Shameful Behaviour of Music Canada

Graham Henderson, President

http://musiccanada.com/contact/

It is totally inappropriate – indeed blatantly disgraceful – for Music Canada to urge an “astroturf” letter writing campaign to the new Chair of the Copyright Board regarding the Board’s Tariff 8 decision, or indeed any other issue.

Here’s Music Canada’s “campaign” pitch:

Campaigns

Send an email to the Chair of the Copyright Board of Canada re: Tariff 8

Send an email to newly-appointed Copyright Board chair Justice Robert A. Blair, urging him to facilitate the prosperity of Canadian cultural businesses rather than impede it by recognizing the value of the Canadian music industry for all Canadians.

To Justice Robert A. Blair, Chair of the Copyright Board of Canada

…

Here’s the text of the letter that Music Canada urges people to send to Justice Blair, with a convenient online “tool” to facilitate the transmission:

Dear Justice Robert A. Blair,

Congratulations on your recent appointment as the chair of the Copyright Board of Canada.  Under the previous leadership of the Copyright Board one year ago the Tariff 8 decision to provide creators with rates 90% lower than those they had negotiated commercially.

This decision discards years of agreements freely negotiated between digital music service providers and the music industry and sends a message to the world that it does not value music as a profession.  This is inconsistent with Canadian values. 

These rates were unprecedented globally – they are one of the world’s worst royalty rates for non-interactive and semi-interactive music streaming.

One year later Tariff 8 decision remains a serious setback for the music community in Canada, for artists and the music companies who invest in their careers.  This decision has created a regulatory precedent that ignores the reality of the marketplace and will continue to harm the business climate in this country and create a market uncertainty.

Today Canadian recorded music digital revenues and physical revenues combined only represent half of revenues fifteen years ago.  I urge you in your new position to make decisions that recognize the value of the Canadian music industry for all Canadians, and to create tariffs that pay creators fairly. Canadian creators should not be paid less than their contemporaries around the world.

As you begin your mandate please consider how the Copyright Board can facilitate the prosperity of Canadian cultural businesses rather than impede it. 

The Copyright Board is an independent quasi-judicial tribunal. Parties make their case. If they don’t like the result, they can seek judicial review.  It is NEVER acceptable to “lobby” such a tribunal in any way, and especially reprehensible to write lobbying letters to its Chair. This is an insult to the Board and its distinguished new Chair, Justice Robert A. Blair.

Music Canada, despite its mis-descriptive name, actually mainly represents the interests of the big three non-Canadian multinational record companies:

·         Sony Music Entertainment Canada Inc.

·         Universal Music Canada Inc.

·         Warner Music Canada Co.

Music Canada and those who oversee it should be completely ashamed. This campaign should, and no doubt will, backfire badly.

This may be a high point in hubris for Music Canada, following its windfall lobbying success for sound recording and performers' copyright term extension. But this is a low point in so-called “advocacy” in Canada.

HPK

Balanced Copyright Teaching Resource - for the USA

v.v.

The amazing EFF has come out with a balanced and informative teaching resource about copyright, with materials for teachers and students.

Unfortunately, we don't have such a thing in Canada. We did have Captain Copyright, who was fortunately euthanized by his creator, Access Copyright, before he could do any damage. He is gone but not forgotten.

We still have Copyright Matters! in Canada by Wanda Noel and Gerald Breau, published by CMEC, which is aimed at teachers and which, as I have noted before, is overly cautious and was obsolete at the time of publication of the second edition in 2005 - because it does not mention or appear to even take into account the landmark 2004 decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in CCH v. LSUC that opens the door to fair dealing for purposes of research or private study. It will be recalled that CMEC attempted to tout Noel and Breau's work as as being an "accurate and reliable" resource for use by teachers and students:

We disagree as well with Access Copyright’s assertion, also in the said August 9, 2006 letter, that there are no tools available to educators to help them teach their students about copyright. There are a number of accurate and reliable resources on copyright for use by teachers and students, such as the publication Copyright Matters!, which is now in its second edition.

We could use a balanced teaching program, not only for Canadian students but for the educational and library community, which largely continues to be afraid of its own shadow in this country - though there is some hope of potential empowerment and better leadership. In the meantime, the best source of information for teachers and librarians that I know of is book by Laura Murray and Sam Trosow, which I've reviewed here.

However, "balance" in the copyright context is becoming increasingly difficult if not impossible to achieve, as we witness certain content owner lobbyists going to more and more extraordinary lengths (for example, as just reported by Michael Geist) to control and manipulate public discussion and the public interest itself.

HK

Conference Board of Canada Controversy & American Based Copyright Lobbying - the Substantive Issues

Those who wish to pay $1,595 to attend a Conference Board of Canada conference this Friday May 29, 2009 that is reportedly being funded in the amount of $15,000 by Ontario taxpayers, according to ITBusiness, at which a controversial Conference Board of Canada report will be presented can find out more information about the Conference here. Prof. Geist has described this as a "deceptive, plagiarized rerport" and there's a front page article about all this in today's Ottawa Citizen.

While there are some good speakers on the list of this Conference Board Conference, the program and speaker list are seriously imbalanced in my view. It is regrettable that prestigious institutions such as the Public Policy Forum last year and the Conference Board of Canada this year allow themselves to be used in this way by lobbyists.

Those wishing to read the 2008 American IIPA lobbyist's report from which the Conference Board report has allegedly taken portions of its content can read it for free here.

These reports on Canada are prepared with the considerable input of a well known Washington lawyer named Steve Metalitz.

As it happens, I debated this very report with Mr. Metalitz at the 2008 Fordham conference, where I presented a paper entitled WHY CANADIAN COPYRIGHT LAW IS ALREADY STRONGER AND BETTER THAN THAT OF THE USA - AND WHY THE USA SHOULD LOOK IN THE MIRROR RATHER THAN AT ITS “SPECIAL 301" WATCH LIST.

This paper shows 15 ways in which Canadian copyright law is already stronger and better than American copyright law. None of those points have been refuted. These include a number of provisions that generate substantial amounts of money that benefit - in some cases mostly and significantly benefit - American interests, and for which the USA has no equivalent counterpart provisions. Here's a simplified "baker's dozen" list of examples from my paper:

1. Payment by broadcasters for "ephemeral rights"
2. Payment for public performance by small business establishments
   
3. Neigbouring rights for sound recording producers and performers
4. Theatrical exhibition rights for composers and authors
   
5. Blank media levies
6. Far higher reprography payments per capita - particularly in educational sector
   
7. Moral rights
8. No compulsory mechanical license
9. About 36 copyright collectives (about six or seven times more than USA)
   
10. Largest copyright tribunal infrastructure of any country that I know of
    
11. No parody right
12. No time shifting exemption
13. Crown copyright, which results in private sector monetization.
    

So - in the current debate, which ironically involves allegations of plagiarism in the context of copyright lobbying - let us not lose sight of the basic underlying issues:

1. In many ways which involve a lot of money flowing out of Canada to US interests, our Canadian copyright laws are already stronger and better than American laws.
2. The USA remains the world's longest and most flagrant outstanding adjudicated international copyright scofflaw, as determined by the WTO now 9 years ago.

HK

NZ Government Runs For Cover on Copyright

With friends like this, the RIAA, IFPI and MPAA hardly need enemies. The current NZ Government is clearly running for cover to distance itself from the "three strikes"/no rule of law/absence of due process/industry defined infringement approach of the previous NZ government. It seems prepared - indeed eager - to repeal the controversial s. 92A of its copyright legislation even before it comes into force. As is being reported:

Calls to scrap the controversial new internet copyright law are increasing ahead of the Government's March 27 deadline for a decision on its future.

United Future leader Peter Dunne, the minister of revenue, today compared it with the ill-fated Electoral Finance Act (EFA).

"The EFA arguably started out with good intentions but those became overwhelmed by the impracticalities of the legislation," he said on Radio New Zealand.

"In the end it became a pariah, it literally brought a government down and Parliament has now repealed it. I would have thought we would have learned a lesson."

Mr Dunne is the second government minister to oppose the new law.

(emphasis added)

One can only hope that the "lesson" isn't lost on the UK government, the Canadian government, and others that might be entertaining thoughts of such ill-conceived legislation and lobbying visits from such entertainment industry organizations as CRIA and its lobbyists.

HK

Professsor Lessig Goes to Washington?

Will Larry Lessig run for Congress?

Maybe.

Here's his site.

Take a few minutes to watch his video. Very interesting indeed.

And potentially very important.

Could this be a real life remake/sequel to the very great 1939 Frank Capra film starring Jimmy Stewart "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington"?

Here are some clips:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=de6f-ij81oQ

http://youtube.com/watch?v=p1d19wV1GZQ

http://youtube.com/watch?v=zWyEc7FAMTg


HK