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    Michael Geist's Blog

    Hill Times Features Op-Ed Copyright Lobby Recycling

    The Hill Times features a full-page opinion piece (sub req) (PDF version) based on my recent post on copyright lobby policy laundering. 


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    Celebrate Canada Day with Beers for Canada

    As Canadians from coast to coast celebrate Canada Day, the people behind VisibleGovernment.ca have developed a novel way to celebrate.  Visible Government is a Canadian non-profit that promotes online tools for government transparency. It encourages government leaders and organizations to share their information openly, and work with developers to build tools and websites that make government information more accessible to average citizens.  There is tremendous value in open government data and greater transparency (my recent CAIRS.Info site is designed to address the issue of transparenc in the access to information system) and this group is pushing things forward in Canada.  As part of the Canada Day celebration, they've launched Beers For Canada, which encourages Canadians to support transparency by "buying your country a beer".  The money raised will support the group's various transparency projects.
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    ACTA Update: New Meetings, New Partners, New Issues

    The Canadian government held an Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement consultation meeting today focused on pharmaceutical and access to medicines issues.  The meeting was smaller than the earlier consultation in April, but featured some important new information about the ACTA process including a fuller description of planned negotiating meetings, details on the upcoming Morocco meeting, and confirmation on an inquiry from Brazil about joining the negotiations.

    1.   Negotiation schedule

    The ACTA partners met on June 11th to discuss ACTA related issues and committed at the meeting to continue with the negotiations.  The next meeting is set for Morocco in July with later meetings currently planned for October (Korea) and December (Mexico).  There are additional tentative plans for meetings in February and April 2010.

    2.   The Morocco meeting

    Officials advised that the Morocco meeting will be a two-day meeting that focuses on ACTA chapters involving international co-operation, enforcement, and institutional issues.  The meeting will also address some "housekeeping" issues including ongoing transparency concerns.  The Internet-related provisions will not be a focus and the Internet-related issues has not progressed beyond the U.S. non-paper that surveyed other ACTA participants on the state of their digital copyright laws (in other words, there is still no draft text).


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    Garneau Responds: Clarifying the Liberal Copyright Recommendation

    Late this afternoon, Marc Garneau, the Liberal Industry critic, contacted me to respond to my post today on the Liberal dissenting recommendation to introduce copyright legislation and ratify the WIPO Internet treaties in the Industry Committee report on the Canadian economy.  The following notes on the call are posted with his permission.  Garneau advised that the committee offered all parties the opportunity to raise recommendations but only those with unanimous support were put forward as committee recommendations.  Those that did not receive unanimous support could be raised by individual parties as the Liberals did with copyright.

    Garneau admitted that the language used may have caused some concern, but that the recommendation was really designed as marker to indicate interest in addressing the copyright issue.  He said that copyright was among the most lobbied issues he faces, with weekly meetings from a variety on stakeholders over the past eight months.  Garneau cautioned against reading the recommendation as the official position of the Liberal party on copyright, noting that it would likely use Bill C-60, which adopted a more flexible approach on anti-circumvention legislation than C-61, as the starting point for analysis.  He added that the Liberal party recognizes the importance of digital issues, as evidenced by their support for C-27 (anti-spam legislation), net neutrality, and copyright reform.
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    Liberal Party Recommends Ratification of WIPO Internet Treaties

    A week after the Liberal Party came out in favour of net neutrality, David Akin notes that Liberal members of the Standing Committee on Industry recently issued a dissenting recommendation focused on copyright reform.  The recommendation was part of a report on the Canadian economy.  While the committee as a whole did not issue a recommendation on intellectual property, the Liberal members added the following:

    That the Government of Canada immediately introduce legislation to amend the Copyright Act, ratify the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Copyright Treaty (WCT) and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty (WPPT), amend related acts and ensure appropriate enforcement resources are allocated to combat the scourge and considerable economic and competitive damage to Canada’s manufacturing and services sectors and to Canada’s international reputation by the proliferation of counterfeiting and piracy of intellectual property.

    At one level, this is not particularly surprising - all major parties support some form of WIPO implementation (the issue is not whether, but rather how).  What is more problematic is the absence of recognition of the need for flexiblity in the law to spur innovation and the blind acceptance that Canada's international reputation has been damaged by copyright claims.  It also contrasts with the recent remarks from Industry Minister Tony Clement and Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore, who as I discuss in my technology law column this week (Toronto Star version, homepage version), recently adopted a more progressive view of digital issues.
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    Copyright Board Releases Educational Copyright Decision

    The Copyright Board of Canada has released its long delayed decision on photocopying in primary and secondary schools.  There are two ways of looking at these decisions - the dollar amount of the tariff and the reasoning.  The dollar amount in this case is big - jumping from the current fee of $2.45 per full-time student (FTE) to $5.16 per FTE.  Note that this goes back to 2005 (although the back pay will be set at $4.64 per FTE), so this represents a huge additional cost to Canadian education and a major source of revenue for Access Copyright.  The Board goes through a detailed analysis of how it arrived at this figure, but at the end of the day, it feels like that it simply split the difference between the two sides.  Access Copyright was seeking $8.92, while the schools argued for $2.43 - that averages to $5.67 per FTE and the Board's award is just below that figure. Whether this is just coincidental or by-design, the current system encourages big requests which set a framework for "reasonableness" that can result in major increases in royalties. 

    The core aspect of the reasoning is the Board's assessment of fair dealing.  


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    Rogers Again Injects Web Pages With Its Own Content

    Canadian Internet watchers may recall a controversy in late 2007 when Rogers began experimenting with adding its own content to webpages that its subscribers visit.  The company used the technology to alert customers about their data usage.  Google was one of the targets of the experiments and the company reacted angrily:

    We are concerned about these reports. As a general principle, we believe that maintaining the Internet as a neutral platform means that carriers shouldn't be able to interfere with Web content without users' permission. We are in the process of contacting the relevant parties to bring this to a quick resolution.

    According to one of my blog readers, the Rogers content substitution approach is back. The image below shows Rogers warning a customer about the expiry of some parental controls.  The warning is included in a Flickr page.  This approach again raises concerns about Rogers interfering with the delivery of content without permission of the end user.  When combined with its ongoing policy of redirecting web pages that do not resolve to a company-sponsored paid search page, Rogers own content seems to show up unasked on a regular basis.


    From Net Neutrality


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    Unravelling the Canadian Copyright Policy Laundering Strategy

    The Conference Board of Canada plagiarism and undue influence story - which with the Board's report and overdue apology to Curtis Cook will now go on hiatus until new reports are issued in the fall - has obviously attracted considerable interest.  Looking back, while plagiarism is rare, it is the public airing of the copyright lobby policy laundering effort that is the far more important development. 

    This lengthy post seeks to unravel the effort further by demonstrating how there has been a clear strategy of deploying seemingly independent organizations to advance the same goals, claims, arguments, and recommendations.  Over the past three years, this strategy has played out with multiple reports, each building on the next with a steady stream of self-citation.  The following diagram highlights the key players:





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    Reflecting on the Digital Economy Conference

    Ottawa has played host to many digital economy-type conferences over the years.  Many have the same feel with pretty much the same people saying pretty much the same thing.  Yesterday's conference titled Canada's Digital Economy: Moving Forward was different. The primary reason was leadership (the noteworthy impact of Twitter on the proceedings and Terry Matthews' warning against mimicking the U.S. on copyright which he said "has become so extreme that it inhibits creativity and innovation" rank a close behind).  Both Industry Minister Tony Clement and Canadian Heritage James Moore left no doubt that they get it and are determined to craft laws and policies that look ahead rather than behind.

    Clement closed the conference by noting how much has changed in the year since Bill C-61 was introduced. Clement said that it was "at least a somewhat different" public policy environment and committed to a copyright consultation this summer:





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    Canada’s Digital Economy: Toward A Safer, Stronger Online Marketplace

    I appeared earlier today at Industry Minister Tony Clement's Canada's Digital Economy Conference.  I shared the stage with Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart and Tim Wilson from Visa Canada on a panel titled Toward A Safer, Stronger Online Marketplace.  My prepared remarks are posted below:


    Canada’s Digital Economy: Toward A Safer, Stronger Online Marketplace

    Michael Geist, June 22, 2009

    Let me begin by thanking Minister Clement - both for the invitation to speak here today and more importantly for his leadership on this critical issue.  We all recognize the importance of the digital environment for commercial, cultural, educational, and communication purposes.  Canada was once a proud leader in this arena and I think most would acknowledge that we have failed in recent years to articulate much-needed vision, strategy, and perhaps most importantly - urgency.

    Minister Clement opened today’s conference by citing confidence as one of his key concerns.  I think he’s identified a crucial concern.  Privacy and security are key components in instilling this confidence, but there are other issues.  I recently wrote about a digital action plan and I want to tease out several points that arise within the context of building confidence. 


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