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Federal Court Orders Privacy Commissioner to Investigate Complaint

The Federal Court of Canada yesterday issued an important decision addressing the jurisdictional reach of Canada's privacy legislation.  The case involved a complaint launched by Pippa Lawson of CIPPIC against U.S.-based Abika.com over the collection and use of her personal information.  The Privacy Commissioner refused to investigate, arguing that Abika.com declined to cooperate with the investigation and that she therefore lacked the jurisdiction to proceed.

CIPPIC applied for judicial review and yesterday won the case.  The court gets it exactly right – "with respect, I think the Commissioner did not distinguish her power to investigate from the effectiveness of her investigation."  

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February 6, 2007 1 comment News

The Integrated Circuit

Environmental issues have obviously commanded an enormous amount of attention in recent weeks.  Next month, the University of Ottawa will host a symposium looking at e-waste.  Learn more – or better yet attend – at The Integrated Circuit.

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February 6, 2007 Comments are Disabled News

The End of Captain Copyright

Digital Copyright Canada is first out to note that Access Copyright has pulled the plug on Captain Copyright.  The Captain generated enormous criticism earlier this year when the lessons, which targeted children as young as Grade One, came to light.  Access Copyright suggests that it is too difficult in the […]

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February 5, 2007 2 comments News

Canadian Heritage Opens Up

Readers will recall that last year I posted information about a Canadian Heritage sponsored study on copyright collectives.  While that study has still not been released, the Copyright Policy branch recently opened up by disclosing the external studies it is supporting.  The list includes the aforementioned collectives study as well […]

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February 5, 2007 Comments are Disabled News

Movie Piracy Claims More Fiction Than Fact

My weekly Law Bytes column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) examines recent claims that Canada has become the world's leading source of movie piracy. The column finds that a closer examination of the industry's own data reveals that the claims are based primarily on fiction rather than fact, featuring unsubstantiated and inconsistent claims about camcording, exaggerations about its economic harm, and misleading critiques of Canadian law.

First, the camcorder claims have themselves involved wildly different figures.  Over the past two weeks, reports have pegged the Canadian percentage of global camcording at either forty or fifty percent.  Yet the International Intellectual Property Alliance, a U.S. lobby group that includes the MPAA, advised the U.S. government in late September that Canadians were the source for 23 percent of camcorded copies of DVDs.  

Not surprisingly, none of these figures have been subject to independent audit or review.  In fact, AT&T Labs, which conducted the last major public study on movie piracy in 2003, concluded that 77 percent of pirated movies actually originate from industry insiders and advance screener copies provided to movie reviewers.

Moreover, the industry's numbers indicate that camcorded versions of DVDs strike only a fraction of the movies that are released each year.  As of August 2006, the MPAA documented 179 camcorded movies as the source for infringing DVDs since 2004.  During that time, its members released approximately 1400 movies, suggesting that approximately one in every ten movies is camcorded and sold as infringing DVDs.  According to this data, Canadian sources are therefore responsible for camcorded DVD versions of about three percent of all MPAA member movies.

Second, the claims of economic harm associated with camcorded movies have been grossly exaggerated.

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February 5, 2007 14 comments Columns