There's a well balanced article by David George-Cosh on the reference to copyright in the Throne Speech in the Financial Post/National Post today, October 20, 2007.
Several of the usual suspects were quoted or referred to, including Michael Geist, Graham Henderson, and yours truly.
The focus of the article is on what might be called "DMCA North", or the attempt of CRIA and the USA Government to import American style copyright law to Canada.
This is nothing if not ironic because, as Michael Geist has documented, the architect of the DMCA, Bruce Lehman has "acknowledged that "our Clinton administration policies didn't work out very well" and "our attempts at copyright control have not been successful."
Also, see Shane Schick for another piece that makes some good points on the Throne Speech in IT World Canada, here.
HK
Showing posts with label copyright throne speech. Show all posts
Showing posts with label copyright throne speech. Show all posts
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Copyright and Throne Speech
Here's the speech.
Copyright revision was mentioned briefly.
That's good news.
Even if a bill is not passed before the next election, it would be good to see it.
If it gets as far as committee, it is essential that it be dealt with wisely, effectively and properly through a joint committee with the appointment of two or three expert counsel who can work together to provide balanced advice. I have suggested all of this before.
Mercifully, the Speech omitted any specific reference to "counterfeiting" as such. Hopefully, this will mean that the efforts of various IP lobbyists that can have the effect of erroneously confusing and conflating counterfeiting (which I abhor) with legitimate parallel imports (which I support and have successfully defended in the Supreme Court of Canada) will be put off to another day.
We already have very strong measures, including criminal offenses, on the books against both commercial "counterfeiting" (which term is generally used in the trade-marks context) and "piracy" (which generally applies in the copyright context). Some activity involves both. It's far from clear that we need to gratuitously guild the lily. Hopefully, the Government agrees and will take care not to enact excessively strong or unnecessary remedies that would catch dolphins in a drift net or impede legitimate (i.e. parallel import) trade.
Of course, the absence of a reference in the speech to counterfeiting doesn't mean that we won't see legislation at some point. Anti-piracy measures (hopefully not excessive) will probably be in the copyright bill.
HK
Copyright revision was mentioned briefly.
That's good news.
Even if a bill is not passed before the next election, it would be good to see it.
If it gets as far as committee, it is essential that it be dealt with wisely, effectively and properly through a joint committee with the appointment of two or three expert counsel who can work together to provide balanced advice. I have suggested all of this before.
Mercifully, the Speech omitted any specific reference to "counterfeiting" as such. Hopefully, this will mean that the efforts of various IP lobbyists that can have the effect of erroneously confusing and conflating counterfeiting (which I abhor) with legitimate parallel imports (which I support and have successfully defended in the Supreme Court of Canada) will be put off to another day.
We already have very strong measures, including criminal offenses, on the books against both commercial "counterfeiting" (which term is generally used in the trade-marks context) and "piracy" (which generally applies in the copyright context). Some activity involves both. It's far from clear that we need to gratuitously guild the lily. Hopefully, the Government agrees and will take care not to enact excessively strong or unnecessary remedies that would catch dolphins in a drift net or impede legitimate (i.e. parallel import) trade.
Of course, the absence of a reference in the speech to counterfeiting doesn't mean that we won't see legislation at some point. Anti-piracy measures (hopefully not excessive) will probably be in the copyright bill.
HK
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