If you visited our website yesterday, you most likely noticed the following black-out page covering the entire cippic.ca site:
CIPPIC.ca joined
countless other websites in going entirely dark, or at least notionally censoring, our web pages for the day. This action was part of a worldwide protest against the U.S. Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT-IP Act (PIPA). The black-outs aimed to give web users a feel for what the internet could become under the purview of the proposed U.S. legislation -- that is, an internet where you might attempt to visit your favourite website, only to find that it was censored and blocked on the basis of aggressive U.S. content policies.
All too often, the crux of a legal case becomes an argument between large organizations over minute points of law. However, make no mistake about it: the copyright cases before the Supreme Court of Canada tomorrow will directly impact the everyday activities of most Canadians. Our interns produced several excellent videos to illustrate the ramifications of these appeals:
Next Tuesday, CIPPIC will make oral arguments in the "Copyright Pentalogy", a set of five copyright case that the Supreme Court of Canada will hear from December 6-7. These cases are likely to have a major impact on the scope of your fair dealing rights, as well as on how much you will pay in the future for online music, videos, and video games. You can watch CIPPIC's oral arguments online on Tuesday at the Supreme Court of Canada's live webcast.
The Supreme Court already granted CIPPIC leave to make written submissions on these important issues. CIPPIC provided the Court with advice in the following factums...
The Government of Canada announced a new copyright bill this morning, entitled the Copyright Modernization Act. The government claims it is identical to Bill C-32, which the Conservative minority tabled last year. This bill proposes many important updates to Canadian copyright law. If passed, it will legalize activities that Canadians already do on a daily basis: record television, copy songs onto MP3 players, and make backups of DVDs. The bill contains provisions to legalize the ordinary digital activities of many internet services, such as search engines and websites. It also importantly extends fair dealing to include education, parody and satire.
Unfortunately, the bill also succumbs to U.S. pressure and makes fair dealing -- including the new exceptions for the many ordinary activities of Canadians -- illegal whenever there is a "digital lock" on a work. A digital lock will trump all other rights, forbidding all fair dealing and keeping a work locked up even after its copyright term expires. Overall, these digital lock provisions are some of the most restrictive in the world.
CIPPIC has filed a motion to intervene in the Supreme Court of Canada case of Rogers v. SOCAN. This follows CIPPIC's filing of a similar motion last week to inteverne in a companion case, ESA v. SOCAN. In these two cases, SOCAN proposes that it should be allowed to levy more fees on online distributors of music and videos games. However, as CIPPIC proposes to argue, these online distributors already pay fair compensation to rights holders. They do so by licensing the right to reproduce and distribute music online, in much the same manner that traditional retail services obtain the rights to sell CDs and sell video game on DVDs. The additional fees that SOCAN proposes will only slow innovation and raise costs to customers.
The Supreme Court of Canada has granted leave SOCAN v. Bell, in which the Copyright Board and Federal Court of Appeal had agreed that consumer "previews" of 30 second music clips were fair dealing since they amounted to consumer research.
To better understand the basics of copyright law, Prof. Samuel E. Trosow (Western Ontario University)
presents to us his master class: Introduction to Copyright Law and prospects for new legislation.
In 2005, parliament considered revisions to the
Copyright Act in order to ensure that Canada's copyright framework remained relevant in the rapidly changing digital environment. The Canadian government introduced a long-awaited bill to amend the Copyright Act on June 20, 2005.
As Parliament considers legislated protection of Digital Rights Management (DRM) technologies (designed to detect and stop copying of digital works), the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has indicated her intent to "initiate a dialogue" with the departments of Heritage Canada and Industry Canada "to ensure that privacy risks" associated with any copyright legislation "are addressed." Some of the Commissioner's provincial counterparts have signaled their support of her initiative.
On May 12, 2004 the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, chaired by Sarmite D. Bulte, M.P. released an interim report listing a number of recommended reforms to Canadian copyright law. The first round of hearings for the report were launched in October 2003 where the Committee heard from a panel of invited witnesses including representatives from Canadian Heritage, Industry Canada, the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, the Canadian Association of Internet Providers and the Canadian Motion Picture Distributors Association among others. As a result of these consultations, the Committee came up with a number of recommendations.
In September 2003, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage ("Heritage Committee") began its review of the Section 92 report published by Industry Canadain October 2002.
The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or "ACTA", is a controversial proposal for a trade agreement currently being negotiated by a number of nations. ACTA addresses standards of enforcement of intellectual property rights. The content being proposed for ACTA has the potential to impact civil liberties and divert public resources towards the enforcement of private rights.
Bill C-61 was a bill to amend Canada's Copyright Act. The bill died on the order paper with the election of 2008. However, the present government has indicated in its
Throne Speech that it intends again to introduce legislation to amend the Copyright Act. Accordingly, we keep this FAQ available to the public.
Over the past few years, file-sharing - i.e., the sharing of files over peer-to-peer (P2P) networks - has become a popular way for music lovers to sample and gather music from a wide range of performers. However, most of the music downloaded and shared by consumers is copyrighted and hence, subject to laws limiting the rights of consumers to reproduce and distribute it.
Digital Rights Management (DRM), also sometimes called ECMS, or electronic copyright management systems, are technologies designed to automatically manage rights in relation to information. This can include preventing copyright works and other information from being accessed or copied without authorization and establishing and enforcing license terms with individuals.
Copyright is a system of laws for promoting both the creation of and access to artistic, literary, musical, dramatic and other creative works. It is usually presented as a balance between promoting the public interest in the encouragement of the creation and dissemination of works of the arts and intellect, and obtaining a just reward for the copyright holder
Bill C-60 was a proposal to amend Canada's Copyright Act. The Bill died on the order paper with the fall of the Martin government in 2005. However, the issues that motivated the government to table this Bill remain with us.
CIPPIC is seeking leave to intervene is SOCAN v. Bell, a copyright case that will consider the scope of fair dealing for research purposes. Also known as the Apple iTunes case, it is specifically about whether listening to short music previews is a research activity protected as fair dealing under the Copyright Act. CIPPIC is of the opinion that it is consumer research protected by fair dealing, as well as by the interaction of fair dealing with freedom of speech under the Charter.
Following through on its threat, the
Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) launched a lawsuit in the Federal Court (Trial Division), in Toronto Ontario, on February 10, 2004 against 29 unnamed alleged music file-sharers.
On March 4, 2004 the Supreme Court of Canada released its decision in the case of Law Society of Upper Canada v. CCH Limited [2004] S.C.J. No. 12, (2004) 236 D.L.R. (4th) 395 holding (i) that the Copyright Act's fair dealing exception should be liberally interpreted to prevent undue restraint of users' rights and (ii) that the provision of self-service photocopiers does not equal an infringement of copyright.
The Supreme Court of Canada heard arguments on Dec.3, 2003 from Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and music industry representatives in an important case that will decide, among other things, the extent to which Canadian ISPs are liable for content flowing through their networks, and the extent to which foreign actors who target communications to Canadians may be liable under the Canadian Copyright Act.
