Archive for October 14th, 2014

CBC News advertising board, CBC Broadcast Centre, Toronto, Southern Ontario, Canada by Pranav Bhatt (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/9HBz23

Broadcaster Copyright Misuse and Collusion?: Why Criticism Over the Government’s Political Ad Copyright Exception May Be Pointed in the Wrong Direction

The Canadian Thanksgiving weekend featured escalating rhetoric over the government’s proposed copyright exception for political advertising with claims of fascism, censorship, expropriation, and more. The commentary bears almost no relationship to reality. The truth is that the government and the broadcasters both agree that the current law already permits use without authorization. For all the claims of “theft”, the copyright owner (broadcasters) and user (political parties) both agree that the works can be used without further permission or payment. As Ariel Katz points out this morning, the bigger issue may well be whether Canada’s broadcasters violated the Competition Act by conspiring to not air perfectly lawful political advertisements.

I wrote about the controversy in my weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version), but the debate can be boiled down to three issues.

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October 14, 2014 22 comments Columns

Political Attack Ads May Be Noxious, but Copyright Isn’t the Right Tool to Stop Them

Appeared in the Toronto Star on October 11, 2014 as Federal Proposal to Loosen Copyright Law for Political Advertising Falls Flat Reports surfaced last week that the federal government plans to introduce a new copyright exception for political advertising within a forthcoming budget bill. The provision would allow politicians and […]

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October 14, 2014 Comments are Disabled Columns Archive