Eddie Schwartz, the president of the Songwriters Association of Canada, responds to the recent National Post editorial criticizing the organization's proposal to fully legalize file sharing with a counterpoint editorial.
Fair Dealing by Giulia Forsythe (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/dRkXwP
Copyright
Responding to the IIPA’s “Inaccuracies and Hyperbole”
Last month, the IIPA, a lobby group representing a handful entertainment industries, released its annual submission to the United States Trade Representative criticizing the copyright laws of dozens of countries around the world. That submission will likely play an influential role in next month's USTR Special 301 Report. As usual, Canada was on their list, leading to the usual press coverage claiming that Canada is a laggard on copyright reform. While Canadian officials have criticized the USTR Special 301 report, to my knowledge the government has never made a formal submission defending Canadian policies.
This year, the USTR received 24 submissions, including comments from three countries – Israel, Poland, and Turkey (the USTR has posted the non-governmental submissions for the first time this year). The Israeli submission has been posted online and provides a great model for how countries should be defending their national interests. The submission, which characterizes the IIPA submission as containing the "usual inaccuracies and hyperbole," includes a great defense of Israeli copyright policy. For example, on the issue of anti-circumvention legislation it notes:
ISPs and P2P
The news is full of ISPs being asked/required to play a larger role in P2P – Japan's ISPs adopt a three strikes and you're out approach to subscribers engaged in file sharing, Sweden rejects that approach in favour of one that requires ISPs to disclose subscriber information to rights holders, […]
Moore on Brunet
Christopher Moore blogs about Claude Brunet's keynote at the Access Copyright annual meeting. While I obviously strongly disagree with the characterization of the Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook group, Moore's emphasis on contract rather than copyright is an important issue that is too often overlooked.
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