Paul V's blog

Like many people, I’m concerned that the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) negotiations are being used to launder copyright reform through a secretive international trade agreement and do an end-run around the recent public consultations in Canada. However, it’s really tough to comment meaningfully on the subject without transparency into the process. In an effort to enlighten myself, I filed a couple of Access to Information (ATIP) requests with the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT).

One of my requests was deliberately wide-open, requesting any communication between the Trade Department and third-parties about ACTA. I’m trying to figure out who’s been consulted, who’s seen draft treaties, and so on. My second request was more specific, requesting the most recent draft text of the treaty as well as a copy contemporaneous with that shared by the United States government with a number of companies and organizations. While draft treaties are exempt under the Access to Information Act, I figured that since the treaty has already been disclosed to some parties, there’d be no statutory reason to withhold that version from me as well.

In response to both requests, DFAIT requested a 6 month extension. To put that in context, the statute allows for 30 days to respond to requests, allowing extensions for specific reasons. My requests were extended under section 9(1)(a), which allows an extension in cases where “the request is for a large number of records or necessitates a search through a large number of records and meeting the original time limit would unreasonably interfere with the operations of the government institution.” I can concede this for my first request, which as I mentioned is quite open-ended. However my second request is quite specific, and I had a hard time believing it could take 6 months to comb through the records. I emailed my contact for an explanation, and was told that:

because of the volume of requests that we have now, and our limited resources, we are taking extensions of 180 days for our requests

This is clearly not acceptable under the Act. Now, it’s not the fault of my contact or even the DFAIT ATIP office, which is under-funded and under-staffed. The contact that I spoke with there was extremely helpful and apologetic. Two years of Information Comissioner reports mention that the DFAIT ATIP office has requested additional funding to keep up with the workload, which vastly increased when the government adopted a policy that other departments needed to consult with DFAIT on any ATIP request which could prejudice Canadian foreign policy/international trade. The Information Commissioner’s latest report on DFAIT does a good job of summarizing the problem. I’m sympathetic with the overloaded workers on the ground there, but management absolutely needs to step up and fix the problem.

Given that the current government was elected on a platform of improved transparency, it is incumbent on them to properly fund one of the busiest transparency-focused departments. Unless, and forgive this baseless speculation, a delay in transparency makes it easier to conduct secret negotiations without the annoying necessity of having to involve those annoying—what are they called?—Canadian citizens.

See also:

• Canwest’s exposé: Foreign Affairs violating disclosure laws: experts
• ACTA timeline

IP access to information, acta, copyright

The fee-for-carriage (or value-for-signal) debate misses the point. Television delivery is already moving online. Bell now has a pure IPTV delivery system for television in condos. Sites like Hulu provide on-demand access to programming. Granted, IPTV has been hyped now to the point that people are getting sick of it, but the simple fact is that television is moving inevitably to internet distribution. Canada was almost a decade ahead of the United States on internet delivery, until Parliament modified the Copyright Act to neuter the emerging business model.

Specifically, Parliament modified the Copyright Act to prevent retransmission of television online, despite allowing the cable companies to continue to aggregate over-the-air signals without having to worry about copyright. Section 31 writes that it “is not an infringement of copyright for a retransmitter to communicate to the public by telecommunication any literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work [...]” but defines a “‘retransmitter’ [as] a person who performs a function comparable to that of a cable retransmission system, but does not include a new media retransmitter.”

With that one change to the Act, Parliament shut down innovative sites like iCraveTV, who were already rebroadcasting television online in 1999. For comparison, Hulu didn’t launch until 2007. In fact, the government was originally going to extend the Copyright Act to include online distribution, but the Heritage Committe caved to special interest pressure from the United States, the broadcasters, and the cable industry. Sound familiar?

I’m sad that our government surrendered to old media special interests. Much like we lost our early advantage in telecom and internet penetration, we threw away a potential lead in new media business models. Hopefully we don’t continue the trend with the current work on the Copyright Act or surrender to US pressure again in the form of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).

IP copyright, distribution, television

DVD FBI warning (source: antypography.com)

Richard Ackerman (@scilib) tweets: “I wonder how many Canadian person-hours are wasted each year by us being forced to watch FBI piracy warnings on DVDs & some iTunes content“?

I decided to take a stab at estimating an answer. Note that this is a total back-of-the-envelope calculation that is likely on the right order of magnitude but otherwise wildly inaccurate.

There are a number of things we need to know:

Doing the math, we can estimate that Canadians spend about 4.6 million hours watching the copyright and FBI warnings on DVDs. If we want to put a dollar figure on it in the laziest way possible, just multiply by the median salary and we get $82 million dollars in wasted time.

See also my critique of the Toronto International Film Festival’s copyright warning.

IP copyright, copyright for canadians, estimate, piracy

The Hill Times released a policy brief yesterday Monday all about copyright reform (pdf). If I were to identify a theme running throughout the article, it’s that the process of copyright reform is as important as the result. For example, Ministers Moore and Clement focus on the public consultations held over this past summer.

Rather than try to summarize everyone, I’ll highlight some key passages and let the writers’ words speak for themselves. I’ll start with Simon Doyle, who writes about the reasons that Canada has seen a number of bills introduced but no actual progress since signing the WIPO treaties in the 90s. He writes:

When governments deliver initiatives, they want “wins.” They want their policies to grow their political capital, and if not grow it, spend very little of it. Copyright reform involves international legal frameworks, and so many lobby groups, companies, organizations, and now the public, that—in the words of one copyright lobbyist I know—“it’s a no-win for any government.”

Introducing a copyright reform bill is kind of like swatting at a beehive with a big stick. In all likelihood, you’re going to get stung. (27)

Howard Knopf writes about the some of the pitfalls of copyright collectives.

Collective administration is essential for copyright, but it does not follow that more and more inefficient collectives and more protracted and expensive hearings are better for public policy. (29)

Guiseppina D’Agostino writes about the need for simplicity and evidence-driven policy:

I spoke about these three things at the Federal Government’s Toronto Roundtable held in Toronto on Aug. 27, 2009. Namely, we need to consider (1) process in copyright reform (2) copyright within IP (and other areas of law); and (3) substance in simplicity.

[...]

We need to be guided by more independent, evidence-based research. This should not be something that is done at the drafting stage: it should be the evidence that guides the policy reform and not the interest groups. (30)

Michael Geist identifies eight conclusions drawn from the submissions to the consultations held over the summer. They are:

1. Copyright policy has gone mainstream
2. There is support for implementing the World Intellectual Property Organization’s Internet Treaties, but on Canadian terms
3. Groups from across the spectrum support fair dealing reform
4. Canadians want to modernize copyright law to reflect common consumer uses
5. Ensuring creators get paid is essential
6. Government should lead by example
7. Copyright reform is directly linked to broader digital policy issues
8. Preserve Canadian choices by pursuing a Made-in-Canada solution (26)

MP Charlie Angus continues to push for progressive policy, ending his contribution with:

Is progressive copyright legislation possible? Certainly. Will it be easy? Certainly not.

Anyone involved in copyright will tell you the devil is always in the details. But as a U.S. copyright lawyer said to me recently, the world is watching Canada because Canada has the ability to learn from the mistakes of countries like the U.S. (26)

The issue is definitely worth downloading and giving a read. Nobody breaks any new ground, but it’s a good collection of viewpoints on copyright reform. I’ll end with another quote from Charlie Angus:

Canada has the opportunity to get it right.

See also:

• Michael Geist’s coverage of the brief
• Howard Knopf’s coverage of the brief
• The submissions to the summer’s copyright consultation
• My submission to the copyright consultation
• Follow #copycon on twitter

IP copycon, copyright for canadians

In “The (legal) music fades out for Canadians“, Barrie McKenna repeats a number of American recording industry talking-points, and ignores the depth and breadth of the copyright reform debate in Canada.

McKenna makes a number of misleading claims. To address some of them: Canada’s copyright isn’t out of step with the Western world, but is fully compliant with Berne; Isohunt is involved in a lawsuit with the CRIA, but it was Isohunt that first sued CRIA for a declaratory judgment; the music industry contributes far less to Canadian GDP than does the technology industry; and, there is tremendous growth in Canadian digital distribution.

Much has changed since copyright was first created, but blindly passing legislation to improve the short-term revenues of American companies isn’t in the long-term best interest of either Canadian culture or the Canadian economy. McKenna writes that there “are good reasons for Canada to embrace reform” and in this he is correct. However, any reform should listen to Canadian citizens, be designed for the long-term benefit of our culture, and ultimately keep in mind the utilitarian goal of maximizing the public good.

Thanks go to Techdirt for bringing attention to the original article.

Edit: An interesting (and not constrained to 200 words) response to the G&M article by Tom Koltai on Perceptric Forum.

IP copyright, copyright for canadians, letter