Month: July 2017

The decision issued by the Federal Court of Canada on July 12 regarding the dispute between the copyright collective Access Copyright and one of Canada’s largest universities, York University (Toronto), marks an important step in swinging the pendulum of copyright back into greater balance. While the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) called the ruling “a setback for balanced copyright”, the decision is in fact just the opposite. It is a common sense judgment based on concrete evidence that restores the definition of “fairness” with respect to unlicenced copying by post-secondary educational institutions in Canada. Continue reading “The Access Copyright v York University Federal Court Decision: Restoring Some Balance to Copyright in Canada”

Jonathan Taplin’s new book Move Fast and Break Things, published in April of this year, (the title is based on Facebook’s internal motto, since modified to make the company appear more responsible) has been attracting considerable attention as he embarks on the usual book launch media tour, in this case Down Under in Australia and New Zealand, and in the UK. Taplin’s core message is enshrined in the subtitle to the book, “How Facebook, Google and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy”. Those are pretty bold statements but Taplin, currently Director Emeritus of the Annenberg Innovation Lab at USC, builds a compelling case. He has a long and varied history in the entertainment business and can speak from experience, having been variously a manager of prominent bands in the 1960s (he was for a while full time tour manager for The Band), a film producer (his best known film is perhaps The Last Waltz), an investment banker working for Merrill Lynch, an entrepreneur who started an early video on demand service, Intertainer, that was arguably ahead of its time, and a writer and thinker on media and digital issues. Continue reading “Jonathan Taplin’s “Move Fast and Break Things”: A Sombre Warning—And a Call for Action”

In my previous blog on the Supreme Court of Canada’s (SCC) decision requiring Google to de-index from its global search the website of a company (Datalinks Gateways) that had been found by the BC Supreme Court to be infringing the intellectual property of another BC company, Equustek Solutions, I commented that the decision was a victory for both the rule of law and for common sense. The Court dismissed Google’s appeal of the earlier BC decision on a number of grounds, including rejection of the argument put forward by a number of intervenors supporting Google who claimed that a world-wide de-indexing order would interfere with freedom of expression on the internet. The Court explicitly rejected that argument, reasoning that reasonable enforcement of intellectual property laws and freedom of expression on the internet are two different issues. Continue reading “The Supreme Court of Canada’s De-Indexing Decision: Does it Widen or Constrain Google’s Power?”

It wasn’t a great week for Google. First on June 27 the EU antitrust regulators fined Google a whopping 2.42 billion Euros ($2.7 billion USD) for engaging in anti-competitive and unfair behaviour by favouring its own shopping sites over third parties through its search platform, and gave it 90 days to alter its practices or face further penalties. Then a day later the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) upheld a provincial Court of Appeal decision requiring Google to de-index the website of a company (Datalink Gateways) that had been accused of infringing the intellectual property and trade secrets of a competing company (Equustek Solutions), based in British Columbia. That in itself would not be unusual. What was ground-breaking was that the SCC upheld the BC Appeal Court’s decision to require that the de-indexing have world-wide application, on all of Google’s search engines, not just within Canada on Google.ca. Continue reading “The Supreme Court of Canada and Google: A Victory for Common Sense”