Last week, I posted on the emerging consensus within the Canadian education on the scope of fair dealing. The AUCC has now become the last major educational association to adopt a fair dealing policy, which largely mirrors the approach of the ACCC and K-12 schools.
Archive for November, 2012
NPD Group Fails Basic Math: Data Shows P2P Users Spend Nearly 50% More on Music Than Non-P2P Users
File sharing of music has been part of the Internet landscape for well over a decade, but the debate over its economic impact continues to rage. The issue has come to fore once again in recent weeks after Columbia University’s American Assembly released an excerpt of a report that found that peer-to-peer users purchase 31 percent more downloads than non-P2P users. The NPD Group, which conducts industry analysis for the Recording Industry Association of America, quickly responded with data that purports to show that among music buyers, both P2P and non-P2P users spend about the same, though P2P users spend more on merchandise and concert tickets. The NPD Group dismisses the additional spending, arguing “it would be silly” to concluded the P2P promotes merchandise or ticket sales.
While there have since been responses from the American Assembly and further promotion of the NPD Group findings from the RIAA (along with coverage from CNET and TorrentFreak), no one seems to have picked up on the basic math error from NPD Group. The NPD Group post ironically starts with:
I often think you ought to have a license to publish data, especially these days, when misinterpreted statistics easily make their way to the blogosphere, and thus become truth.
Yet take a closer look at its own data in a chart that has been replicated throughout the blogosphere.
Fair Dealing Consensus Emerges Within Canadian Educational Community
Four months after the Supreme Court of Canada issued its landmark series of copyright decisions, a consensus on the scope of fair dealing has begun to emerge within the education community. While Access Copyright has been sending threatening letters to institutions that seek to rely on fair dealing with claims that the decisions are being misinterpreted, roughly similar policies have now been developed by K-12 school boards, community colleges, and universities that plainly reject the views of the copyright collective.
As discussed in my post on the ACCC fair dealing policy, the breadth of fair dealing raises obvious questions about the necessity of an Access Copyright licence. All educational institutions already spend millions on licensed materials. Indeed, the Access Copyright study on K-12 institutions found that 88% of copying was permitted without the need for either an Access Copyright licence or reliance on fair dealing. Given the scope of fair dealing as articulated by the Supreme Court of Canada, many are concluding that the Access Copyright licence offers little additional value to Canadian educational institutions.
Canada Reportedly Ready to Cave on CETA Drug Patent Demands
The Canadian Press reports that Canada is ready to cave to European demands for changes to patent rules that could cost Canadians hundreds of millions of dollars in higher health care costs. The ministerial meeting on the remaining CETA issues is set for next week.
CRTC Launches Online Discussion on Wireless Code
The CRTC has launched an online discussion to foster greater debate among Canadians on a new code for wireless services. A public hearing is planned for next February.
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