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Moving Targets: CRTC Sets Universal Broadband Access Target By Year End But Govt Plan Is For 2019

The federal government released its Report on Plans and Priorities for 2014-15 today with departments and agencies identifying spending estimates and work priorities. The CRTC’s report offers some interesting insights into its main activities and targets, particularly with respect to broadband access.

The latest CRTC broadband target is for 100% of Canadian households to have access to broadband speeds of 5 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload by December 31, 2014. That target is a year ahead of schedule as last year’s report set the 100% target for the end of 2015. The new target is also difficult to reconcile with the government’s announcement that it plans to spend $305 million over the next five years to extend broadband to rural and remote areas. In fact, last week reports suggested that Industry Minister James Moore and the government had established a target of 2019 for universal access to broadband. If the CRTC target is achieved, the government’s broadband plans and targets would appear already outdated. Interestingly, Industry Canada’s report includes a target of 77% of the population with broadband subscriptions (not access) by March 2015, but broadband is defined is only 1.5 Mbps or higher.

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March 6, 2014 — 5 comments — News

The CRTC’s Future of Television Consultation: The Missing Provocative Questions

Last month, I blogged about the CRTC’s Talk TV consultation and concerns that the questions were framed in a lopsided manner.  CRTC Chair Jean Pierre Blais was asked about those concerns in Twitter chat and he responded that the questions and answers “were intended to be provocative.” I address that response in my weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) highlighting both the concerns with the survey and offering some additional provocative questions that the Commission excluded.

The column begins by noting that regulation of Internet video services and the prospect of pick-and-pay television channels headline the second phase of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission’s future of television consultation which launched late last month. The “TalkTV” initiative is designed to make it easy for Canadians to participate, featuring six short scenarios followed by a limited number of choices for respondents.

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March 5, 2014 — 5 comments — Columns

Copyright Users’ Rights in Canada Hits Ten: The Tenth Anniversary of the CCH Decision

As Meera Nair noted last week, today marks the tenth anniversary the Supreme Court of Canada’s landmark CCH Canadian v. Law Society of Upper Canada. A decade after its release, the case has grown in stature as the leading the users’ rights copyright decision by a high court in the world. Writing for a unanimous court, Chief Justice McLachlin stated:

the fair dealing exception is perhaps more properly understood as an integral part of the Copyright Act than simply a defence. Any act falling within the fair dealing exception will not be an infringement of copyright. The fair dealing exception, like other exceptions in the Copyright Act, is a user’s right. In order to maintain the proper balance between the rights of a copyright owner and users’ interests, it must not be interpreted restrictively. As Professor Vaver, supra, has explained, at p. 171: ‘User rights are not just loopholes. Both owner rights and user rights should therefore be given the fair and balanced reading that befits remedial legislation.’

The articulation of fair dealing as a users’ right represented a remarkable shift, emphasizing the need for a copyright balance between the rights of creators and the rights of users. While this approach unquestionably strengthened fair dealing, the immediate reaction to the CCH was somewhat mixed.

 

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March 4, 2014 — 2 comments — News

Why The Surprise?: The Longstanding Application of Quebec’s Language Laws to the Internet

Over the past couple of days, there has been mounting attention on the application of Quebec language laws to a Facebook page. The issue arose when the OQLF advised a Chelsea boutique that they had received a complaint about its English-only Facebook page. While many are reacting with alarm, the reality is that Quebec’s language enforcement body has applied the law to websites for many years.

Complaints about the issue date back at least 15 years, when a complaint was filed against an English-only photography website. While a Montreal lawyer claims the issue has not been challenged in court, the issue was in fact litigated in Reid v. Court of Quebec, a case involving the online sale of maple syrup. The Quebec Superior Court upheld the application of the language laws to the Internet ruling that the law applied to commercial publications and that included websites. Further complaints seem to pop up every few years  (presumably because the system is complaints-based), but the legal analysis is pretty straightforward. The law applies to all commercial publications – including websites – involving a business with a Quebec location or address that is selling goods or services. The location of the server or even the intended audience is irrelevant – what matters is the real-space location of the business.

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February 28, 2014 — 16 comments — News

Copyright Board of Canada on Copying a Few Pages: It’s Insubstantial and Not Compensable

The Copyright Board of Canada has issued a series of questions  to Access Copyright in the tariff proceedings involving Canadian post-secondary institutions. Once Canada universities and colleges quit the proceedings, the Board was left to play a more aggressive role in questioning Access Copyright’s claims.  Its questions focus on several important issues (discussed further below), but perhaps most noteworthy is its preliminary conclusion on what constitutes insubstantial or de minimis copying.  

In establishing the scope of copyright rights, the law refers to “the sole right to produce or reproduce the work or any substantial part thereof.”  Since the rights only arise once the full work or a substantial part of it are used, anything less than that – ie. an insubstantial part – is not subject to the rights identified in the Copyright Act. While some rights holders have argued that the standard for a substantial is very low (the National Post recently argued in a case that “even the reproduction of a small number of words in a newspaper article can be an impermissible reproduction”), the Copyright Board says that its preliminary view is that “copying of a few pages or a small percentage from a book that is not a collection of short works, such as poems, is not substantial.” With respect to the tariff application, the Board says this excludes more than 2.5% of coursepack copying. 

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February 26, 2014 — 4 comments — News
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