The mainstream media coverage of copyright continues – the Montreal Gazette features a "bluffer's guide" to copyright, the Toronto Star reports on how "the copyfight is underway in earnest in Canada," and the Ottawa Citizen covers next month's private copying levy court hearing and the 2003 battle over the Lucy Maud Montgomery Copyright Term Extension Act.
More MSM Copyright Coverage
Tags: cdmca / Copyright Canada / copyright for canadians / Copyright Microsite - Canadian Copyright / dmca / prentice / private copying
4 Comments
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Letters to the editor
Any time we see mainstream media coverage on an issue, we should write a letter to the editor. I just wrote one to the Gazette 🙂
Levy
My question is about this:
“The recording industry association opposes the iPod levy because of its concern that by paying the $75, consumers would believe they therefore had the legal right to download music and shift those files among different formats.”
I wonder, how could a consumer interpret this as anything other then a license to copy? You can’t be hit with a fine with out committing some sort of crime, and I thought there was a legal principle that you can’t be forced to
Levy (continued)
(Sorry, I bumped the submit button before I was done)
… pay, but not receive compensation. The argument for the levy seems to be a presumption of guilt with out any evidence. It seems only fair that you should be able to make copies of your media, if you’ve been judged guilty just by making a purchase.
Thank you for your interesting blog and all your work.
-Steve
About five years ago, Sheila Copps (then the Heritage Minister) was giving a talk to university student journalists, and one of them asked her basically that same question: Does paying the fee give you a license to copy?
Surprisingly (though it may have been Copps’s unfamiliarity with the issue) she said that indeed it did. Student newspapers ran with the story, saying the government condones downloading music (at least for personal use)