Search Results for "c-11" : 382

Copyright Lobby Demands Rollback of Recent Canadian Reforms in Secretive Trade Deal

More than ten years of contentious debate over Canadian copyright law appeared to come to a conclusion in late June when Bill C-11 passed its final legislative hurdle and received royal assent. Yet despite characterizing the bill as a “vital building block”, the copyright lobby that pressured the government to impose restrictive rules on digital locks and tougher penalties for copyright infringement is already demanding further reforms that include rolling back many key aspects of the original bill.

Unlike the last round of copyright reform that featured national consultations and open committee hearings, my weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) notes this time the lobby groups are hoping to use secretive trade negotiations to forge legislative change. Later this week, the International Intellectual Property Alliance, an umbrella organization that represents movie, music, and software associations, will urge the U.S. government to pressure Canada to enact further reforms as part of the Trans Pacific Partnership trade negotiations.

September 24, 2012 — 17 comments — Columns

Copyright Lobby Demands Rollback of Recent Canadian Reforms in Secretive Trade Deal

Appeared in the Toronto Star on September 23, 2012 as Copyright Lobby Demands Rollback of Recent Canadian Reforms in Secretive Trade Deal More than ten years of contentious debate over Canadian copyright law appeared to come to a conclusion in late June when Bill C-11 passed its final legislative hurdle […]

September 24, 2012 — 2 comments — Columns Archive

The Economist on Canadian Copyright Law

The Economist focuses on new copyright rules for the digital age, rightly pointing to Bill C-11 as “setting a new standard of permissiveness” (though it neglects to mention the restrictive digital lock rules).

September 4, 2012 — 2 comments — News

The Supreme Court of Canada Speaks: How To Assess Fair Dealing for Education

With the start of the school year less than two weeks away, the Canadian education community is increasingly thinking about copyright and the implications of Bill C-11 and the Supreme Court of Canada’s five copyright decisions. While Access Copyright argues that little has changed (in recent correspondence to the Copyright Board it even objected to a six-month delay in formulating a school survey on copying practices to fully account for Bill C-11 and the decisions), most recognize that the law has undergone a dramatic change that confirms significant flexibilities for educational uses.

I’ve posted several pieces on these issues (fair use in Canada, technological neutrality, impact on Access Copyright), but given the ongoing efforts to mislead and downplay the implications of the decisions, this long post pulls together the Supreme Court’s own language on how to assess fair dealing. The quotes come directly from the three major fair dealing decisions: CCH Canadian, Access Copyright, and SOCAN v. Bell Canada.

Note that this post is limited to the Court’s decisions and does not focus on the changes in Bill C-11. The legislative reforms provide additional support for education as they include the expansion of fair dealing to include education as a purposes category, a cap of $5000 on statutory damages for all non-commercial infringement, a non-commercial user generated content provision, an education exception for publicly available on the Internet, a new exception for public performances in schools, and a technology-neutral approach for the reproduction of materials for display purposes that may apply both offline and online.

August 22, 2012 — 5 comments — News

Why the End of Access Copyright K-12 Licensing for Is Not The End of Payment for Educational Copying

The reaction to last month’s Supreme Court of Canada copyright decisions with Access Copyright continues to play out with its supporters seeking to downplay the likely impact. I’ve already written several posts on the decision, including one explaining why the decision eviscerates Access Copyright’s business model. The short version of that post is that the Court rejected each Access Copyright key fair dealing arguments, in the process greatly expanding fair dealing in the education context such that the Access Copyright licence – which typically only covers 10 percent of a work – will rarely add value beyond what is permitted under fair dealing.

In light of the decisions and recent copyright law reforms, K-12 schools are likely to conclude that they do not need an Access Copyright licence. While the collective and its supporters will react by claiming that this will greatly harm Canadian publishers and authors, the reality is that schools have permission to reproduce the overwhelming majority of materials without Access Copyright or fair dealing.

Access Copyright has argued that the case only focused on 7% of copies, but the truth is that it involved an even smaller amount. The 7% figure stems from the copies for which Access Copyright seeks payment. In fact, the Access Copyright sponsored study that lies at the heart of the K-12 case found that schools already had permission to reproduce 88% of all books, periodicals, and newspapers without even conducting a copyright analysis or turning to the Access Copyright licence.

August 16, 2012 — 10 comments — News