Post Tagged with: "tpm"

paywall_nyt by Christoph Borer (CC BY-ND 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/czkcBm

Flawed Copyright Case Places Spotlight on Canada’s Digital Lock Problem

Does asking a friend for a copy of a newspaper article from a subscription website constitute copyright infringement? According to an Ottawa small claims court, it does.

The court recently issued a deeply flawed copyright ruling, providing a timely warning about the dangers of Canada’s restrictive digital lock rules that were enacted by the Conservatives over the strong objection of many copyright watchers.

My weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) notes that the case involved the president of the Canadian Vintners Association (CVA), who received an email from Blacklock’s Reporter, an Ottawa-based political publication, advising that he was quoted in an article discussing a recent appearance before a House of Commons committee. The man did not subscribe to the publication, which places its content behind a paywall, so he contacted a member of the association who was a subscriber and asked if he could see a copy of the article. When Blacklock’s Reporter learned that he had received a copy from the subscriber, it demanded that he pay for a full subscription or face a copyright infringement lawsuit.

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November 10, 2015 9 comments Columns

Industry Committee on Canada’s Science and Technology Strategy

The Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology has commenced the hearings on Canada's science and technology policy.  There are a handful of submissions online including CIPPIC, Tracey Lauriault, Russell McOrmand, the BCLA, and the Canadian Association of Broadcasters.  My submission is posted below:

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April 23, 2008 2 comments Committees, News

New Zealand’s Digital Copyright Law Demonstrates Anti-Circumvention Flexibility

New Zealand passed its digital copyright law this week, drawing the ire of the technology community and the blogosphere.  While the bill isn't great, many of the provisions are far better than what Industry Minister Jim Prentice may have in mind for Canada including format and time shifting provisions as well as anti-circumvention provisions that are more flexible than those found in the DMCA.  In fact, the anti-circumvention provisions are arguably the best of any country, since they are compliant with WIPO, limited in scope, and seek to preserve fair dealing rights.

On the anti-circumvention front, there are several things to note:

  • the technological protection measures (TPMs) expressly exclude access controls such as region coding.  In other words, the anti-circumvention provisions do not apply to devices that "only controls access to a work for non-infringing purposes."
  • the legislation targets anti-circumvention devices, but excludes those devices that have something more than "limited commercially significant applications" other than circumventing a TPM.
  • the law prohibits making, selling, distributing, advertising, or offering a circumvention device if the person "knows or has reason to believe that it will, or is likely to, be used to infringe copyright."  The inclusion of a knowledge requirement creates an additional safeguard against overbroad application of the provision.
  • most importantly, the law clearly permits circumvention for "permitted acts", which effectively preserves fair dealing rights (the statute also specifies the right to circumvent for encryption research).  More impressive, the law includes a system to facilitate circumvention for permitted acts in the event that users are unable to circumvent a TPM themselves.  In such cases, the law allows a "qualified person", which includes librarians, archivists, and educational institutions, to circumvent a TPM on behalf of a user (the user can also ask the copyright owner to unlock the work for them).

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April 10, 2008 16 comments News

Finland Court on Effective Copyright Protection

Lots of interest in a new decision from the Helsinki District Court, which has ruled the copy-protection system for DVDs, known as CSS, is not an effective TPM and therefore circumventing it does not constitute infringement.

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May 28, 2007 2 comments News

Will The Next Copyright Bill Pass Constitutional Scrutiny?

My colleague Jeremy deBeer has been the leading voice questioning whether anti-circumvention legislation – the legal protection for DRM that is often described as "para-copyright" – is constitutional, given that the potential rules arguably involve property rights (which falls under provincial jurisdiction) far more than traditional copyright (a federal matter).  […]

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May 24, 2007 4 comments News