Post Tagged with: "copyright term"

By Office of the President of the United States (@realDonaldTrump on Twitter) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ADonald_Trump_Justin_Trudeau_2017-02-13_03.jpg

The USMCA and Copyright Reform: Who is Writing Canada’s Copyright Law Anyway?

Canada’s year-long copyright review has thus far featured dozens of witnesses from creators such as singer Bryan Adams to telecom giants Bell and Telus. While the review is designed to help Canadian policy makers craft a roadmap for future reforms, the release of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), the successor to NAFTA, represents a significant detour as it contains a detailed intellectual property rights chapter that effectively cedes many key issues to U.S. trade negotiators.

My Globe and Mail op-ed notes that in the weeks leading up to the conclusion of the trade pact negotiations, most of the attention was focused on supply management and the dairy sector, the threat of tariffs on the automotive industry, and the future of dispute resolution provisions. Yet once the secret text was released just after midnight on Sunday, the mandated reform to Canadian copyright law became more readily apparent.

Read more ›

October 3, 2018 10 comments Columns
Bryan Adams by Derek Hatfield (CC BY 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/67j7jp

Cuts Like a Knife: Bryan Adams Calls for Stronger Protections Against One-Sided Record Label Contracts

Canadian artist Bryan Adams placed copyright in the spotlight on Tuesday, appearing before the Canadian Heritage committee to make his case for copyright reform. Adams attracted widespread media coverage, though the big music industry groups such as Music Canada were conspicuously silent with not even a tweet to mark the appearance. Why the cold shoulder from the Canadian music industry to one of Canada’s best known artists? The obvious answer is that Adams sang from a far different songbook than the industry lobby groups. While those groups have been pushing for copyright term extension and a so-called “value gap” that bears little reality to Canadian law, Adams expressed artist frustration with the industry and one-sided contracts, noting that “I don’t even want to start naming the names of people who have had their copyright whisked from underneath their feet from contracts that they’ve signed as youngsters.”

Read more ›

September 20, 2018 6 comments News
https://web.archive.org/web/20180830172416/https://ustr.gov/about-us/policy-offices/press-office/press-releases/2018/august/modernizing-nafta-be-21st-century

Is Copyright Term Extension Still in Play in the New NAFTA?

As Canadian NAFTA negotiations continue in the aftermath of a U.S.-Mexico agreement on a trade deal, the inclusion of a mandated copyright term remains a bit of mystery. The U.S. has long been focused on getting Canada to extend the term of copyright beyond the international treaty standard of life of the author plus 50 years and seems likely to want to do so here. If so, the cost will be significant, locking down works from the public domain for decades and potentially increasing educational costs by millions of dollars. The U.S. fact sheets on the deal have undergone regular changes which suggests that the issue may still be in play. The original fact sheet issued last week described the copyright term provision as follows:

Read more ›

September 4, 2018 6 comments News
Green Spin by rwhitesi37 https://flic.kr/p/2bkmgn (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Who Needs an iPhone Tax: Canadian Music Industry Instead Calls for $40 Million Annual Handout

As the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology continues its copyright review, the Canadian Heritage committee has launched its study on remuneration models for artists and creative industries. Yesterday, Music Canada’s Graham Henderson appeared before the committee to make his case for copyright reform (the organization will presumably make the same case in the coming weeks at the Industry committee). The industry is garnering record-setting Internet revenues, but it reverted to claims of a “value gap” that doesn’t fit within the Canadian legislative experience and demands for a copyright term extension that would cost Canadians millions of dollars and that was rejected by the government in the TPP.

Most notably, after privately lobbying for a new tax on all smartphones and other devices, the group is shifting toward an even bigger cash haul. Rather than apply a tax on all smartphones, the industry is spinning for a tax on everyone by simply calling for a $40 million handout:

Read more ›

May 30, 2018 8 comments News
Ryerson talk screen shot, https://ryecast.ryerson.ca/11/Watch/11904.aspx

Canadian Copyright, OA, and OER: Why the Open Access Road Still Leads Back to Copyright

It is open access week and this year I had the honour of delivering the keynote address at a terrific open access event co-sponsored by the Ryerson University Library and Archives and the University of Toronto Libraries. My talk – which can be viewed in full here or from the embed below – starts with a review of the remarkable success of open access over the past 15 years, but quickly shifts toward the continuing connection between balanced copyright and open access.

Read more ›

October 26, 2017 8 comments Keynote Speaking, News, Video