As the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology (INDU) prepares for its first copyright review hearing next week featuring various representatives from the education community, MPs will regularly hear witnesses talk about the “copyright balance.” For Canadian copyright policy, balance has long been a foundational goal, regularly reflected in the views of both government and the courts. Yet according to a document obtained under the Access to Information Act, last fall officials at the Ministry of Canadian Heritage advised Minister Melanie Joly to abandon the emphasis on a copyright balance.
Post Tagged with: "theberge"
Copyright in the Public Interest: How Canada Can Establish a Pro-Innovation Reform Agenda
The Centre for International Governance Innovation, the well-respected independent think tank based in Waterloo, has posted the first part of an exceptional new series on innovation. From the introduction from Rohinton Medhora to several pieces on innovation and trade (Kahin, Haggart, Ciuriak, and Van Harten), the series promises to provide politicians and policy makers with valuable insights to support the government’s focus on innovation. I was delighted to participate in the project with a piece titled How Trolls are Stifling Innovators, Gamers and Netflix Junkies.
The contribution, which is accompanied by a video on the impact of copyright and fair use on innovation, identifies several areas of copyright reform that are closely linked to innovation policy. These include copyright flexibilities such as fair use, the need to prevent IP and copyright misuse, and the harms associated with restrictive digital lock rules. The article starts by noting that the Supreme Court of Canada highlighted the link between copyright and innovation in the 2002 Theberge decision:
Competition Policy and IP
While response to last week's federal budget unsurprisingly focused on new spending, it also included a commitment to create an expert independent panel to conduct a review of Canadian competition policy. Given that the Minister of Industry envisions a broad mandate to "review anything under the federal umbrella that affects […]
30 Days of DRM – Day 12: Research and Private Study (Circumvention Rights)
Section 29 of the Copyright Act contains one of the most important user rights in Canadian copyright law – fair dealing for the purpose of research or private study does not infringe copyright. For many years, this provision was narrowly defined such that the education and library communities adopted relatively conservative approaches to defining what constituted fair dealing. In recent years, however, Canada has experienced a dramatic shift in the vibrance and importance of fair dealing. In a trio of cases, the Supreme Court of Canada strongly affirmed the need for balance in Canadian copyright law. The shift began in the Theberge, where Justice Binnie, in discussing the copyright balance, stated that:
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