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

Copyright

30 Days of DRM – Day 23: Education Institutions (Circumvention Rights)

Much like the Libraries, Archives, and Museums provisions discussed yesterday, Canadian educational institutions also benefit from some specific exceptions under the Copyright Act. These include:

Section 29.4(1), which permits copying a work to project in a classroom for education or training purposes
Section 29.4(2), which permits reproduction or telecommunications of works as required for examination purposes
Section 29.6, which permits educational institutions and their educators to make a copy of a news program to be shown to a class, while 29.7 covers any other program communicated to the public by telecommunication for a class presentation. These provisions are subject to several requirements including royalty payments and stringent record keeping.

All of these provisions face the prospect of being curtailed by DRM as the technology can be used to limit basic copying, reproduction, and copying of television broadcasts. Once anti-circumvention legislation is added to the mix, merely attempting to exercise those rights could constitute an infringement.

September 10, 2006 — Comments are Disabled — News

Steven Page on Spiral Frog

Steven Page of the Barenaked Ladies provides his perspective on the Spiral Frog announcement on the BNL Blog: have you heard about SpiralFrog yet? It's Universal Music's attempt to deal with the new world of music, and it seems downright bizarre to me. Basically, they're saying you can have all […]

September 9, 2006 — 2 comments — News

30 Days of DRM – Day 22: Libraries (Circumvention Rights)

Early in the series, I discussed the need for DRM-free library deposits as part of the legislated library deposit program that seeks to preserve Canadian heritage. There are additional library issues, however, that merit discussion. Section 30.1 of the Copyright Act grants libraries (as well as archives and museums) special rights to copy works in order to preserve or manage their collections. These are important rights and any anti-circumvention legislation must not be permitted to render them ineffective.

Section 30.1(1) provides that, under certain circumstances:

It is not an infringement of copyright for a library, archive or museum or a person acting under the authority of a library, archive or museum to make, for the maintenance or management of its permanent collection or the permanent collection of another library, archive or museum, a copy of a work or other subject-matter, whether published or unpublished, in its permanent collection

The circumstances that permit such copying include a copy that is:

September 9, 2006 — Comments are Disabled — News

Is RIM’s Pearl a Ringtone Killer?

Bob Lefsetz astutely points out that RIM's new Pearl device not only features a music player, but also permits users to use the songs they upload as ringtones.