Post Tagged with: "canada"

What If YouTube Was Sued in Canada?

My colleague Jeremy deBeer assesses the legal issues from a Canadian perspective.

April 4, 2007 — Comments are Disabled — News

Never Mind

Remember the big battle over Canadian Internet pharmacies, the claims of a major crisis in Canada and the U.S., and the introduction of Canadian legislation to address the issue? Well, last year Internet pharmaceutical sales dropped in half, the result of a stronger Canadian dollar and better insurance plans in […]

March 21, 2007 — Comments are Disabled — News

The State of the TV and Film Industry in Canada

The CFTPA and Canadian Heritage have released their annual report [PDF] on the state of the industry. The report contains detailed analysis of film and tv production in Canada without (refreshingly) a single complaint about copyright. Interestingly, rather than discussing camcording, the report identifies a different problem with the Canadian […]

March 2, 2007 — 11 comments — News

In Good Company

The International Intellectual Property Alliance – a group that brings together several U.S. lobby groups including the MPAA, RIAA, BSA, the ESA, and publisher groups, has just released its Section 301 recommendations, a submission to the U.S. Trade Representative that frequently serves as a blueprint for U.S. commentary on intellectual property protection around the world. The list covers 60 countries, including most of the world's leading economies. The USTR report, which will be released in April, will likely mirror the IIPA recommendations.

Canada figures prominently on this list and indeed this year it is expected that the U.S. will escalate the pressure by placing us on the Priority Watch List. The Globe and Mail gives the lobby groups' recommendations front page coverage with dire warnings for Canada (the coverage is matched in other countries – see Taiwan and Thailand as examples). The IIPA submission on Canada includes a litany of complaints, including the failure to implement the WIPO Internet Treaties, the need for ISPs to play a greater role in dealing with copyright infringement, the need for a camcorder law, and the need for greater enforcement activity. The IIPA report is particularly critical of Bill C-60, arguing that Canada should "jettison" the approach in favour of something, well, like the U.S. has implemented. In fact, it incorrectly argues that full compliance with the WIPO Internet treaties requires legislation that matches the DMCA (full TPM protection, ban on devices that can be used to circumvent, limited exceptions). It also wants the scope of the private copying limited and clear liability for P2P services established. In fact, it even attacks Bill C-60's tepid distance learning and library loan provisions, arguing that they "would have had a significant detrimental impact on publishers of scientific, technical, and medical materials."

While the IIPA recommendations have predictably led to negative, overblown press coverage in Canada, a little context is needed. The reality is that the majority of the world's biggest economies face similar criticism, including:

February 14, 2007 — 27 comments — News

CPCC Goes For Broke, Part One

A remarkable week in music that started with the Steve Jobs call to drop DRM, followed by speculation that EMI will drop DRM, concluded with another critically important development – the Canadian Private Copying Collective, which administers the private copying levy, has asked the Copyright Board to increase the levy on blank CDs and add levies to electronic media cards (storage media) such as SD cards as well as digital audio players such as the Apple iPod. There is much to consider here, which I will divide between the specific issues raised by the tariff application and the bigger story that is at work.

On the specific tariff application, I think the CPCC is going to have a tough time convincing the Copyright Board (and almost certainly the federal court) that the levy increases and extensions to other media are warranted. The blank CD increase represents an astonishing request as the CPCC is now openly asking that more than half of the retail price of blank CDs to be comprised of levy costs. A backgrounder on the CPCC notes that blank CDs cost about 50 cents and that the levy currently comprises 21 cents of that cost. That is an enormous cost – 42 percent – and the collective wants to increase that by an additional 28 percent. This is a staggering market distortion that will obviously face very stiff opposition.

The proposal to extend the levy to storage media and Apple iPods also face an uphill climb. The storage media usage data simply does not come close to supporting a levy. The CPCC's FAQ says that its surveys suggest that 25 percent of content copied onto these cards is music and that 20 percent of people say that the last time they copied onto an electronic memory card, the content was music. Put another way, 75 percent of content copied onto these cards is not music and 80 percent of people say that the content they last copied onto these cards was not music. These results are obvious to anyone who owns a digital camera, but apparently not to the CPCC. While the Copyright Board's definition of ordinary use opens the door to considering storage media, this represents bad, market-distorting policy that (if approved) would force the 80 percent of non-music copiers to subsidize the 20 percent of music copiers.

The attempt to extend the levy to Apple iPods is similarly flawed.

February 11, 2007 — 14 comments — News