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Wednesday March 07, 2012 |
The Bill
C-11 committee
conducts its final witness hearing on copyright reform today and not a
moment too soon. Based on the demands from music industry witnesses
this week, shutting down the Internet must surely be coming next. The
week started with the Canadian Independent Music Association seeking changes to
the
enabler provision that would create liability risk for social
networking sites, search
engines, blogging platforms, video sites, and many other websites
featuring third party contributions. It also called for a new iPod tax,
an extension in the term
of copyright, a removal of protections for user generated content,
parody, and satire, as well as an unlimited
statutory damage awards and a content takedown system with no court
oversight. CIMA was followed by ADISQ, which wants its own lawful access
approach
that would require Internet providers to disclose subscriber
information without court oversight based on allegations of
infringement (the attack on fair dealing is covered in a separate post).
Yesterday the Canadian Music Publishers Association added to the demand
list by pulling out the SOPA playbook and calling for website blocking
provisions. Implausibly describing the demand as a "technical
amendment", the CMPA argued that Internet providers take an active role
in shaping the Internet traffic on their systems and therefore it wants
to "create a positive obligation for service providers to prevent the
use of their services to infringe copyright by offshore sites." If the
actual wording is as broad as the proposal (the CMPA acknowledged that
it has an alternate, more limited version), this would open the door to
blocking
thousands of legitimate sites. The CMPA admitted that the proposal
bears a similarity to SOPA and PIPA, but argued that it was narrower
than the controversial U.S. bills. While that may technically be true - SOPA
envisioned DNS blocking and targeting advertising and payment networks
- the website blocking provisions look a lot like the legislation
that sparked massive public protest.
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Wednesday March 07, 2012 |
The extremist demands on Bill C-11 are not limited to the music
industry's massive overhaul of Canadian copyright reform
that would require Internet providers to block access to foreign sites,
take
down content without court oversight, and disclose subscriber
information without a warrant. Over the past two days, several groups
have also taken aim at fair dealing. While those groups start by
focusing on the extension of fair dealing in Bill C-11 to include
parody, satire, and education, under questioning it becomes clear that
they their real target is the full fair dealing provision and the
desire to undo the Supreme Court of Canada's CCH decision.
On Monday, the Writers' Union of Canada told the committee:
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Wednesday March 07, 2012 |
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At a stakeholder meeting yesterday, the U.S. Trade Representative indicated
that Canada would not have a voice in negotiating the Trans Pacific
Partnership. The USTR has adopted the position that late entrants such
as Canada, Japan, and Mexico will have to take the agreement "as is",
potentially including copyright term extension and a rejection of some
of the Bill C-11 provisions.
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Tuesday March 06, 2012 |
The "enabler provision" has emerged as one of the major demands by
copyright lobby groups, who want to see significant expansion of the
current provision by including SOPA-style reforms that could target
sites such as Youtube. In fact, the music industry has gone even
further with demands
that could create liability risk for social networking sites, search
engines, blogging platforms, video sites, and many other websites
featuring third party contributions. Jason Kee of the Entertainment
Software Association of Canada argues
that unless the enabler provision is expanded "the provision is
useless." All of these demands come despite the fact that the industry
is using existing law to sue isoHunt
for millions of dollars under current copyright law.
In addition to expanding the provision, the same groups want to add
statutory damages to the mix (the music industry recently argued that
statutory damages should be unlimited).
Yet a June
2010 letter
to SOCAN from Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore's department
indicates it is opposed to the change since it stems from a lack of
understanding about how statutory damages work. The letter
states:
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