Columns

Can’t Blame Canada For Counterfeiting

My weekly Law Bytes column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) picks up on last week's posting on the Canadian Anti-Counterfeiting Network's claims about counterfeiting in Canada. In begins by noting that based on recent media coverage, people unfamiliar with Canada could be forgiven for assuming that all Canadians sport pirate […]

March 5, 2007 — Comments are Disabled — Columns

Open Access Reshaping Rules of Research

My weekly Law Bytes column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) focuses on the growing global demand for open access, a trend that is forcing researchers, publishers, universities, and funding agencies to reconsider their role in the creation and dissemination of knowledge.

For years, the research model remained relatively static. In Canada, federal funding agencies in the sciences, social sciences, and health sciences doled out hundreds of millions of dollars each year to support research at Canadian universities. University researchers typically published their findings in expensive, peer-reviewed publications, which were purchased by those same publicly-funded universities.
The model certainly proved lucrative for large publishers, yet resulted in the public paying twice for research that it was frequently unable to access. Cancer patients seeking information on new treatments or parents searching for the latest on childhood development issues were often denied access to the research they indirectly fund through their tax dollars.

The emergence of the Internet dramatically changes the equation.

February 26, 2007 — Comments are Disabled — Columns

U.S. Copyright Lobby Out of Touch With the Rest of the World

Given that it has been picked up by Slashdot, BoingBoing, and Wired, I'm a bit behind in pointing to a column (BBC version, homepage version) I wrote for the BBC on the recent IIPA intellectual property protection submission to the USTR. The column picks up on many of the points I made in a posting about the submission last week. In the column I argue that what is most noteworthy about the IIPA effort is that dozens of countries – indeed most of the major global economies in the developed and developing world – are subjected to criticism. The IIPA recommendations are designed to highlight the inadequacies of IP protection around the world, yet the lobby group ultimately shines the spotlight on how U.S. copyright policy has become out-of-touch and isolated from much of the rest of the globe.

The IIPA criticisms fall into three broad categories.

February 20, 2007 — 7 comments — Columns

The Recording Industry’s Digital Strategy Out of Tune

My weekly Law Bytes column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) begins with the following:

Ten years ago, as the Internet began to mushroom in popularity and emerging technologies enabled consumers to make near-perfect copies of digital content, the recording industry emphasized a two-pronged strategy in response to the changing business environment. First, it focused on copy-control technologies, often referred to as digital rights management (DRM), that many in the industry believed would allow it re-assert control over music copying. Second, it lobbied the Canadian government for a private copying levy to compensate for the music copying that it could not control.

While the industry’s approach proved successful on the legal front – the 1996 World Intellectual Property Organization’s Internet Treaties established legal protections for DRM and Ottawa introduced a private copying levy on blank media such as cassettes and CDs in 1997 – the strategy’s effectiveness has long been subject to debate. The week of February 5th may ultimately be viewed as the beginning of the end of that debate. That week, which began with Apple CEO Steve Jobs calling on the industry to drop DRM and concluded with the Canadian Private Copying Collective (CPCC), the collective that administers the private copying levy, applying for its dramatic expansion, leaves little doubt that the recording industry got it wrong.

The column proceeds to discuss the failure of DRM and the mounting pressure on the industry to drop it.

February 19, 2007 — 5 comments — Columns

The Canadian Net Neutrality Debate

My weekly Law Bytes column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) discusses the recent revelations that Industry Canada is highly skeptical about the need for net neutrality legislation. I argue that the need to prevent a two-tier Internet in Canada has never been greater. The Canadian competitive landscape is dominated by a handful of companies, with the top five providers controlling 84 percent of Canadian Internet connections. Indeed, Canadian consumers who have access to broadband networks (many communities are still without access) invariably face steady price increases and service limitations from the indistinguishable choice between cable and DSL.

Leveraging their dominant positions, Canadian telecommunications companies have been embroiled in a growing number of incidents involving content or application discrimination. Over the past two years, Telus blocked access to hundreds of websites during a dispute with its labour union, Shaw attempted to levy surcharges for Internet telephony services, Rogers quietly limited bandwidth for legitimate peer-to-peer software applications, and Videotron mused publicly about establishing a new Internet transmission tariff that would require content creators to pay millions for the privilege of transmitting their content.

The government documents uncovered last week confirm that Industry Minister Maxime Bernier is aware of the situation.

February 14, 2007 — 10 comments — Columns