My regular Law Bytes column (freely available hyperlinked version; Toronto Star version, homepage version) features the second part of an examination of the recent Canadian Federal Court of Appeal decision involving the recording industry's attempt to identify 29 alleged file sharers. After considering the privacy issues last week, this column moves to the copyright implications by considering three questions: can the Canadian recording industry sue file sharers? Can it win such suits? And what legal reverberations might ensue if it does win?
			
		Post Tagged with: "copyright"
Canada’s Upcoming Copyright Clash
The Literary Review of Canada's June issue is about to hit the newsstands and it includes The Upcoming Copyright Clash, an essay I wrote on copyright reform in Canada.
The essay brings together several themes that I've written about in the past including the value of the Canadian public domain and the danger associated with potential copyright term extension. It argues for a positive vision of copyright reform incluing the creation of a national digital library and greater usage rights for content created by the CBC, Canada's public broadcaster.
			
		Canada’s Choice: Copyright, Culture and the Internet
Canadian Library Association link
Canadian Copyright Petition Presented to Parliament
Yesterday Peter Julian, an MP from Burnaby, BC, presented to the House of Commons the first of what is likely to be several petitions calling for a balanced copyright approach in Canada. 
			
		Copyright’s Convergence
My weekly Law Bytes column (Toronto Star version and non-reg hyperlinked version, homepage version) reflects on two major copyright events of the past ten days — last week's Grokster case and the recently announced Canadian copyright reforms. Of all the interesting anecdotes about the Grokster case, I found the fact that people began lining up at 2:30 p.m. the day before the hearing the most interesting. As I argue in the column, when people are willing to line up for nearly 24 hours to hear a copyright case, something far bigger than accessing free music is taking place. 
			
		





