This week I wrote about the need for reform of the Copyright Board of Canada. Copyright collective management is addressed in two chapters of The Copyright Pentalogy: How the Supreme Court of Canada Shook the Foundations of Canadian Copyright Law, an effort by many of Canada’s leading copyright scholars to begin the process of examining the long-term implications of the copyright pentalogy. As I’ve noted in previous posts, the book is available for purchase and is also available as a free download under a Creative Commons licence. The book can be downloaded in its entirety or each of the 14 chapters can be downloaded individually.
First, the complexity of copyright collective management is a recurring theme in debates over whether the Copyright Board of Canada, the Copyright Act and industry practice result in multiple payments for use of the same works. Jeremy de Beer describes this as “copyright royalty stacking” in his important chapter that unpacks “the layering of multiple payments for permission – through a certified tariff, collective blanket license or individual contract-to use copyright – protected subject matter.”
