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

Copyright

An Open Letter to Harper on Fair Use

Meera Nair has crafted an excellent open letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper urging the government to implement a fair use provision in the Copyright Act.

June 3, 2011 — 1 comment — News

Cabinet Minister Mandate Letters for The Digital Era

With the new Parliamentary session set to kick off today with the election of a new speaker, new cabinet members are busy brushing up on the myriad of issues they will face in the coming months. The appointment to cabinet comes with a private mandate letter from the Prime Minister that sets out his expectations and policy goals. If Canadians focused on digital policies were given the chance to draft their own mandate letters, my weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) speculates that they might say the following:

Christian Paradis, Minister of Industry: As the new Minister of Industry, it falls to you to make the digital economy strategy initiated by your predecessor Tony Clement a reality. The centrepiece of the strategy should be universal, competitively priced broadband service. With a majority government in place, we have four years to open the market to new competitors, facilitate the introduction of new wireless broadband alternatives, encourage the market to offer fibre connections in all major markets, foster new local competitors, leverage the role of high speed research and education networks, consider using spectrum auction proceeds to fund broadband initiatives, and address anti-competitive pricing models. We should set realistic but ambitious targets for broadband speed, pricing, and competition that allows Canada to reverse a decade of decline and once again become a global leader.

June 2, 2011 — 1 comment — Columns

Access Copyright Responds: So Much For Getting the Facts Straight

Access Copyright has posted a two-page response to my recent series of blog postings (transactional licensing, economics of the collective, future reforms, all three posts in single PDF) titled “Let’s Get the Facts Straight on Access Copyright.” Unfortunately, as has become typical for an organization that based its advocacy strategy on Bill C-32 on misleading claims about fair dealing in an effort to “break through” beyond talk of digital locks and levies, the document contains very few facts to address its transparency and financial concerns.

The key post in my series involved a look at the economics of Access Copyright with the goal of ascertaining how much of the revenue collected in 2010 was distributed to Canadian authors. Those numbers should be easy to find, but they are not. Access Copyright points to its total distribution in 2010, which was $23.3 million. Yet this does not set the record straight. First, this global amount was distributed to all publishers and authors, both Canadian and foreign. Second, this figure draws from both the 2010 revenues and the balance entering the year, which stood at $29.5 million. How much of the 2010 distribution came from 2010 revenues? How much went to Canadian authors? Access Copyright still isn’t saying.

May 31, 2011 — 28 comments — News

Massive Copyright Class Action Settlement Approved: Record Labels to Pay $50 Million

The largest copyright class action in Canadian history received court approval yesterday, with the four major record labels that comprise the Canadian Recording Industry Association – EMI Music Canada Inc., Sony Music Entertainment Canada Inc., Universal Music Canada Inc. and Warner Music Canada Co. – agreeing to pay over $50 […]

May 31, 2011 — 22 comments — News

The Access Copyright Backlash: Writers Union of Canada Calls for Collective Licensing Reform

Last week’s series of posts on Access Copyright (transactional licensing, economics of the collective, future reforms, all three posts in single PDF), which examined the astonishing lack of transparency behind the copyright collective and the small percentage of revenues that are ultimately distributed to Canadian authors, resulted in a large number of private emails from authors expressing gratitude for the posts and venting enormous frustration. The concerns with Access Copyright broke out into the open this weekend at the Writers’ Union of Canada annual general meeting as the TWUC passed a motion recognizing the lack of control over how licensing revenue is managed and the inability of Access Copyright to represent creator interests. As a result, the TWUC plans to investigate operational separation of creators’ and publishers’ interests in collective licensing.

The full motion passed at the plenary session of the TWUC AGM states:

RECOGNIZING that collective licensing of copyright is a vital interest of the creator community, but that creators receive an inadequate share of the revenues of Access Copyright and are unable to control how the copyright income raised in their name is managed

And RECOGNIZING that key differences in the copyright interests of publishers and creators will always prevent Access Copyright from fully and effectively representing creators’ copyright interests

MOVED that a solution is an operational separation of creators’ and publishers’ interests in collective licensing, for instance, by the British model of a creator-run distribution collective that controls and distributes the half of collective revenues that belong to creators.

And MOVED that National Council direct an investigation as to how this significant reform of collective licensing in Canada can be brought about at the earliest possible moment.

The motion apparently passed with one abstention and opposition from only three people, all Access Copyright board members.

May 29, 2011 — 84 comments — News