Post Tagged with: "music canada"

Canada Copyright Board: Challenges & Opportunities #copycon2015 panel by Giulia Forsythe (CC BY 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/z73WDe

Former Copyright Board Chair Vancise Takes Aim at the Board Critics

The Honourable William Vancise, the former Chair of the Copyright Board of Canada, recently delivered a combative (and entertaining) speech at an ALAI conference in which he took the critics of the board head on. Although the conference was focused on the future of the Copyright Board, many lawyers who regularly appear before the board seemed reluctant to air their concerns in public. Instead, it fell to Vancise to liven the proceedings. The board has posted the speech online and it is well worth a read. I was in the audience and came in for criticism for this 2013 article titled It’s Time to Admit the Copyright Board is Broken.

Vancise reserved his strongest criticism for Music Canada and its lobbying campaign against Tariff 8:

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June 9, 2016 — 1 comment — News
Maryland State House by Danny Huizinga (CC BY 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/onmk19

Canada’s Copyright Lobby Revolving Door Raises Fairness Concerns Ahead of 2017 Review

The revolving door between government and lobby groups has long been a source of concern in the United States, where lead government IP officials have regularly jumped to lobby groups representing music, movies, and software interests and vice versa. In recent years, that has included the USTR official responsible for copyright in ACTA and the TPP moving the MPAA, the lead software industry lobbyist joining the USTR, and the general counsel of the Copyright Office joining the top international music association.

The Lobby Monitor reports that the revolving door has apparently migrated to Canada, with the former Director of Regulatory Affairs for Music Canada joining the government to play a key role in copyright policy, only to be replaced by the former Director of Parliamentary Affairs within the Prime Minister’s Office, who was the lead on the surprise copyright term extension for sound recordings passed in 2015.

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May 20, 2016 — 2 comments — News
Ontario Music Fund Oversight Hits Sour Note: Gov Docs Discuss “Breach of Integrity”

Ontario Music Fund Oversight Hits Sour Note: Gov Docs Discuss “Breach of Integrity”

The Canadian music industry gathered in Calgary last weekend for the Juno Awards, the industry’s biggest awards gala that has grown into a week-long event. While the award show is the public face of the Junos, behind the scenes are years of negotiations with governments to provide millions in public funding.

With Ontario hosting the Junos twice in three years – Hamilton hosted in 2015 and Ottawa is slated to host in 2017 – the provincial Liberal government has committed to enormous taxpayer support. My weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) reports that according to internal documents recently obtained under the provincial access to information laws, that funding has sparked concerns within government departments due to the mushrooming budgets, inflated claims about the economic impact of the awards, and what officials have described as a “breach [of] the integrity of the objective grant assessment process.”

Earlier this year, I wrote about the problems associated with the Ontario Music Fund (OMF), the provincial government’s flagship funding program for the music industry. The fund, which is administered by the Ontario Media Development Corporation (OMDC), has doled out nearly $30 million in two years despite little public transparency on how the money has been spent and questionable claims about job creation.

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April 4, 2016 — 2 comments — Columns
Harper Letter to Music Canada on Budget Day Confirms Copyright Extension the Product of Industry Lobbying

Harper Letter to Music Canada on Budget Day Confirms Copyright Extension the Product of Industry Lobbying

The government’s decision to extend the term of copyright for sound recordings in the budget may have taken most copyright observers by surprise, but not the music industry. I’ve posted earlier on their extensive lobbying efforts on the issue and how the extension will reduce competition, increase costs for consumers, and harm access to Canadian Heritage. The record of lobbyist meetings gives a hint of the reasons behind the extension, but a letter sent by Prime Minister Stephen Harper that I recently obtained suggests that it all it took was a letter from Music Canada President Graham Henderson to the Prime Minister.

The Harper letter was sent on April 21, 2015, the day the budget was tabled. It states:

Thank you for your recent letter regarding the copyright term for sound recordings. I have reviewed this material carefully, and share your view that the current term of copyright protection for sound recordings falls short of what is required to protect artists and ensure they are fairly compensated for their work.

Please know that, as announced today in Budget 2015, our Government will extend copyright protection for sound recordings from 50 to 70 years. The extension will be incorporated into the Budget Implementation Act, and will be in effect immediately upon passage of the legislation.

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May 15, 2015 — 21 comments — News
Girl in Front of Beatles Mural by James Jardine (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/dbQUCt

Lobbying & Licensing: Behind the Recording Industry’s Campaign to Squeeze Out New Competitors

My recent posts on the government’s surprise budget announcement that it plans to extend the term of copyright protection for sound recordings generated considerable private feedback, with several industry sources suggesting that the change is not quite what it seems. In fact, despite painting the reform as an effort to protect the rights of artists, foreign record companies have been primarily concerned with eliminating new competitors who offer cheaper, legal public domain recordings of popular artists such as the Beatles, Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, and the Rolling Stones.

From a consumer perspective, there is little doubt that the change will lead to higher prices for music. Multiple studies on copyright term extension for sound recordings have concluded that public domain recordings encourage competition between release companies and drive down the price for consumers. The songwriters are paid either way, but the consumers win with more choice and lower priced music.

My weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) notes that while some artists have lent support to the government’s proposed changes, the bigger story is what has been happening behind the scenes. As new public domain-based recordings began to appear at major Canadian retailers, foreign record labels adopted a two-pronged strategy: intense lobbying for legislative changes to lock down recordings for decades and blocking royalty payments to copyright owners to keep the new competitors out of the market.

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May 5, 2015 — 4 comments — Columns
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