The House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology recently launched a study on intellectual property and tech transfer, which it hopes will feed into the government’s national IP strategy. I appeared before the committee yesterday, which provided an opportunity to provide a perspective that shifted away from encouraging greater university patenting and instead emphasized that the real goal should be knowledge transfer, not just tech transfer. I noted that knowledge transfer certainly incorporates tech transfer but it also includes research papers, data trials, educational materials, and highly qualified students and personnel. My opening remarks also highlighted potential strategic reforms including emphasizing open access, crafting an anti-IP abuse statute, and expanding fair dealing with additional categories or adopting fair use provisions. The ensuing discussion touched on a wide range of issues, including patent and copyright trolls. My opening remarks are posted below.
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Why Violating Net Neutrality is not a Smart Way to Promote Canadian Content
In the aftermath of last month’s CRTC’s zero rating decision, there have been several pieces in the Globe and Mail raising the possibility that Canadian cultural policy might benefit from zero rating Cancon. In other words, rather than rely on net neutrality rules (including restrictions on zero rating) to ensure that Canadian content benefits from a level playing field, perhaps it would be even better to tilt the rules in favour of Cancon by mandating that domestic content not count against monthly data caps.
The issue was raised during the CRTC zero rating hearing as Canadian Media Producers Association argued that:
the Commission should be open to considering ways in which differential pricing practices related to Internet data plans could be used to promote the discoverability of and consumer access to Canadian programming.
The CRTC rejected the argument, concluding that “any benefits to the Canadian broadcasting system would generally not be sufficient to justify the preference, discrimination, and/or disadvantage created by such practices.” In response, anti-net neutrality advocate Roslyn Layton argued that Canada should exempt Canadian content from data charges, an idea picked up by Kate Taylor and Robert Everett-Green.
Now More Than Ever, Canada Needs a Strong Anti-Spam Law
Canada’s anti-spam legislation has long been the law that Corporate Canada loves to hate. Months before it was slated to take effect in 2014, there were ominous warnings about how regulation would bring commercial e-mail to a screeching halt, banning everything from large-scale business marketing efforts to emails promoting a neighbourhood lemonade stand.
My regular Globe and Mail technology op-ed notes that nearly three years later, e-mail marketing is alive and well in Canada as many have adjusted to the tougher privacy standards that require informed consent prior to sending commercial electronic messages. Moreover, in a world where malware and ransomware have become serious cybersecurity threats touching millions of Internet users, the inclusion of antimalware provisions has proven prescient since they give authorities the legal tools to participate in global enforcement efforts.
Music Industry’s Canadian Copyright Reform Goal: “End Tech Companies’ Safe Harbours”
Miranda Mulholland, a Toronto-based musician and music label owner, delivered an exceptionally passionate, accessible, and deeply personal keynote speech last week to the Economic Club of Canada. Mulholland’s talk was notable not only for providing an artist’s perspective, but for coming ready with next steps for everyone. She urged artists to create and protect their intellectual property, consumers to create playlists, write reviews, go to shows, and subscribe to digital music services, the music industry to be upfront about payment, to better support artists (including providing daycare services), and to pay for tickets to their own artists (Kate Taylor offered her take on the talk here, which includes an incredible comment from Music Canada that it wants only a level playing field, not public money. Music Canada has spent the last few years successfully lobbying for tens of millions in taxpayer support from provincial governments).
Given the active support from Music Canada for the event, her recommendations for policy makers were a core part of her message and largely mirror those of the industry. Unlike the 2010-2012 copyright reform process, piracy is no longer a key issue. Indeed, the issue of peer-to-peer file sharing and unauthorized downloading was not even mentioned in the speech. With the Canadian digital music market enjoying remarkable growth – Canada leaped ahead of Australia last year to become the 6th largest music market in the world and SOCAN generated record revenues – the industry focus is no longer on whether the public is paying for music (they are) but whether they are paying enough.
Can Cancon Compete?: A Response to the WGC on The Future of Canadian TV Production
My post this week on the recent CRTC’s television licensing decision elicited a strongly worded response yesterday from the Writers Guild of Canada. My original post made two key points. First, responding to Kate Taylor’s assertion that CRTC Chair Jean-Pierre Blais has offered no consistent strategy to the challenges facing the Canadian television production industry, I noted that over the course of the past five years, Blais has charted a very clear path toward making Canadian policy and regulation relevant in the digital age by promoting a competitive marketplace for Canadian creators, consumers, broadcasters, and broadcast distributors.
Second, I defended the recent CRTC decision on several grounds, including the need to address the gap between regulated and unregulated services (such as Netflix), the already-significant public support for Canadian content creation, the incentives for Canadian broadcasters to invest in original content, and the fact that Canadian broadcasters contribute a very small slice of the overall financing of domestic fictional programming which suggests that the harm to the sector from a further reduction is overstated.
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