Fair dealing debates often focus on education-related issues, but its role as a user’s right extends far beyond the classroom. As part of fair dealing week, I’ll be posting on several cases that highlight the importance of fair dealing for many other purposes. For example, last year an Ontario case highlighted how fair dealing is an essential legal right for creators. The Room is a well-known film (sometimes referred to as the Citizen Kane of bad movies) that was the subject of The Disaster Artist, a film released late last year starring James Franco. In 2016, a group of documentary film makers released Room Full of Spoons, which examined the popularity of The Room.
Fair Dealing by Giulia Forsythe (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/dRkXwP
Copyright
Fair Dealing Fake News: When Seeking a Refund Arising From Copyright Over-Payments Becomes a “Legal Attack on Writers”
With the Canadian copyright review likely to commence in a few weeks, the hysteria associated with fair dealing – much of it disconnected from the economic reality of spending on copyright works since 2012 – promises to hit a fever pitch. Access Copyright and the Writers Union of Canada got off to an early start in their reaction to a lawsuit filed last week by Canadian school boards and Ministries of Education seeking a refund for years of over-payments that has cost schools more than $25 million. The groups described the lawsuit as “an outrageous attack on Canada’s writers” and “simply intimidation.”
![By Pratyeka (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AOptus_blocking_TPB.jpg](https://www.michaelgeist.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Optus_blocking_TPB-200x150.jpg)
The Case Against the Bell Coalition’s Website Blocking Plan, Part 8: The Ineffectiveness of Website Blocking
The Bell website blocking coalition unsurprisingly argues that blocking “regimes have been widely adopted internationally because they have been proven to work.” The submission cites data from several countries including the UK, Portugal, and South Korea. As demonstrated last week, the Bell coalition proposal has not been widely adopted internationally. In fact, the overwhelming majority of countries have rejected approaches that do not include court orders. Moreover, a closer look at the data reveals that website blocking is far less effective than its proponents claim.
Canada Releases Most of the Updated TPP Text…But the Side Letters Are Still Missing
The Canadian government and other TPP partners released the text of most of the CPTPP yesterday. The release contained few surprises as the TPP remains intact and a new annex identifies the suspended provisions. The list of suspended provisions was revealed several months ago and is particularly notable for the suspension of IP provisions such as copyright term extension, patent term adjustment, technological protection measures, biologics protection, and Internet safe harbour rules.
The Case Against the Bell Coalition’s Website Blocking Plan, Part 6: Over-Blocking of Legitimate Websites
As the public concern over the Bell coalition website blocking plan continues to grow (both the Canadian Press and CBC this weekend covered the thousands of interventions at the CRTC), the case against the plan resumes with a review of why it is likely that it will lead to over-blocking of legitimate websites. Last week’s post highlighted the probable expansion of the scope of piracy for blocking purposes, a theme that continues today with a look at the many incidents over-blocking of legitimate sites sparked by website blocking (other posts in the series include the state of Canadian copyright, weak evidence on the state of Canadian piracy, the limited impact of piracy, and why the absence of a court order would place Canada at odds with virtually all its allies).
The danger of over-blocking legitimate websites raises serious freedom of expression concerns, particularly since experience suggests that over-blocking is a likely outcome of blocking systems. The Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights issued a report in 2014 on the rule of law on the Internet in the wider digital world, noting:
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