Last week, Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez introduced Bill C-18, the Online News Act, a bill that adopts an extreme approach to compensation by requiring payments for merely facilitating access to news in any way and in any amount. As a result, the Canadian government envisions mandated payments not only for copying or reproducing the news or for directly linking to news articles, but also for general links to news sites. But the concerns with Bill C-18 do not end there. The bill threatens press independence in two important respects.
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The Harm from Budget 2022’s Hidden Copyright Term Extension, Part Two: The Generational Loss of Access to Canadian History
The decision to agree to a copyright term extension in the USMCA is harmful policy, made worse by the decision to bury plans for implementation in Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s Budget 2022. As a result, there will be a two decade moratorium on new works entering the public domain, creating an enormous negative impact on access to Canadian culture and history for a generation. My first post examining the cost focused on some of Canada’s most decorated authors, whose works will be locked out of the public domain for a generation.
The negative impact of term extension on access to Canada’s history is equally damaging. Historians will lose public domain access to the works and papers some of Canada’s most notable leaders and figures of modern times, including leading Prime Ministers, Premiers, First Nations leaders, and Supreme Court justices. They include:
The Harm from Budget 2022’s Hidden Copyright Term Extension, Part One: Entry to Public Domain of Canadian Authors Lost for a Generation
Copyright term extension was rightly resisted by successive Canadian governments for decades because it offers few benefits and raises significant costs. The decision to agree to an extension in the USMCA is harmful policy, made worse by the decision to bury plans for implementation in Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s Budget 2022. As a result, there will be a two decade moratorium on new works entering the public domain, creating an enormous impact on access to Canadian culture and history for a generation. The plan has been described as a tax on consumers given that the new costs for Canadian education could run into the hundreds of millions of dollars. Further, the policy will create barriers to digitization initiatives that would otherwise increase access to works for all Canadians from coast-to-coast-to-coast.
While there is overwhelming independent academic and economic study on the harms, it is the real world stories that bring the harm arising from the policy to life. Today’s post is the first in a series that highlights just some of the works that were scheduled to enter the public domain in the coming years that will be locked out for a generation. As discussed in this post, the best approach for the government to mitigate against these harms is the implementation of a registration requirement. Registration would allow rights holders that want the extension to get it, while ensuring that many other works enter the public domain at the international standard of life plus 50 years. By providing for life plus 50 and the option for an additional 20 years, Canadian law would be consistent with Berne Convention formalities requirements and with its trade treaty obligations.
Budget 2022’s Tax on Consumers: Chrystia Freeland’s Seven Year Struggle With Copyright Term Extension
The inclusion of copyright term extension in Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s Budget 2022 may have been buried toward the very end of the last annex of the budget on page 274, but the issue has been front and centre for Freeland for many years. Indeed, Freeland has been well aware of the hidden costs arising from term extension since she was first elected in 2015. In her roles as Minister of International Trade, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and now Finance Minister, term extension has arisen repeatedly as she worked first to avoid term extension and later to maintain flexibility if forced into implementing the change.
Having fought to maintain that flexibility, it is now essential to establish a registration requirement, which would allow rights holders that want the extension to get it, while ensuring that many other works enter the public domain at the international standard of life plus 50 years. By providing for life plus 50 and the option for an additional 20 years, Canadian law would be consistent with Berne Convention formalities requirements and with its trade treaty obligations.
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 125: Sue Gardner on Journalism, the Internet Platforms, and the Online News Act
Last week, Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez introduced Bill C-18 – the Online News Act – the second of three planned Internet regulation bills. There is much to unpack about the provisions in the bill including the enormous power granted to the CRTC, the extensive scope of the bill that could cover tweets or LinkedIn posts, the provision that encourages the Internet platforms to dictate how Canadian media organizations spend the money at issue, and the principle that news organizations should be compensated by some entities not only for the use of their work but even for links that refer traffic back to them.
Sue Gardner is the Max Bell School of Public Policy McConnell Professor of Practice for 2021-2022. A journalist who went on to head CBC.ca and later the Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia), she is the only Canadian, and the first woman, to have run a global top-5 internet site. She joins the Law Bytes podcast for a conversation about journalism, the Internet platforms, and Bill C-18.
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