Fair Dealing by Giulia Forsythe (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/dRkXwP

Copyright

Why Isn’t YouTube Canadian?: My Appearance Before the Industry Committee

Earlier this month I appeared before the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology, which is conducting a study on the e-commerce market in Canada. A transcript of the hearing is available here and audio of the hearing here. My prepared opening remarks are posted below. The discussion that followed touched a wide range of issues including copyright reform and competitiveness in the wireless and broadband sectors.

Appearance before the Standing Committee on Industry
October 17, 2011

Good afternoon. My name is Michael Geist. I am a law professor at the University of Ottawa where I hold the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law.

I appear before this committee today in a personal capacity representing only my own views.

I want to congratulate the committee for launching this study of e-commerce in Canada. It is a critically important issue deserving of greater attention. While the committee has identified some excellent questions, I’d boil the issue down to a single one:

Why have Canadian consumers embraced e-commerce, but Canada has failed to produce many significant global e-commerce success stories?

October 31, 2011 — 10 comments — Committees, News

The Daily Digital Lock Dissenter, Day 19: Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences

The Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences represents more than 85,000 researchers in 80 scholarly associations, 79 universities and colleges, and 6 affiliates. Its submission on Bill C-32’s digital lock rules provides a good illustration of the damage likely to be caused by the rules to research in […]

October 31, 2011 — 1 comment — News

The Problem With Digital Locks

The National Post runs a masthead editorial that tears apart the digital lock rules in Bill C-11, describing the bill as a “flawed piece of legislation” that the government should either kill or amend on its own initiative. It argues: Preventing consumers from playing material that they have paid for, […]

October 28, 2011 — 32 comments — News

The Daily Digital Lock Dissenter, Day 18: Canadian Bar Association

The Canadian Bar Association, which represents 37,000 lawyers, law professors, and students from across the country, released an important submission on Bill C-32. The submission, which was approved as a public statement by both the National Intellectual Property and the Privacy and Access Law Sections of the CBA, did a nice job setting out the debate over Bill C-32 (I was once a member of the CBA’s Copyright Policy section but was not involved in the drafting of the Bill C-32 document).

The CBA submission is notable as a strong counter to the frequent attempts to characterize critics of digital lock rules or other elements of the bill as “anti-copyright.” Far from the claims that there is near unanimity in support of DMCA-style reforms, the CBA submission confirms that the legal experts who work on copyright issues on a daily basis are deeply divided on many issues. While some members supported the digital lock rules, there was a clear divide:

October 28, 2011 — 2 comments — News

Plurilateral Trade Agreements Lack Protections for Users, Intermediaries

Margot Kaminski posts an important op-ed at IP Watch on the lack of protection for users and intermediaries in agreements like ACTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP). The IP chapter in the TPP leaked earlier this week.

October 28, 2011 — Comments are Disabled — News