Post Tagged with: "copyright"

Warman v. Fournier Copyright Case Appealed

An appeal has been filed in the Warman v. Fournier, a notable federal court copyright case that addressed liability for linking and insubstantial copying. I wrote about the earlier decision here.

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September 24, 2012 1 comment News

The Nexus of Copyright and Intellectual Privacy

Alex Cameron, a lawyer with Faskens, recently obtained his doctorate in law from the University of Ottawa (I served on the examination panel at his defence). He has posted his important thesis examining the nexus between copyright and intellectual privacy, which is available here.

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September 20, 2012 1 comment News

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).

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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.

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August 22, 2012 5 comments News

How the Supreme Court of Canada Doubled Down on Users’ Rights in Copyright

I’ve posted several pieces on the recent Supreme Court of Canada copyright decisions, including an immediate overview, a piece on why Canada has shifted to fair use, an analysis of the inclusion of a technological neutrality principle, a discussion on the implication for Access Copyright, and a high level look at the key issues. This final post in the series tries to provide a broader context for what just occurred as the decisions mark the culmination of a ten year transformation of copyright at Canada’s highest court. Over the years, many have expressed doubts about this transformation, yet these five cases should put to rest the debate over whether a balanced analysis of the Copyright Act that prioritizes both creator and user rights has been entrenched in Canadian copyright law.

The shift began in 2002 with the Theberge decision, in which Justice Binnie for the majority discussed the copyright balance:

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July 23, 2012 6 comments News