Post Tagged with: "Copyright Board"

Prime Minister Trudeau Announces Canada Will Ban Single-Use Plastics by Adam Scotti (Office of the Prime Minister) https://pm.gc.ca/en/photos/2019/06/10/prime-minister-trudeau-announces-government-canada-will-ban-harmful-single-use

The Guilbeault Internet Plan: Leave it to the CRTC and Copyright Board of Canada to Get Money from Web Giants

In recent months, Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault has emerged as the de facto digital policy lead minister in Canada with Navdeep Bains largely silent on the race to regulate everything from online linking to how Canadian content is promoted on digital streaming services. New legislation is still forthcoming, but recent comments to industry town halls and press reports provide a good sense of what Guilbeault has in mind. In short, it appears the government will establish an extensive regulatory structure for digital services with registration or licensing requirements and mandated payments for a host of online activities. The amounts payable will be established through hearings at the CRTC and the Copyright Board of Canada. The government would retain the power to fine companies that fail to comply with the payment requirements and use a policy direction to the CRTC to make its policy intentions clear.

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October 13, 2020 5 comments News
Best Rubber Stamp by Funky Tee (CC BY-SA 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/bchhhx

Taking Value out of the Copyright Tariff Process: The Copyright Board’s Access Copyright Post-Secondary Tariff Decision

In March 2010, Access Copyright filed a tariff proposal with the Copyright Board to cover copying at post-secondary institutions in Canada. The proposed rate was $45 per year per university student and $35 per year per college student. The proposal represented a dramatic increase in the fees paid under the Access Copyright licence, which, when combined with Supreme Court of Canada jurisprudence on fair dealing in the 2004 CCH decision and the growing investment in digital materials, sparked concern among the Canadian education community. In 2012, the Supreme Court of Canada re-emphasized the broad and liberal approach to fair dealing as user’s right and the government would expand the fair dealing purposes to explicitly include education.

The Access Copyright tariff proposal progressed slowly before the Copyright Board, but on Friday, more than nine years after it was first filed, the Board issued its ruling. It established a retroactive tariff for the years from 2011-2014 of $24.80 per university student ($9.54 for college students) and $14.31 per university student ($5.50 for college students) for the years 2015 to 2017. Access Copyright welcomed the decision, arguing that it outlined a reasonable framework for copying in post-secondary institutions.

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December 10, 2019 3 comments News
Should Universities Opt Out of Access Copyright? @HowardKnopf @RoanieLevy Debate #congressh #caljacrs14 by Giulia Forsythe https://flic.kr/p/nvbkJN (CC0 1.0)

Misleading on Fair Dealing, Part 1: Access Copyright’s Inconsistent Claims on the Legal Effect of the 2012 Fair Dealing Reforms

Fair dealing has unsurprisingly emerged as one of the dominant topics of the ongoing Canadian copyright review. While educational institutions maintain that spending on content has increased since the 2012 reforms that added education to the list of fair dealing purposes, Access Copyright and the publishing community argue that licensing revenues have declined. Starting today, I’ll be posting a series on fair dealing that unpack many of the issues and demonstrate why House of Commons committees studying the issue may have been misled by exaggerated and inaccurate claims.

The series starts with the foundational argument from Access Copyright and its supporters, namely that current educational practices are the result of the 2012 copyright reforms that led to a significant expansion of fair dealing. The implication is that the government broke their compensation system in 2012 and should “fix it” by curtailing educational use of fair dealing. Future posts will explain why licensing has actually increased since 2012, but this post is limited to the oft-heard claim that the 2012 reforms are to “blame” for current educational practices.

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November 19, 2018 11 comments News
Omnibus by David (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/j4vM7Q

Tinkering With Copyright in Bill C-68: My Appearance Before the Standing Committee on Finance

I appeared earlier this week before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance as part of its review of Bill C-86, the Budget Implementation Act. The bill features extensive intellectual property provisions arising out of the IP strategy referenced in Budget 2018. My comments were consistent with previous posts on the changes to notice-and-notice, patents, and the Copyright Board.  My opening remarks are posted below.

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November 9, 2018 1 comment Committees, News
Copyright Reform 2017 by Giulia Forsythe https://flic.kr/p/T5g5tS (CC0 1.0)

Canadian Government Rejects Access Copyright’s Demand for Statutory Damages

Earlier this year, I wrote about lobbying pressure to “harmonize” statutory damages for copyright collectives. Access Copyright, which supported the measure, argued that the massive escalation in potential damage awards were needed for three reasons: deterrence, promotion of settlement negotiations, and efficient use of court resources. Yet as I argued in this post, none of the arguments rang true.

After months of internal wrangling, the government unveiled its proposed reforms to the Copyright Board yesterday as part of Bill C-86, its Budget Implementation Act. The bill contains many changes requested by copyright stakeholders. With respect to the statutory damages provisions, however, it has rightly left the statutory damages distinction between certain collectives in place, meaning that Access Copyright will not be able to rely on statutory damages for non-payment of tariffs, relying instead on actual damages (if any).

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October 30, 2018 3 comments News