Post Tagged with: "CRIA"

Can’t Blame Canada For Counterfeiting

Appeared in the Toronto Star on March 5, 2007 as Piracy in Canada Noise Getting Tiresome Based on recent media coverage, people unfamiliar with Canada could be forgiven for assuming that all Canadians sport pirate eye-patches while searching for counterfeit treasure. The "Canada as a piracy haven" meme has been […]

March 5, 2007 — 1 comment — Columns Archive

Counterfeit Claims

CRIA's Graham Henderson was back in the spotlight yesterday with a speech delivered on behalf of the Canadian Anti-Counterfeiting Network at the Economic Club of Toronto understatedly titled "Canada Awash in Piracy" An Action Plan to Secure Our Prosperity". The speech, which has yet to be posted online (then again, CRIA has not posted a release or a speech since last September), followed the usual CRIA formula:

law firm sponsors to help fill the room (McCarthy Tetrault)
a questionable Pollara study (this one focused on Canadians' appetite for counterfeit goods)
cracks at law professors ("we don't have a [piracy party] here yet but there are rumours that some law professors are putting one together")
an astonishingly critical portrayal of Canada and Canadian policy makers (Canada has "a poorly developed marketplace framework for intellectual property rights", low Canadian attendance at a WIPO counterfeiting conference was "a grievous oversight and it sends a disturbing message", etc.)

There are several issues worth noting about the speech. First, I don't know many people who are in favour of commercial counterfeiting. If the allegations regarding organized crime involvement and health and safety issues (counterfeit pharmaceuticals, batteries, toys) are even partially true, Canada should have a legal system to address these concerns. Henderson suggested several reforms (trademark reform, customs powers) that would likely prove relatively uncontroversial in that regard.

The problem with this latest campaign is that it massively overstates the problem and seeks to conflate commercial counterfeiting with other activities that are not nearly as problematic.

February 28, 2007 — 10 comments — News

The Recording Industry’s Digital Strategy Out of Tune

My weekly Law Bytes column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) begins with the following:

Ten years ago, as the Internet began to mushroom in popularity and emerging technologies enabled consumers to make near-perfect copies of digital content, the recording industry emphasized a two-pronged strategy in response to the changing business environment. First, it focused on copy-control technologies, often referred to as digital rights management (DRM), that many in the industry believed would allow it re-assert control over music copying. Second, it lobbied the Canadian government for a private copying levy to compensate for the music copying that it could not control.

While the industry’s approach proved successful on the legal front – the 1996 World Intellectual Property Organization’s Internet Treaties established legal protections for DRM and Ottawa introduced a private copying levy on blank media such as cassettes and CDs in 1997 – the strategy’s effectiveness has long been subject to debate. The week of February 5th may ultimately be viewed as the beginning of the end of that debate. That week, which began with Apple CEO Steve Jobs calling on the industry to drop DRM and concluded with the Canadian Private Copying Collective (CPCC), the collective that administers the private copying levy, applying for its dramatic expansion, leaves little doubt that the recording industry got it wrong.

The column proceeds to discuss the failure of DRM and the mounting pressure on the industry to drop it.

February 19, 2007 — 5 comments — Columns

Recording Industry’s Digital Strategy Out of Tune

Appeared in the Toronto Star on February 19, 2007 as Recording Industry's Off-Key Strategy Ten years ago, as the Internet began to mushroom in popularity and emerging technologies enabled consumers to make near-perfect copies of digital content, the recording industry embarked on a two-pronged strategy in response to the changing […]

February 19, 2007 — Comments are Disabled — Columns Archive

CPCC Goes For Broke, Part Two

While the substantive shortcomings of the latest attempt to add a levy to the Apple iPod and SD cards are important (not to mention legal questions of res judicata and political questions surrounding the Conservatives policy commitment to eliminate the levy), there is a bigger story at work. Ten years ago, the music industry's vision of what the market would look like today focused on two things – DRM and the private copying levy. DRM formed the key provisions in the WIPO Internet Treaties that were concluded in 1996, while CRIA celebrated the culmination of a 15 year lobbying effort to create a levy on blank media in 1997.

Fast forward to 2007 and it is clear that the industry got it completely wrong. DRM faces a consumer and regulatory backlash, with a growing number of leading digital music vendors – Yahoo, Real, and Apple – all calling on the industry to drop the restrictions. They are joined by independent labels who are successfully promoting their music through eMusic, the number two online music seller, and by the artists themselves. With the rumours of EMI dropping DRM, it looks like it is only a matter of time before the DRM-focused strategy is abandoned.

The private copying levy has gone through similar challenges. The levy has succeeded in generating an enormous amount of income (over $150 million), yet some believe it has become a roadblock to WIPO ratification (national treatment concerns associated with the levy), it is far more market distorting that its advocates anticipated, and much to CRIA's dismay, it has provided peer-to-peer file sharers with a legitimate argument that downloading for personal, non-commercial purposes is lawful in Canada.

At the same time, the emerging view worldwide is that some of the copying it compensates – device shifting from CDs to iPods – should not be compensated. For example:

February 12, 2007 — 6 comments — News