"Officer Bubbles" Sues YouTube et al over Cartoons based on Video of "Bubble Trouble" Assault Arrest @ G20

"Officer Bubbles" (the officer second from the right in the photo below) is suing YouTube and several individuals over videos reportedly consisting of allegedly defamatory cartoons based on this video. The cartoons ("parodies" perhaps?) have been taken down already, which is interesting. Here and here are Toronto Star stories.

His lawyer says that "This level of ridicule goes beyond what is reasonable".

Watch the video. It's about an arrest at the recent G20 protest in Toronto for assaulting a police police officer by blowing bubbles.

Seriously, this could be real bubble trouble.

Reminiscent perhaps of the RCMP's Sargeant Pepper (above at the top) in Vancouver in 1997 at the APEC conference? In this bubble case, there was an arrest of the alleged bubble blowing perpetrator.

Here's the video that's going viral.


An interesting situation for YouTube. Let's hope it does the right thing concerning the cartoonists' identities, which are reportedly now being sought.

We may not get to see the cartoons. Maybe they did go beyond the pale? Maybe ridicule would be redundant in this case? Maybe some or all of them would be defensible and should be defended - with recourse, if necessary, to s. 2(b) of Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms?

Hopefully, a well funded advocacy group such as CIPPIC or the CCLA will get involved. Maybe the bubble blower (allegedly Ms. Courtney Winkles) has a cause of action? This could maybe be as interesting, if not more, as the BMG case, in which I was involved - both in terms of substance and procedure.

We could use some good law on parody in Canada - both in terms of defamation and copyright law. "Parody and satire" are included in Bill C-32, the copyright amendment bill. If this passes, it will hopefully reverse some arguably unfortunate jurisprudence that denies Canadians a right to parody enjoyed by those in Australia, France and the USA.

HK

PS - An anonymous reader has provided a link to what appears to be the statement of claim in this matter in a comment below.

More PS - see Toronto Life.

More US Treaty Troubles

(Philip Johnson's "Glass House"/Business Week)

There has been a potentially very important interim ruling in the mega litigation in the USA involving NFL, Premier league, et al against YouTube.

Judge Louis Stanton of the Southern District of New York has ruled that infringement of foreign works (other than live broadcast events for which 48 hour advance notice has been given to potential infringers) cannot given rise to statutory damages under US Copyright Act unless the work was registered in in the USA in a timely fashion - which will seldom be the case.

While this might not have a huge effect on the particular litigation against YouTube, it is great news overall for Google, which owns YouTube, and any other parties that host foreign works on US servers.

Naturally, alarm bells are ringing about whether this puts the USA into (yet another) violation of the Berne Convention and TRIPS, and presumably NAFTA as well. The essential point of Berne is that no country can impose “formalities” on nationals of another member country.

Judge Stanton considered all of that along with the legislative history in some detail but ruled on the wording of the statute, not the treaties - which is what Courts are supposed do if they believe that the wording is clear. As is the case in Canada, treaties are not self executing in the USA.

Here’s good blog commentary by AmeriKat, a new kitten to be watched, and good old reliable Out-law.

This ruling will likely be appealed.

Other US violations of Berne include these:

• The USA has also been ruled to be in violation of Berne in the “Section 110" matter at the WTO, which goes back to 2001.

• The USA has no “moral rights” other than for visual works, although it cleverly exempted moral rights from the dispute resolution process under TRIPs.

There's an old adage about people who live in glass houses not throwing stones.....

Of course, none of this will stop certain lobbyists in Canada who serve primarily US interests and even the USTR itself (which is heavily influenced by these lobbyists) from whining about Canada's failure to ratify the 1996 WIPO treaties, when Canada is under no such legal or other obligation.

HK

PS - "AC" makes an interesting point in the first comment below. This reminds me of the obvious fact that Canada does not make statutory damages conditional upon registration. So, foreign owners can - and do - threaten to use this powerful weapon in Canada. If this decision stands, it will be yet another example to add to my growing list of how Canadian copyright law is already stronger than US copyright law.

Google and Privacy - update

The other day on July 4, 2008 I posted about the sweeping production and disclosure order in Viacom v Google that was issued by a US Court.

Today, Ontario's Privacy Commissioner, the redoutable Ann Cavoukian, challenged Google to appeal this order.

This case will clearly focus again on why Google and YouTube and others retain personal data for so long - i.e. 18 months. And that's down from two years.

The EU is clearly concerned about search engine data retention policies.

The EU seems to be heading strongly to a six month maximum retention period based on this April report.

PS - David Fraser, a Canadian East Coast lawyer, has a thoughtful blog on this available here.

HK

Copyright and Personal Privacy, eh?

Yesterday's ruling in the American mega litigation involving Viacom v. YouTube & Google requires the handover of 12 terabytes of data containing info about viewers' login ID, IP addresses, time of viewing, etc. is a potentially devastating invasion of the privacy of millions of people, who had no expectation that this could ever happen. Here's the ruling and here's the NYTimes story.

As the privacy breach debacle by AOL in 2006 showed, it is not hard to find out a lot about particular people with far less information than appears to be at stake here. Knowing an IP address and time of access can identity a particular person in many cases.

I would hope that such a ruling would not be made in Canada. We have our PIPEDA federal privacy statute.

We have the BMG ruling, in which I was pleased to have been involved. Here's two opposing views and a neutral summary of that ruling by an editor, myself and another counsel on the other side. These set forth some of the basis of the debate in Canada, if a similar situation should arise.

HK