Archive for April, 2017

What is on Television Tonight by Trey Ratcliff (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/t1pU6

The Internet as Cable: The Risk of Treating Telecommunications as Cultural Policy

Canadian Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly travels to California this week with an agenda that includes meetings with Internet giants such as Google and Facebook. Given the recent announcement in the budget that the government plans to “review and modernize” the Broadcasting Act and Telecommunications Act, the discussions may help shape an issue that could have a profound impact on the Internet in Canada as there are concerns the government may attempt to shoehorn Canadian cultural policies into telecommunications law.

My Globe and Mail column notes that Ms. Joly’s consultation last year on Cancon in a digital world revealed there is a strong appetite within the traditional Canadian culture lobby for bringing policies such as cultural taxes and mandated Cancon requirements to the Internet. The groups claim the Internet is rapidly replacing the conventional broadcast system as a means of distributing cultural content and that the longstanding analog rules should be shifted into the digital environment.

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April 19, 2017 — 5 comments — Columns
Creative Commons by Kristina Alexanderson (CC BY 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/dp7BN7

Copyright Reform in Canada and Beyond

Creative Commons will hold their annual global summit in Toronto later this month. In anticipation of that event, I discussed copyright reform in Canada and around the world in an interview with Creative Commons’ Public Policy manager Timothy Vollmer.  The full interview, which included discussion on copyright and trade agreements, educational exceptions, and empirical data, can be found here. An excerpt discussing the Canadian experience is posted below:

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April 18, 2017 — Comments are Disabled — News
New Thinking on Innovation, https://www.cigionline.org/innovation-series?utm_source=author&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=innovation&utm_content=release1

Copyright in the Public Interest: How Canada Can Establish a Pro-Innovation Reform Agenda

The Centre for International Governance Innovation, the well-respected independent think tank based in Waterloo, has posted the first part of an exceptional new series on innovation. From the introduction from Rohinton Medhora to several pieces on innovation and trade (Kahin, Haggart, Ciuriak, and Van Harten), the series promises to provide politicians and policy makers with valuable insights to support the government’s focus on innovation. I was delighted to participate in the project with a piece titled How Trolls are Stifling Innovators, Gamers and Netflix Junkies.

The contribution, which is accompanied by a video on the impact of copyright and fair use on innovation, identifies several areas of copyright reform that are closely linked to innovation policy.  These include copyright flexibilities such as fair use, the need to prevent IP and copyright misuse, and the harms associated with restrictive digital lock rules. The article starts by noting that the Supreme Court of Canada highlighted the link between copyright and innovation in the 2002 Theberge decision:

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April 13, 2017 — Comments are Disabled — News
TPP Vancouver Rally by Leadnow Canada (CC BY-NC 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/GooPJ6

The International Trade Committee’s TPP Report: Clarifying the Liberal, Conservative, and NDP Policies on Asia-Pacific Trade

The Standing Committee on International Trade released its long awaited report on the Trans Pacific Partnership yesterday, the result of months of hearings and public consultation. The TPP committee review represented the Liberal government’s most tangible mechanism to consult with the public on an agreement it did not negotiate and that suffered from a lack of transparency throughout the negotiation process. Along the way, Donald Trump was elected president of the United States and moved quickly to withdraw from the TPP.  The resulting report is therefore anti-climatic, since the agreement is effectively dead.

Nevertheless, the 113 page report provides a record of the many witnesses that appeared before the committee and places all three political parties on the record. Much of the report identifies the controversial issues – intellectual property, dispute settlement, trade in services among them – and recounts the differing views. The report leaves little doubt about the public divide on the TPP, noting support from some (though not all) business groups and opposition from many public interest groups. For example, the report notes that the intellectual property chapter was among the issues most raised before the committee, particularly the patent provisions and copyright term extension. It highlights not only comments before the committee (including my own), but also briefs submitted to the committee, including one from the Girl Guides of Canada, who expressed concerns with copyright term extension.

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April 11, 2017 — 1 comment — News
2009 “Innovation Canada” by Musée des sciences et de la technologie du Canada’s photostream. (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0). https://flic.kr/p/6pJhif 

Centre for International Governance Innovation: Michael Geist on the Impact of Copyright and Fair Use on Innovation

I discussed how flexibilities as opposed to strong enforcement of copyright can encourage innovation. I talk about what we can learn from the Australian Government’s Productivity Commission” to apply to Canada’s innovation policies.  

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April 10, 2017 — Comments are Disabled — Video
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