Ariel Katz has a must-read post on the history of fair dealing. Katz states “the notion that if a purpose isn’t explicitly enumerated, it is categorically excluded from the purview of fair dealing, is antithetical to the purpose of the Copyright Act. In order to encourage future innovation and creativity […]
Articles by: Michael Geist
The Letters of the Law: The Year in Tech Law from A to Z
Appeared in the Toronto Star on December 18, 2011 as The Year in Tech Law, From A to Z The past 12 months in law and technology were exceptionally active, with legislative battles over privacy and copyright, near-continuous controversy at the CRTC, and an active Supreme Court of Canada docket. […]
CRTC’s Net Neutrality Rules in Action: Bell To Drop P2P Traffic Shaping
Bell advised the CRTC yesterday that it plans to drop all peer-to-peer traffic shaping (often called throttling) as of March 1, 2012. While the decision has been described as surprising or as quid pro quo for the usage based billing ruling, I think it is neither of those. The writing […]
What Happened to the PIPEDA Review?
Section 29 of PIPEDA, Canada’s private sector privacy law, requires Parliament to review the portion that deals with data protection every five years. The first review started in 2006 and led (after considerable delay) to the reforms found in Bill C-12, which is currently languishing in the House of Commons. […]
The Daily Digital Lock Dissenter, Day 52: Ontario Council of University Libraries
The Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL) represents the 21 public university libraries in Ontario, serving a community of about 400,000 full time students and professors. OCUL provided a submission to the 2009 national copyright consultation that stated the following about digital locks:
Digital locks can prevent users from interacting with copyright materials in ways that are perfectly legal in themselves. Copyright law must not make it illegal to circumvent a digital lock in order to use a copyrighted item for purposes that do not infringe copyright. To satisfy WIPO treaty obligations, it is sufficient that copyright law afford protection to digital locks only to penalize the breaking of digital locks for infringing purposes.
Recent Posts
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 249: The Debate Over Canada’s AI Strategy – My Consultation Submission and Appearance at the Canadian Heritage Committee 
How the Liberal and Conservative Parties Have Quietly Colluded to Undermine the Privacy Rights of Canadians 
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 248: Mark Surman on Why Canada’s AI Strategy Should Prioritize Public AI Models 
We Need More Canada in the Training Data: My Appearance Before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage on AI and the Creative Sector 
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 247: My Senate Appearance on the Bill That Could Lead to Canada-Wide Blocking of X, Reddit and ChatGPT
