Post Tagged with: "fair dealing"

Pulling a Fast One?: Who Is Really Hurt By C-32’s Missing Fair Dealing Circumvention Exception

For the past two Bill C-32 committee meetings, Conservative MP Ed Fast, a new member of the committee, has emerged as an important questioner. Fast has focused on the digital lock rules with several exchanges that defend the government’s approach. While dozens of groups (including education, consumer groups, libraries, archivists, retailers, and technology companies) have called for a link between circumvention and copyright infringement, Fast believes that opening that door would effectively eliminate the use of digital locks.

For example, yesterday he asked the Canadian Federation of Students how it could justify “eliminating digital locks altogether by allowing circumvention for fair dealing purposes?” Last week, he had a similar exchange with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, stating “my concern is if you go that extra step and allow circumvention for fair dealing, you’ve now made it so much more easy to actually allow the cheaters to undermine the system, where digital locks become absolutely meaningless.”

Fast has clearly given some thought to the digital lock issue, but he is wrong that linking circumvention to actual copyright infringement would render digital locks irrelevant.

February 16, 2011 — 23 comments — News

Canadian Federation of Students Releases C-32 Position Paper

The Canadian Federation of Students has issued a comprehensive position paper on Bill C-32. It calls for the adoption of a flexible fair dealing provision and raises questions about the inclusion of the digital lock rules. At a minimum, it calls for a link between circumvention and an infringing purpose […]

February 2, 2011 — Comments are Disabled — News

The Roadmap to a Compromise on Bill C-32

Yesterday I posted on the urgent need for Canadians to speak out on Bill C-32, with the committee examining the bill inviting email submissions until January 31, 2011. The post included links to several background posts on the bill, digital locks, and fair dealing. A more specific proposal on digital lock reforms can be found here. This week I also have a guest op-ed in the Hill Times (HT version, homepage version) that suggests that the roadmap to a compromise on Bill C-32 can be found among the various policy comments from the political parties late last year.

January 18, 2011 — 10 comments — Columns

Supreme Court Grants Leave to Hear Song Previews as Fair Dealing Case

Fair dealing is heading back to the Supreme Court of Canada. This morning, the court granted leave to hear an appeal of SOCAN v. Bell Canada, the case in which the Federal Court of Appeal confirmed that 30 second song previews can constitute fair dealing under the Copyright Act since […]

December 23, 2010 — 10 comments — News

Clearing Up the Copyright Confusion: Fair Dealing and Bill C-32

Fair dealing has played a prominent role in the hearings on Bill C-32, with education and creator groups debating the merits and impact of the proposed reforms. Unfortunately, much of the discussion has confused rather than clarified the issue with misleading claims about potential losses, inaccurate comments on copyright and Internet materials, and dubious arguments about the compliance of the reforms under international copyright law.

Given the recent discussion, this lengthy post [also available as a PDF] seeks to clear up the confusion with an opening basic introduction to fair dealing and the proposed reforms followed by answers to many of the questions that have been raised over the past few months (a similar review of the digital lock rules can be found here [PDF]).

Bill C-32 and Fair Dealing – The Basics

December 15, 2010 — 26 comments — News