Appeared in the Toronto Star on September 3, 2007 as Unlocking the Mystery of Locked Phones From the moment of its debut, the Apple iPhone has attracted enormous attention. Its biggest impact may go beyond the consumer electronics market, however, as the iPhone has forced politicians and regulators to confront […]
Fair Dealing by Giulia Forsythe (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/dRkXwP
Copyright
CRIA Stands Alone
This week, HMV announced that it was reducing the price on hundreds of back-catalog CDs generating a surprising amount of news coverage (Post, CBC). The move is good for everyone – the recording industry gets an important retail outlet to reduce prices on increasingly hard-to-find CDs (their largest retail outlets such as Wal-Mart do not carry many older titles), HMV gives a boost to music sales at a time when digital downloads, DVDs and video games command a growing share of the market, and consumers may find that the $20 sticker shock on some older CDs disappears. Yet leave it to CRIA to use the opportunity to spin this as a copyright reform story. HMV said absolutely nothing about the issue, because high-priced, older CDs have little to do with P2P file sharing or copyright law. CRIA's Graham Henderson claims, however, that "it's an effort to stem the tide of illegal downloading that threatens retailers and everyone else in the recording industry" and argues that other countries have reduced P2P through copyright reform while "a succession of Canadian governments have sat on their hands and done nothing."
Leaving aside the obvious – P2P is not down in other countries, HMV has not indicated that the reduced prices has anything to do with downloading, the Liberals introduced Bill C-60 in 2005, and that so-called "illegal downloading" often isn't illegal in Canada given the compensation that comes from the private copying levy – it is worth noting that these latest claims may drive a wedge between CRIA and one of its most important retail channels. In this case, HMV generates millions in free publicity for sale prices and CRIA jumps in with misleading copyright claims that only serve to undermine the goodwill created by HMV.
In many respects, this is nothing new.
The City of Totems
The City of Duncan, British Columbia is a relatively small town of about 5,000 located on Vancouver Island. With 80 totems scattered throughout city, Duncan bills itself as the City of Totems. Duncan has begun to generate some press coverage for adopting a new Totem Copyright Policy which apparently states that the City "holds the copyright policy on the totem collection" and that "the use of the totem images in any form requires approval from the City of Duncan."
As a matter of copyright law, this is seemingly wrong as there is no infringement of copyright for taking pictures of movies of a public sculpture or artistic work. Section 32.2(1)(b) of the Copyright Act provides that:
it is not an infringement of copyright for any person to reproduce, in a painting, drawing, engraving, photograph or cinematographic work a sculpture or work of artistic craftmanship. . . that is permanently situated in a public place of building.
Moreover, the City's claims raise further questions about whether it owns the copyright in the totems.
The SPP on IP
The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, which brings together the leaders of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, concluded this afternoon with a series of new agreements and strategies. Given the U.S. involvement, it should come as no surprise to find that an Intellectual Property Action Strategy forms a core part of the summit's final documentation. The document, which focuses on counterfeiting and piracy, includes three broad action items:
- "Detect and Deter Trade in Pirated and Counterfeit Goods," including developing best practices for enforcement, creating an enforcement network, increase collaboration on IP enforcement, and increased attention on border enforcement. Note that "digital piracy" is specifically identified as an issue for future work.
- "Public Awareness and Outreach," which includes greater co-operation between government and industry with increased information sharing. Lobby groups such as the Canadian Anti-Counterfeiting Network will conduct joint seminars with its US and Mexican counterparts on best practices and enforcement. The strategy also envisions policy roundtables and public awareness campaigns. The three countries will combine on a new website that will post articles about IP enforcement around the world, while industry has promised to develop a code of ethics for online transactions as well as a database on the benefits of IP and the dangers of counterfeiting and piracy.
- "Measuring Piracy and Counterfeiting," which includes developing baseline data on these issues, highlighting the effects of IP in each country's economy, and facilitating the collection of counterfeiting and piracy data.
All of these measures were entirely predictable, given that they are precisely what the North American Competitiveness Council recommended earlier this year. With that in mind, it bears noting what else the NACC recommended for completion by 2008, since it telegraphs what is on the horizon.
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