Month: February 2019

There are many issues under consideration as the mandated five year review of the Copyright Act in Canada continues to grind away, but one area to be carefully watched is that of fair dealing. Will fair dealing be widened further as it was during the last revision in 2012, or will at least some of the new and expanded exceptions introduced in the 2012 Copyright Modernization Act be tightened? Or, perhaps, will the government duck the issue and decide to leave things more or less as they are until the next review in five years’ time? There is a lot riding on the outcome of the review, particularly for some copyright industries like publishers of educational books. Continue reading “Copyright Review in Canada: Will Fair Dealing Be Widened Further, Tightened or Left As Is?”

For those of us who find copyright to be a fascinating field of study, copyright issues lurk everywhere. Thus when the US crusade against China’s leading technology company, Huawei, hit the headlines with the arrest in Vancouver in December of the company’s CFO Meng Wanzhou, I couldn’t help but wonder if past allegations about the company’s history of IP theft figured into the equation and whether there was a copyright angle to the story. Guess what? I think there is. Continue reading “The US Case Against Huawei: The Copyright Angle”

Last week in writing about the issue of SuperBowl ads, I referred to Annex 15-D of the new NAFTA, the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA, or CUSMA as it is referred to in Canada) that will restore (once the Agreement is in force) the practice of substituting Canadian ads into the Superbowl broadcast even if Canadians are watching the game on a US channel redistributed in Canada. If this very minor issue was worthy of inclusion in this broad-reaching trade agreement, it is worth examining in more detail what else is in there. For example, what did Canada and the other two partners agree to that will affect creators and rights-holders? In addition to IP safe harbours for Internet Service Providers in Chapter 20, the intellectual property chapter (which grandfathers Canada’s existing “notice and notice” system), there is another type of safe harbour provision buried in the chapter that deals with digital trade, Chapter 19. Article 19.17 addresses safe harbours for content that may infringe laws in areas other than intellectual property. It says;

“…other than as provided in paragraph 4 below, no Party shall adopt or maintain measures that treat a supplier or user of an interactive computer service as an information content provider in determining liability for harms related to information stored, processed, transmitted, distributed, or made available by the service, except to the extent the supplier or user has, in whole or in part, created, or developed the information”.

Continue reading “Did Canada get “Section 230” Shoved Down its Throat in the USMCA?”

In a world of threatened border walls, trade wars with China, a US government shutdown, politics, the rising cost of living and the weather, the annual SuperBowl classic is a welcome distraction for many, if not most, North Americans. For many Canadians it really doesn’t matter which US team is playing which other US team; the game is a pleasant respite from the icy grip of winter that prevails over most of the country at this time of year except, happily for me, on Vancouver Island where I am fortunate enough to live. It is not just the game itself; it is also about the half time entertainment (although this is not without its controversies this year), and the ads. The creative Superbowl ads have become an attraction in themselves and have ended up being a source of US-Canada trade friction, as I reported in a blog on this issue two years ago. Two years on, the issue is still before the courts in Canada (at the Supreme Court level) and until the updated NAFTA agreement (USMCA or CUSMA if you are in Canada) is ratified and in force, it will remain as a bilateral trade irritant alongside issues such as the Trump tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum (because Canada is a “national security” threat to the US), softwood lumber tariffs, and so on. How did it all come to this? Continue reading ““Simsub” and SuperBowl Ads: Canadians, Enjoy Them While You Can”