by facing CRTC enforcement and
further user complaints.
Last night's Republican presidential candidate debate featured a
question on SOPA, leading all four remaining candidates to register
their opposition to the bill. Their positions are consistent with the
growing trend
on the right in the United States as it the Republicans that are increasingly opposed
to SOPA and PIPA with Democratic supporters left to wonder
why their representatives remain so out-of-touch with the popular view
of the public (this morning Democrat Senator Reid announced
a delay in the vote on PIPA). In fact, it isn't just Republican
politicians who are opposed to overbroad copyright reforms: the right-leaning
press and conservative
think-tanks
are expressing the same views. None of these groups or politicians can
be accused of being soft on crime or weak on intellectual property.
Rather, they recognize the need for government to tread carefully and
to ensure that legislative initiatives do not undermine basic freedoms
and personal property rights.
The opposition to SOPA is not limited to the right in the United
States. In Canada, Blogging
Tories, which aggregates dozens of right-leaning blogs, went
dark in support of the SOPA protest and the National Post was the
only major Canadian paper to publish an editorial
on the issue, concluding:
On Wednesday, Wikipedia and a handful
of other sites will shut down in protest of SOPA and PIPA. They have
our full support. Governments should not be in the business of propping
up outdated business models, nor of blocking legitimate speech. This
draft legislation would do both.
All of this raises the question of whether the government's approach in
Bill C-11 is consistent with this trend. The overall talking points
certainly are as the government talks about letting the market rule,
protecting creators by targeting piracy, and giving consumers new
freedoms. The devil is in the details, however.
Bill C-11 includes provisions to target infringement (the enabler
provision) and shifts toward market-focused solutions with the creation
of new consumer exceptions that ensure those rights are built into the
price of the products, not subject to additional levies. The bill is
also cognizant of the importance of Internet freedom with a
notice-and-notice approach to Internet provider liability and a
consistent rejection of proposals that could lead to terminating
Internet service.
The outlier, however, remain the digital lock rules, as was noted in
this National
Post op-ed.
Far from adopting a market-focused approach, the C-11 digital lock
rules are among the most restrictive in the world with the government
intervening in the market by creating incentives to adopt digital
locks. The government message to business is clear: with digital locks
you get all your copyright rights plus you get to override consumer
rights such as fair dealing, time shifting, or making backup copies.
For consumers, the loss of property rights is enormously troubling (and
one reason
for doubts about the constitutionality of this aspect of the bill). The
"right" approach on this issue is to avoid meddling in the market by
linking circumvention of digital locks to actual copyright
infringement. That would provide legal protection for digital locks but
ensure that the copyright balance (including copyright exceptions) is
not lost in the process.
The Toronto Star runs a special op-ed in which I discuss why I turned
my site dark for 12 hours yesterday. The article (Toronto
Star version, homepage
version)
reiterates how SOPA could be applied in Canada and emphasizes that if
the U.S. passes the legislation, it is very likely to pressure other
countries to do the same:
the U.S. intellectual property
strategy has long been premised on
exporting its rules to other countries, including Canada. The same
forces that have lobbied for SOPA and PIPA in the U.S. are the primary
lobbyists behind the digital lock provisions in Bill C-11 and the
recent submission to the U.S. government arguing that Canada should not
be admitted to the Trans Pacific Partnership negotiations until it
complies with U.S. copyright demands.
SOPA virtually guarantees that this will continue. Not only is it
likely that the U.S. will begin to incorporate SOPA-like provisions
into its IP demands, but SOPA makes it a matter of U.S. law to ensure
that intellectual property protection is a significant component of
U.S. foreign policy and grants more resources to U.S. embassies around
the world to increase their involvement in foreign legal reform.
Following UBC's
announcement that it will not sign the Access Copyright model
licence, three additional universities have followed suit - Athabasca,
Windsor,
and Winnipeg.
The four universities demonstrate that the licence raises concerns in
all types of universites - big, medium, small and distance-focused.
May.22/12Comments (0)
Reports indicate
that the European Union is set to provide an 80 billion euro boost to
open access by making open access publishing the norm for its Horizon
2020 research program.
May.22/12Comments (0)
Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponta says
his country will not ratify the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement
unless the European Parliament modifies the agreement. Since the EP
does not have the power to amend ACTA, that makes ratification unlikely.
May.22/12Comments (0)
Dozens of leading U.S. law professors have written
to the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance to express concern about the
lack of constitutional authority to approve the Anti-Counterfeiting
Trade Agreement without submitting it for Congressional approval. May.17/12Comments (0)
Harvard Professor Winston Hide has stepped
down from the editorial board of the prestigious Genomics journal
over the lack of open access. May.17/12Comments (0)
In addition to the UBC decision to not sign the Access Copyright model
licence, the Manitoba Library Association has added
its voice
in opposition to the agreement. Moreover, the Trent University Senate
has adopted a motion stating "that the Senate, in solidarity with the
CAUT, the CFS and dozens of other constituent and governing bodies,
reject this unfair and unreasonable AUCC-Access Copyright 'model
license' and instead affirm and abide by 'the right to fair and
reasonable access to copyrighted works for educational purposes.'"
May.16/12Comments (1)
The Globe's John Ibbitson has a column
that confirms much of the private speculation about lawful access,
namely that the bill is going nowhere so long as Vic Toews remains
public safety minister. This is consistent with the prevailing view
that Toews is so closely associated with the worst of the bill -
warrantless disclosure of subscriber information, new surveillance
technologies, and divisive us vs. them framing - that a change will be
needed for the bill to come back. Ibbitson focuses on the likelihood of
Parliament proroging before the bill is revamped and returns, yet
speculating on those issues is always difficult. What is certain
is
that lawful access will return at some point, meaning Canadians will
need to remain vigilant to ensure that any future bill addresses the myriad of
concerns associated with Bill C-30.
May.16/12Comments (2)
Conservative MP Dean Del Mastro offers up one of the oddest copyright
analogies during the C-11 debate, likening format shifting to socks
and shoes.
May.16/12Comments (11)
The Wall Streeet Journal's MarketWatch picks
up
on Canada's missing digital economy strategy, using the Penske File
framing to discuss the failure of Industry Minister Christian Paradis
to lead on the file.
May.16/12Comments (0)
