Unravelling the Canadian Copyright Policy Laundering Strategy

The Conference Board of Canada plagiarism and undue influence story - which with the Board's report and overdue apology to Curtis Cook will now go on hiatus until new reports are issued in the fall - has obviously attracted considerable interest.  Looking back, while plagiarism is rare, it is the public airing of the copyright lobby policy laundering effort that is the far more important development. 

This lengthy post seeks to unravel the effort further by demonstrating how there has been a clear strategy of deploying seemingly independent organizations to advance the same goals, claims, arguments, and recommendations.  Over the past three years, this strategy has played out with multiple reports, each building on the next with a steady stream of self-citation.  The following diagram highlights the key players:




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Unravelling the Canadian Copyright Policy Laundering Strategy

The Conference Board of Canada plagiarism and undue influence story – which with the Board's report and overdue apology to Curtis Cook will now go on hiatus until new reports are issued in the fall – has obviously attracted considerable interest.  Looking back, while plagiarism is rare, it is the public airing of the copyright lobby policy laundering effort that is the far more important development. 

This lengthy post seeks to unravel the effort further by demonstrating how there has been a clear strategy of deploying seemingly independent organizations to advance the same goals, claims, arguments, and recommendations.  Over the past three years, this strategy has played out with multiple reports, each building on the next with a steady stream of self-citation.  The following diagram highlights the key players:

Although there are many groups involved in copyright lobbying, at the heart of the strategy are two organizations – the Canadian Recording Industry Association and the Canadian Motion Picture Distributors Association.  CRIA's board is made up the four major music labels plus its director, while the CMPDA's board is comprised of representatives of the Hollywood movie studios.  Those same studios and music labels provide support for the International Intellectual Property Association, which influences Canadian copyright policy by supporting U.S. government copyright lobby efforts. 

In addition to their active individual lobbying (described here), CRIA and CMPDA have provided financial support for three associations newly active on copyright lobbying – the Canadian Anti-Counterfeiting Network, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce's IP Council, and the Ontario Chamber of Commerce (there are other funders including pharmaceutical companies and law firms).  Those groups have issued virtually identical reports and in turn supported seemingly independent sources such as the Conference Board of Canada and paid polling efforts through Environics.

The net effect has been a steady stream of reports that all say basically the same thing, cite to the same sources, make the same recommendations, and often rely on each other to substantiate the manufactured consensus on copyright reform.  The relevant reports are as follows:

Just how similar are these reports?  First consider some sample recommendations (note particularly the Ontario Chamber and Conference Board recommendations which include arguable plagiarism problems):

Not only are the recommendations the same, so too are the claims and the arguments used to support the recommendations.  First the claims:

1.    Counterfeiting costs the Canadian economy billions. (see posts on the uncertainty associated with counterfeiting claims here, here, and here)

2.    Lost revenues in the software industry (see my post on the BSA numbers here, dodgy software numbers here)

  

3.   Losses Due to Film Piracy (see my post on movie industry losses here).

4.   Losses to the Music Industry

And a few of the arguments:

1.   Piracy is out of control in Canada

2.   The U.S. is unhappy with Canada

3.   Canada’s lax IP protection hampers innovation and puts foreign investment at risk

False Momentum

It is not just that these reports all receive financial support from the same organizations and say largely the same thing.  It is also that the reports each build on one another, creating the false impression of growing momentum and consensus on the state of Canadian law and the need for specific reforms.  Consider the IP Council's A Time for Change, which was released in early 2009.  The very first chapter of the report is titled "Canada's Emerging Consensus on Intellectual Property Rights."  Where does this consensus come from? 

According to the IP Council, it starts with the CACN report, followed by two House of Commons committees that heard primarily from these groups and which led to the 2007 Speech from the Throne and Canada's participation in ACTA.  The chapter then states that IPR policy was taken to the "next level" with the Ontario Chamber report, the founding of the IP Council, and the 2008 Conference Board of Canada conference that led to the three recalled IP reports.  The chapter then notes the "growing public awareness of the need for action" which cites Environics polls (paid for by the IP Council) and a Toronto Star supplement on counterfeiting (paid for by the CACN).  In all, the IP Council cites the CACN four times, the Ontario Chamber twice, the Conference Board of Canada proceedings 13 times, and the Environics research five times.

Environics

The influence over some of these independent reports is evident in other ways.  For example, Environics has emerged as the survey company of choice for this effort (Pollara was a favourite until Duncan McKie left to run the Canadian Independent Record Production Association).  Environics lead on these issues was once Don Hogarth, who now provides communications for CRIA.  On June 4, 2008 – one week before the introduction of C-61 – Environics released a poll that it said found that Canadians are looking for leadership on IP issues.  The report repeats the CACN, Ontario Chamber, and IP Council assertions, stating:

over the past several years Canada has fallen behind the international community when it comes to the protection of intellectual property and products of the mind. The gap between Canadian laws and international standards in the area of counterfeiting, piracy, and illegal downloading is growing ever wider. Canada has been maintained by the U.S. Trade Representative on a special watch list specifically because of its laxity in the realm of protecting intellectual property.

What makes the timing particularly noteworthy is that even though Environics issued a press release claiming that the data came from a new study, the data was not new.  Rather, it was drawn from a 2006 survey that seemingly sat idle for two years until the opportune moment to raise it days before the introduction of new copyright legislation.  Who funded the questions related to intellectual property?  It will come as little surprise to find that CRIA paid for those.  Moreover, Environics oddly proceeded to re-issue the identical press release six months later (June 2008 version, December 2008 version) in conjunction with an IP Council commissioned survey on counterfeiting.

What does it all mean?

At a certain level, none of this will come as a surprise.  Companies lobby for their position and what made the Conference Board of Canada series of events so unusual was the way in which it was exposed. Yet the Conference Board of Canada's recalled reports were clearly just a part of a much larger strategy to influence Canadian copyright policy by creating a narrative of crisis and the false impression of Canada as a piracy haven.  This week's comments from Industry Minister Tony Clement and Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore provide the strong sense that they better understand the current dynamic around copyright, but it is obvious that the lobbying on the issue is only going to intensify in the months ahead.

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