Post Tagged with: "copyright"

The DMCA is Anti-Competitive

So says the CATO Institute, a noted free market, limited government, U.S. think tank. I provided a Canadian perspective on the competitive effects of anti-circumvention legislation in my contribution to the In the Public Interest book. (Thanks Howard!).

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March 21, 2006 Comments are Disabled News

The Rise of the Clip Culture

My weekly Law Bytes column (homepage version, Toronto Star version, international BBC version) examines the rise of the "clip culture" which has driven the remarkable growth of video sharing sites such as Youtube.com. The column highlights the different types of clips and discusses the legal and business implications that video sharing is beginning to generate. 

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March 20, 2006 Comments are Disabled Columns

More McBride

As keepmusiccoming.com falls into the hands of a Russian download site and the French Parliament moves closer toward creating download penalties akin to traffic tickets, Nettwerk founder Terry McBride continues to push for sanity in North America.  Check out his Save the Music Fan site, which includes his op-ed for […]

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March 12, 2006 Comments are Disabled News

Bill C-60 and Private Copying

While Bill C-60 is history, a specific provision involving private copying merits a brief comment.  The bill's approach to anti-circumvention provisions was generally that circumvention of a TPM was only an infringement where the purpose was to infringe copyright.  There was, however, a notable exception for private copying.  In other words, if you defeated the encryption on a copy-control CD for the purposes of making a private copy, that act would constitute infringement, even if the copying itself was lawful.

The presumed rationale behind this exception was that the private copying levy is supposedly linked to actual copying.  Supporters of the provision argue that the levy can go up or down, depending on that copying.  Assuming a world of ubiquitous copy-controls (that actually work), the levy would decrease to zero since there would be no private copying at all.

 

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March 9, 2006 5 comments News

Keepmusiccoming.com Goes From Bad To Worse

I recently blogged about CRIA's failure to renew keepmusiccoming.com, which it used as part of its "educational" campaign to convince users to stop downloading.  A blog reader has noted that the situation has gone from bad to worse as the site is now owned by a Russian download service offering […]

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March 9, 2006 6 comments News