Author: hughstephensblog

I am a former Canadian foreign service officer and a retired executive with Time Warner. In both capacities I worked for many years in Asia. I have been writing this copyright blog since 2016, and recently published a book "In Defence of Copyright" to raise awareness of the importance of good copyright protection in Canada and globally. It is written from and for the layman's perspective (not a legal text or scholarly work), illustrated with some of the unusual copyright stories drawn from the blog. Available on Amazon and local book stores.

Celebrate Canadian Independent Bookstore Day

Photo: Author (one of my several overcrowded book cases)

Today, April 26, is Canadian Independent Bookstore Day (CIBD). Independent bookstores in all countries, especially in a country as geographically dispersed as Canada, form a community based network allowing readers of all ages to access the wonder of the written word, often beautifully illustrated. Whether you are Tofino, Whistler, or Victoria BC, Whitehorse in the Yukon, downtown Toronto, Calgary, Winnipeg or Montreal, Nova Scotia’s south shore or Tors Cove, NL, and everywhere else in between, there is an independent bookstore for you offering everything from novels, cookbooks, children’s stories, history, travel…and so on. Some even have copies of my book, In Defence of Copyright! Of course, there is also Amazon and, in Canada, Indigo, but the uniqueness of each independent bookstore is what I like. Wherever I go, I always seek one out. It can tell you a lot about the town you are visiting. If you want to find the closest independent bookstore, just type in the postal code of wherever you are in Canada (here), and you will get a full listing.

Indie bookstores are facing many challenges these days, not the least of which is the ongoing tariff war launched by the Trump Administration against the world, including islands populated exclusively by penguins. Given the close economic integration between Canada and the US, it is not surprising that Canadian bookstores import a fair amount of their stock from the US. In fact, even books by Canadian authors are often either printed, or stored and distributed from US locations because of economics. The major publishing houses have concentrated their North American distribution hubs in the US. More that 80% of books published in Canada are published by foreign-owned firms (not all American). For example, Penguin Random House is owned by Bertelsmann, a German conglomerate. Macmillan is also German owned; Harper Collins and Simon & Schuster are US owned.

Most Canadian publishers and printers operate on a small scale. Sutherland House, an Indie Canadian publisher, reports that in 2024, sales by Canadian owned publishers totalled $56 million, or just 5% of the Canadian market. However, in Quebec it is a different story as Canadian owned French language publishers have 54% of the market. Considering that Quebec has about a quarter of Canada’s population and economic activity, this suggests that the sales of Canadian published works in the rest of Canada must be well below five percent.

While Canadian authors and publishers (so called “CanLit”) are important to independent bookstores in Canada (and Indie bookstores play an important part in the promotion of local authors and CanLit), their bread and butter is still any book that customers are prepared to buy, regardless of the nationality of the author, the genre, or where it is published. When Donald Trump invoked the 1970s-era International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) as the pretext to impose 25% tariffs on Canadian (and Mexican) products exported to the United States, regardless of commitments the US had made to both countries under the USMCA (the “new NAFTA”), Canadian publishers were delighted to find out that the IEEPA had a carve out for “information or informational materials”. This included “publications”, as I wrote about here. (Donald Trump’s Tariff Threats: Their Potential Impact on Canada’s Cultural Industries). Not that many Canadian publishers ship to the US, but some, including specialized printers, do so. As I noted above, it’s an integrated North American market.

But if the IEEPA exception provided a tariff respite with respect to the export of Canadian published materials to the US, it is the threat of Canadian counter-tariffs on US products coming into Canada that is of greatest concern to Canadian independent booksellers. The addition of a 25% counter-tariff on their book imports from the US would undermine profit margins and require a price increase, further threatening sales at an economically challenging time for most consumers. Happily, so far, the threat of Canadian counter tariffs has been suspended after Donald Trump blinked and allowed all Canadian (and Mexican) products that qualify for USMCA/CUSMA coverage to continue to be tariff exempt, as per the terms of the Agreement.

This exemption was supposed to end on April 2, but as is usual with Trump, he changed his mind at the last minute. The relief from US import duties (at least insofar as USMCA/CUSMA compliant products are concerned, except for steel and aluminum) has been extended without a fixed end date, but as with so much concerning Donald Trump it could be ended on a whim. If that happens, Canada will move to activate the counter tariffs it was preparing to impose on April 2. Books were on that list, although the Canadian Federation of Independent Booksellers and Indigo Books joined hands to lobby against the inclusion of books as part of Canada’s retaliation. It is not just bookstores that have warned against collateral damage to small, independent Canadian business from the imposition of counter tariffs on books imported from the US, but also librarians. The Ottawa Public Library estimated that the imposition of Canadian tariffs could result in it acquiring 33,000 fewer items for its collection.

The booksellers are from being out of the woods yet. They might get an exemption or a duty remission if Canada imposes tariffs. Then again, Canada might not impose tariffs, as it depends on what actions Donald Trump takes. Even if the book trade remains tariff free, the forecast recession in both Canada, the US, and elsewhere as a result of Trump’s unilateral tariff barriers is likely to hurt bookstores, as for most consumers buying a book is a discretionary purchase.

Let’s hope the worst doesn’t happen and that, at the end of the day, some reason and economic logic will prevail. In the meantime, if you haven’t seen it, I recommend a blog I wrote earlier this month on my visit to one of the most magical bookstores in the world, Livraria Lello, in Porto, Portugal.

(c) Hugh Stephens, 2025.

Here is the link to “The Resilience of Independent Bookstores (My Visit to Livraria Lello, Porto)“

Obituaries and Copyright: If You Publish an Obituary in the Globe and Mail (and many other papers), Be Prepared for Legacy.com and its Upsell Business Model

Image: Shutterstock.com

After the recent death of a dear friend, I was watching for the publication of his obituary to mark the final chapter. His distinguished professional and post-professional career certainly merited it, and a couple of weeks after his passing I was pleased to spot a full column in the printed edition of Globe and Mail, the paper that could arguably be called English Canada’s journal of record. An obituary in the Globe is a fitting tribute to anyone. To my surprise, when I went to look at the online version, first logging into my digital subscription to the Globe, I was taken to another website, Legacy.com. I didn’t ask to be taken there, it just happened.

The obituary was there, verbatim as printed in the Globe, with the same information and photo, but with some additional options. I could purchase a memorial tree, in fact I could purchase a whole grove of 100 memorial trees. I could order various memorial floral offerings, which it appears are actually delivered by an outfit called Blooms Today. I could also buy a sympathy card and have it shipped to me. There may be other things that I could also buy as there is a handy 1-888 number, but I didn’t pursue it. All this is linked back to the Globe and Mail’s listings of obituaries via a button on Legacy’s home page but even though you appear to be visiting the Globe site, there is a header that says, “You are now on Legacy.com. Your site use is governed by their Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy. Any purchases are with Legacy.com. Learn More”. “Learn More” takes you to Legacy’s Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policies.

So, just who is Legacy.com? Legacy is a Chicago based company that has been around for about a quarter of a century. It dominates the online obituary business and has numerous press affiliates. Customers can list their obit on Legacy, which can then help them to have it published in any of its 2600 affiliate publications in the US, driving business to papers all over the country. In Canada, Legacy has affiliations with almost 90 publications (it is hard to keep the record accurate because they keep going out of business!) ranging from major dailies like the Globe and Mail and Toronto Star to tiny weeklies in small communities. PostMedia, which operates dailies in most major Canadian cities is not an affiliate. This reference service helps sustain the newspaper business, since printing obituaries is one of the few forms of “advertising” where the printed media still plays a reasonably prominent role. Heaven knows, the industry needs all the help it can get to attract sources of revenue.

Legacy apparently does not charge newspapers for its referral service but gets a cut of the amount paid for printing the obituary. If the obituary has initially been placed in the newspaper, and subsequently posted on Legacy.com, the website gets the obituary content without charge but kicks back to the paper of record a percentage of the amount it generates from merchandise it “upsells” to those who visit the site. The bereaved family has paid for the obituary but it becomes fodder for peddling memorial products and services. However, this is a good deal for both parties, the website and the newspaper. Legacy gets more content against which it can sell the memorial paraphernalia listed on its website, while the newspaper gets some revenue from the merchandise sales and doesn’t have to pay to maintain the website or to post its obituaries online. And I guess even the bereaved family is not all that fussed because the obituary gets wider circulation, although they have paid extra for this additional exposure.

This is all laid out in the “Affiliate Partnership Overview” at sales.legacy.com. This is how the revenue model works;

“Newspaper increases price of death notice for enhanced online product.

Newspaper receives percentage of gross revenue from add-on product sales administered online by Legacy.com and advertising sales.

Newspaper retains all page views and owns all advertising inventory within in the header and footer on the co-branded site.”

When you pay for an obituary in the Globe or any of the other newspapers with whom Legacy.com has an affiliation agreement, you pay extra for the online listing (in the case of the Globe, the extra charge is $60, which is minor compared with the cost of printing most obituaries). As noted above, the Globe or other affiliate gets a kickback from the add-on product sales generated from friends and relatives of the deceased who visit the site.

None of this is illegal and the information about how it works is easily found on the internet. In the past I have written about dodgy obituary websites that either copy obituaries without authorization, or do quick rewrites of posted obituaries, allegedly copying only the “basic facts” of the deceased person’s life (which in their haste they sometimes get wrong) in order to avoid charges of copyright infringement. In both cases, the end game is to monetize the content, as Legacy.com is doing, but Legacy has made it legal by signing affiliate and revenue-sharing agreements with the newspapers publishing the obituaries.

Obituaries are considered copyrighted works. Even though Legacy.com offers templates to write obituaries and no doubt some are now written with the use of AI, most obituaries are thoughtfully composed pieces reflecting the deceased person’s achievements and character, sometimes self written before death or more frequently composed by a loved one. In either case, they are creative works and are protected by copyright law, although the facts, such as a deceased person’s date of birth or death, name of spouse, number of children, etc. cannot be protected. The website that was copying obituaries without authorization, known as Afterlife, was shut down and fined on the basis of copyright infringement. If a carefully written obituary is a copyrighted work, and if you wrote the obituary and thus legally hold the copyright, how is it that the Globe or other outlets can in effect resell or license your copyrighted work to Legacy.com? Simple. It is because you, the author, agreed to it.

When placing an obituary in the Globe, the person submitting it is presented with the following;

“By submitting an obituary, you agree to The Globe and Mail’s Terms and Conditions and Advertising Terms and Conditions (Print and Digital) as well as for online obituaries, Legacy.com’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.”

If you take the time to wade through all that you will find that in the Globe’s Advertising Terms there is a clause (paragraph 20) that says that any advertising published in the paper may, at the Globe’s discretion, be published, displayed, retained and archived by the paper and anyone authorized by the Globe (including by any form of licence), as many times as the Publisher and those authorized by Publisher so wish, including anything in print, electronic and other form. I hadn’t thought of an obituary as advertising, but insofar as it involves purchasing space in a newspaper to disseminate information, I guess that is exactly what it is. In any event, by placing an obit you are subject to the Globe’s advertising code. The wording in Para 20 that a consumer is required to accept if they want their obituary to be published clearly allows the Globe to provide your content to Legacy.com

As for Legacy, this is almost no limit as to what they can do with an obituary provided to it through one of its affiliates. By using their platform, a person submitting an obituary is granting Legacy. Com;  

“a royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive right and license to use, copy, modify, display, archive, store, publish, transmit, perform, distribute, reproduce and create derivative works from all Material (provided to) Legacy.com in any form, media, software or technology of any kind now existing or developed in the future. You grant all rights described in this paragraph in consideration of your use of the Services without the need for additional compensation of any sort to you.

(Legacy.com Terms of Use 3. (c).) 

Note that Legacy does not own the content, the rights holder does, but it has been granted a licence to do all of the above.

The person submitting the obituary also must certify that they are the author of the content or that the content is not protected by copyright law, or that they have express permission from the copyright owner to post the content.

All this just because you wanted to print Grandpa’s obituary in the Globe!

Can you opt out of having the obituary published on Legacy and restrict it to just the print edition? Yes, you can (at least insofar as the Globe is concerned; I don’t know about other affiliates). Additionally, the Globe informed me that if I still wanted an obituary to be online, but without the ads, they would ask Legacy to remove any third party advertising for trees, flowers, etc., from the notice. (I presume if the Globe asks, Legacy will comply). While this is helpful in ultimately putting the decision in the hands of the person placing the obituary, (the so-called “advertiser”), the default is for the obituary to be posted on Legacy.com, with ads.

To its credit, the Globe does disclose that this will happen;

“The Globe and Mail’s online obituary is powered by Legacy.com, and may include services from third party suppliers such as flowers, memorial trees and charities.”

Thus no-one can say that they didn’t know this was happening, although they may not have particularly focused on it. Perhaps they don’t object. One can also argue that Legacy provides an additional service and that no one is obliged to purchase any of the add-ons found on the website. In return for the opportunity to sell against your loved one’s obituary, Legacy provides a permanent (insofar as anything is “permanent”), searchable database of obituaries. Maybe that is the way to look at it. Death is a part of life and those who work in the “death business” perform an essential service (in some cases) or a desired service in others. So, why do I find it offensive that the Globe has monetized the memory of my friend?

Maybe I am just old fashioned but it seems to me there are certain conventions surrounding the end of life business, although these are probably changing. Dreary funerals are replaced by more joyous celebrations of life. Yet it still seems somehow inappropriate to openly market memorial products off the back of an obituary. I note that the Globe’s obituary page in its printed edition contains no ads, and it’s not as if there is not space. There is space for ads but the only ones that appear are fillers promoting the Globe’s own obituary services (“Precious memories”, “In your thoughts”, etc). At the end of the day, remember that the obituary you have written for someone is your creative, copyrighted work, and you have every right to determine how it is used. If you want it up on the web “in perpetuity” be prepared for the compromise of having it supported through e-commerce.

As much as I am grumbling, the important thing is that the obituary of my friend, a fitting tribute, was published and seen. And maybe a few memorial trees even got planted, which I guess is not a bad thing.

© Hugh Stephens 2025. All Rights Reserved.

The US National Trade Estimates (NTE), Trump’s “Reciprocal” Tariffs and IP/Cultural Industries

Image: Shutterstock

On so-called “Liberation Day”, April 2, a day that, to echo FDR, will live in infamy, (the day the world trading system was turned upside down and the US shot itself in the foot, or head) Donald Trump unveiled a limited list of “reciprocal” tariffs in a Rose Garden game show format. Like a magician revealing a secret, he unveiled a chart announcing imposition of minimum 10% “reciprocal” tariffs on a variety of transgressors, like the UK even though it buys more from the US than it sells to it, or Singapore which is an open port and has no tariff import barriers at all, or even the Heard and Macdonald Islands, a remote Antarctic territory of Australia populated exclusively by penguins. The penguins weren’t on the shorter Rose Garden chart but were included in the full list published by the White House on Truth Social (that authoritative channel). The Truth Social list included the Svalbard and Jan Mayen Islands near the Arctic Circle (population 2500, many of them scientists at research stations), the British Indian Ocean Territory, a jurisdiction populated entirely by the US military with some token Brits to maintain the fig-leaf of British sovereignty, and Norfolk Island, population 1500, a remote island between Australia and New Zealand. Some countries, like the small African kingdom of Lesotho or the French North Atlantic islands of St. Pierre et Miquelon (population 5000) didn’t get off so lightly, being assessed at 50%, half their supposed transgression rate of 99%. St. Pierre’s sin was that someone shipped some fish to the US whereas the French territory neglected to purchase the same volume of US goods. I guess they don’t need Dodge Ram or Chevy Silverado trucks there.

When the White House finally published the official list they cleaned up some of the ridiculous anomalies initially announced (the penguins were gone), but the only official response from the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) was to try to explain how the “reciprocal” tariffs were calculated. Prior to the announcement, trade observers assumed USTR would actually measure the level of tariffs imposed on US goods by other countries, possibly “tarrifying” other alleged non-tariff barriers, like Value Added Taxes, “currency manipulation”, cultural support policies, weak IP regimes, or any other perceived or real grievance from US industries. This list of “problematic” measures is released annually in the National Trade Estimates (NTE) document assembled and published by USTR. This year it was released on March 31, a couple of days before “Liberation Day” leading to speculation that it would provide the backstopping for the calculation of tariff reciprocity. However, no measures on the lengthy list of transgressions were actually included or used in making the “reciprocal” tariff calculations. Instead USTR published the following impressive looking formula to explain how the “reciprocal” tariffs were calculated. It makes Einstein’s E=mc² look simple.

What this actually means, however, is that the reciprocal punishment was based exclusively on whether the US ran a trade deficit with another country (except where there was no deficit, as in the case of the UK and Argentina, where countries got nailed with the minimum 10% tariff anyway.) The actual formula represents the 2024 US trade deficit in goods with a given country, divided by the total quantity of US imports from that country. So for example if Country X grows a lot of bananas very efficiently and exports them to the US, which doesn’t grow bananas (as far as I know), and if Country X doesn’t import the same value in US goods as it exports in bananas, it will get nailed with a “reciprocal” tariff of at least 10%, probably more, even if it doesn’t apply tariffs to US imports. Since Country X is a remote, relatively poor country, the likelihood of it being able to import substantial amounts of US goods is low. Never mind that its country is dominated by US service providers, such as delivery services, content streaming services and banks. Services don’t count in the Trump Administrations calculations.

As long as Country X or others like it can’t find a way to buy US products (the leading US exports are petroleum and gas, aircraft and aircraft parts, pharmaceuticals, autos, and chemicals, none of which a poor country like Country X has much need for), their banana exports to the US will be subjected to tariffs. This will increase the price of bananas for US consumers, and possibly lead to reduced imports, putting some banana farmers in Country X out of business thus making them even less likely to buy US products. Who thought this was a good idea? (You know who). As the US National Tax Foundation pointed out, the calculations are nonsense and will punish mutually beneficial trade. Indeed, the sloppiness and amateurish way in which they were calculated and announced seems to reflect the typical modus operandi of this Administration. Rush things to social media without fact checking or even applying a commonsense test, like checking for penguins. It makes USTR look downright foolish.

While some countries were dropped when the official list was published, a couple were never put on that list. Russia was one, since there is almost no bilateral trade post-sanctions; Canada and Mexico were two other significant exceptions. That is because they had already been the recipients of the Trump tariff treatment earlier, as I have written about here, with the imposition of 25% US tariffs (which were subsequently suspended for products that qualify for tariff-free treatment under the USMCA/CUSMA, except for steel and aluminum). Trump used the same loophole, the “national emergency” provisions of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose tariffs on Canada and Mexico as he used for the “reciprocal” tariffs on most of the rest of the world. This legislation allows the President to deal with “unusual and extraordinary threats” to the national security of the United States.

Trump invoked the supposed flow of fentanyl from Canada to the US as the pretext for his trade actions. Earlier reports had indicated that only 43 lbs of fentanyl had been seized in 2024 by US officials at the Canada-US border (over 21,000 lbs were seized at the Mexican border). Updated statistics winkled out by the Globe and Mail show that in fact 555 lbs were seized at the northern border, or inland having crossed the border, but of this amount, only 0.74 lbs (i.e. less than a lb.) was of Canadian origin, or 0.13 % of the total. The rest was sourced from Mexico, the US itself (almost 30%) or from unknown sources. Facts matter, but apparently not in this case. The use of the IEEPA to impose tariffs on the rest of the world is equally specious, and almost certainly a violation of the legislation, as argued here and in more detail here. Tariffs are the prerogative of Congress to impose except in emergency situations but given the supine, badly divided and highly partisan nature of the current Congress, legislators seem unwilling or afraid to assert their rights and jurisdiction vis a vis the President.

Coming back to the National Trade Estimates (NTE), which until “Liberation Day” many of us assumed would form the basis for the calculation of “reciprocal” tariffs, they are still worth examining to understand which measures get under the skin of US business and the US government. Not all countries hit by the Trump tariffs were listed in the NTEs (the penguin islands did not get a listing), but many were (58 in all) for one policy or another that some interest group in the US objected to.

In Canada’s case, the US not unreasonably complained about Canada’s antiquated supply management system that gives dairy, egg and poultry producers a set-price closed shop paid for by Canadian consumers, and keeps out almost all imports. It also complained about provincial control of liquor distribution and marketing, although 17 US states have similar systems, restrictions on US seed exports, where seeds have to be registered with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency before they can be sold in Canada, and several other issues ranging from plastic waste regulations to the proposed Digital Services Tax. The US also objected to Quebec’s Bill 96 where some US businesses are concerned about the impact of the language law on their federally registered trademarks. But it is in the intellectual property (IP) and cultural industries areas where the complaints pile up.

In the IP area, the NTE draws on last year’s Special 301 (Watch List) Report on Canada, an annual USTR exercise that compiles the IP related “transgressions” of countries into a report that highlights US concerns. Among these with respect to Canada are enforcement against counterfeit goods and online piracy, inspection of goods in-transit, transparency with respect to new geographical indications (GIs), and the broad interpretation of the fair dealing exception for the purpose of education. The notorious Pacific Mall in Markham, about which I wrote way back in 2019, still gets USTR attention. According to USTR’s report “Noticeably counterfeit luxury goods, apparel, electronics, and automobile parts are reportedly on display or hidden under tables or in back rooms but are available upon request.” I did not have that experience when I last visited the place pre-COVID but maybe I didn’t look like a likely buyer so was not invited to look under the table.

As for measures taken by Canada to support cultural industries, both the Online Streaming Act and the Online News Act got mentioned as areas the US will continue to monitor closely. The whole USTR “name and shame” exercise is a bit hypocritical in my view and certainly one-sided since the US itself has a number of shortcomings of its own with respect to policies that limit compensation to creators or fail to adequately provide responses to IP theft, such as establishment of site-blocking (disabling access to offshore pirate websites). Last year I wrote a tongue-in-cheek Special 301 Report assessing how the US is doing. (The USTR “Watch List” Designation You Will Never See).

All these transgressions, and more which the Trump Administration could dream up, like the existence of Goods and Sales Tax (GST) in Canada or a Value Added Tax (VAT) in Europe, could have been used to determine “reciprocal” tariffs. But they weren’t, as we have seen. In Canada’s case it was not assessed tariffs additional to those that had already been imposed on the improbable pretext of fentanyl trafficking, and in the case of other countries, the NTE Report was set aside in favour of USTR’s “innovative” trade calculation formula.

What will happen next? That is anyone’s guess. Since I started writing this blogpost a couple of days ago, global stock markets have gone up and down like a yo-yo. Global tariffs that were to have been imposed at midnight on April 9 were suddenly suspended for 90 days–as a result of an impending meltdown in US bond markets–just hours before the deadline (except for a 10% toll on everyone). There were exceptions, the penguins, Canada and Mexico because of the USMCA, and China, which found itself with a combined tariff of something like 145% imposed on all Chinese goods coming to the US because it had not simply rolled over and accepted the US calculation of “reciprocity”.

If the first 80 days of Donald Trump’s Administration is anything to go by, it is going to be a wild ride that could well end up crashing the vehicle in which we are all passengers . The National Trade Estimates and reports like the USTR Special 301 (IP Watch List) will continue to be prepared and released but will be either ignored or used depending on the current whim in the White House. Some in Congress may eventually be inclined to stand up for their rights to control tariffs. Some US citizens may even go to court to challenge what the Administration is doing in defiance of the law, but all this will take time. In the meantime, don’t look at your stock portfolio, tighten your seatbelt and be prepared for whiplash. It’s Show-Time at the White House. Or is it Amateur Hour?

© Hugh Stephens, 2025. All Rights Reserved.

The Resilience of Independent Bookstores (My Visit to Livraria Lello, Porto)

Photo: Author

Much has been written about the decline or even the imminent demise of independent bookstores, yet most of them continue to survive, even thrive. In the same vein as the comment famously attributed to Mark Twain (“the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated”), so too have independent bookstores survived the onslaught of online shopping and mass merchandising. The Canadian Independent Booksellers Association has almost 200 members and there are an estimated 300 independent bookstores across the country. The US has around 2600. Some are well known, especially in the cities in which they are based, such as Powell’s Books in Portland, OR, City of Lights Books in San Francisco or Strand Books in NYC. In Canada, there is Munro’s in Victoria, BC, probably the most famous in the country.  Internationally there is Shakespeare and Company in Paris, Foyles or Daunts in London and Livraria Lello, the “Harry Potter” bookstore in Porto, Portugal.

Lello was the first destination for me and my wife last month when we visited that coastal city, the home of port wine. In fact, we went there even before touring the port “lodges” on the opposite bank of the Douro River, in Gaia. Lello has become a tourist destination in its own right, largely due to its association with JK Rowling and Harry Potter. When we arrived, there was a long queue outside and various roped off channels with identified time slots.

Photo: Author

Lello has discovered a whole new revenue stream, paid admission. We were tempted to walk on and find somewhere for lunch, but having come this far, I had to figure out how to get entry. It wasn’t that hard; you need to go online and book a slot, at a cost of €10 per person, redeemable against a book purchase. That is the basic (“silver”) option. Then there is the “gold” option at €15.95 that includes a book from their exclusive imprint, “The Collection”, or if you really want to splurge there is the “platinum” version at €50 per person. That will give you a voucher for book purchases, access to the “Gemma Room” and priority entry. “The Collection” is Lello’s offering of public domain classic imprints (Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, Tolstoy, Saint-Exupery, JM Barrie, etc.) The “Gemma Room” is the space where Livraria Lello keeps its self-described “most precious jewels”, rare books, manuscripts, first editions, luxury books etc. How much you want to spend depends on how much of a book aficionado you are. We selected “silver” and after a short wait, were inside, all set to explore the wonders of Lello.

The ability to charge an entry fee to prospective customers who may not even buy a book or bookmark is an interesting additional revenue stream that many bookstores would die for. But it is not unreasonable when you consider that Lello is part bookstore, part museum. It has been charging for entry since 2015 and is now listed in all the guidebooks along with Porto’s other many attractions.

Photo: Author

It is truly spectacular and aptly deserves, in my view, the description of “world’s most beautiful bookstore”. As you can see from the photos, it has a Hogwarts like-atmosphere, and it is the tenuous connection with JK Rowling that has really put it on the map, even though its history goes back to 1906 in its present location. Rowling lived in Porto for almost two years (1991-93) and wrote the first three chapters of the first Potter book, the Sorcerer’s Stone while there. According to one account, she visited Lello in 1991, spent several hours there and bought a book. Surely she must have spent more time there than that, as she was an English teacher and Lello even in the 1990s was a well known entity. Lello has acknowledged the connection and has ensured there are plenty of Harry Potter books to buy.

Photo: Author

The history of Lello is a story worth telling quite aside from any modern Harry Potter connections. It traces its origins to other bookstores in the city, dating back to 1869. After several changes of ownership, the Lello brothers commissioned the design and building of the current structure, opening in 1906 in its present location on Rua das Carmelitas, a stone’s throw from Porto University. It was one of the first buildings in the city built with reinforced concrete and the iconic staircase is, in fact, cast from concrete although you would never know if from the rich wood finish. The ceiling is a stained glass window by a Dutch artist Samuel Van Krieken, featuring the motto “Decus in Labore” (Dignity in Work). The finishings are in painted plaster. The exterior façade is neo-Gothic.

Photo: Author

In addition to the bookstore itself, Lello supports the Livraria Lello Foundation, dedicated to the promotion of literacy. It has acquired the Monastery of Leca do Balio, located a few kilometers north of Porto, and has is developing it as a cultural centre.

The history and scale of the Lello operation is something that most independent bookstores can only dream of, but it illustrates well the contribution that these institutions make nationally, even internationally, as well as in their local communities. Independent bookstores add vitality and a window on the world. Often they are gathering places and host book circles, book readings and other literary activities. They have managed to carve out a niche in the market despite the omnipresence of Amazon and larger chain book outlets. Most don’t have the history or the cachet of Lello, but they are part of a proud fraternity. Long may they thrive.

© Hugh Stephens, 2025. All Rights Reserved

As you can plainly see, I am not a professional photographer. If you want a better view of Livraria Lello than I have provided with my cellphone snaps, click here.

Copyright, Cultural Issues and Canada’s General Election, 2025

Image: Shutterstock (AI generated)

As we complete the first few days in what is the shortest election campaign in Canadian history, the minimum 37 days required by law, where do the copyright and cultural industries stand with respect to electoral platforms and public consciousness? Given the overwhelming focus on dealing with economic and even potential political disruption coming from south of the border, along with traditional bread and butter issues like the cost of living, especially food and housing, one could be tempted to say that cultural and copyright issues are largely invisible. Party platforms have not yet been released (and are probably still being worked on) and by the time they are made public, the election will be well underway. So while there still may be a couple of small references to copyright issues in party platforms (as occurred in the 2021 election, none of which led to any substantive legislation), they will simply be part of a laundry list of possible actions in many disparate areas. However, that has not stopped the cultural sector from outlining its policy proposals, which have been laid out articulately by the Coalition for the Diversity of Cultural Expressions (CDCE), an umbrella group that represents more than 350,000 creators and artists, and more than 3,000 cultural enterprises. Despite the fact that copyright issues are not at or even near the top of the agenda, there is a strong undercurrent of Canadian nationalism in this election that will inevitably have an influence on policies in the cultural sector.

In 2021 the governing Trudeau Liberals included a promise to “protect Canadian artists, creators and copyright holders by making changes to the Copyright Act including amending the Act to allow resale rights for artists”. They were re-elected but did nothing. The Conservatives for their part undertook “recognize and correct the adverse economic impact for creators and publishers from the uncompensated use of their works…”. They weren’t elected so the commitment was meaningless. This time proposed changes to copyright legislation are unlikely to move the needle for any party although the issue of the unauthorized use of copyrighted content to train AI still needs to be resolved, since AI will become a front-burner issue for any party elected. The CDCE’s paper addresses this issue, among others, in its 9 recommendations. Broken down into 4 buckets, the CDCE’s proposals address (1) International Trade and Cultural Sovereignty (2) Broadcasting and CBC/Radio Canada (3) Copyright and (4) Artificial Intelligence and Culture.

The CDCE proposal under “International Trade” is to insist that the cultural exemption clause be retained if the CUSMA/USMCA is renegotiated, and that cultural activities, goods and services be excluded from all future agreements. The cultural exemption clause, (Article 32.6 of the CUSMA) is based on a similar exemption in NAFTA and the original US-Canada bilateral trade agreement of 1989 but is more of a political fig-leaf than a real protection since if the provision is invoked, the US can retaliate with equivalent effect in any trade sector. However, it provided comfort to the cultural sector at a time when free trade with the US was seen to make Canada vulnerable culturally. Thirty plus years of bilateral, and now trilateral, trade proved that fear to be unfounded—until now—and the cultural exemption has never been used. During the period from 1989 to the present, even through the ups and downs of Trump 1.0, the fundamentals of the initial bilateral Free Trade Agreement, then NAFTA, and now the CUSMA/USMCA were basically respected by all parties. Under Trump 2.0 this has all been called into question. If the Trump Administration is going to disavow the basic elements of the CUSMA, having a cultural exemption clause becomes less than meaningless.

On April 2, the US will unveil its “reciprocal tariff” regime. It has arrogated to itself the right to include, in addition to tariffs imposed by other countries, self identified non-tariff measures in its calculations. Among these may be various cultural support measures imposed by Canada on foreign entities operating in Canada requiring them to make financial contributions to Canadian content. If that happens, the US will be violating yet again the provisions of the CUSMA/USMCA as it has already done with regard to the imposition of tariffs on some products on the specious grounds of fentanyl trafficking from Canada to the US, (less than 20kg in all of 2024). However, given the surge in Canadian nationalism as a result of the tariff threats but more particularly the verbal diarrhea coming daily from President Trump about Canada becoming the 51st state, it is unlikely that any Canadian government would throw Canada’s cultural identity under the bus for the sake of preserving tariff-free access to the US market for some commodities. Thus, seeing Canada sacrifice cultural support measures that may annoy some US businesses operating in Canada (like online streaming content providers) in return for a degree of tariff relief is an unlikely outcome in the present circumstances.

This surge of nationalism relates to the second of the CDCE’s “demands”, protecting the CBC and the Canadian broadcasting environment. Ever since Pierre Poilievre became leader of the opposition Conservative Party, one of the Party’s mantras has been “defund the CBC”. There is no question that the CBC business model is in need of reform, particularly its English language entertainment television service which captures a very small market share, but CBC radio, CBC news broadcasts and CBC’s French language service, Radio-Canada, remain highly relevant, as this CBC explainer attempts to show. Given the need to protect national identity in the face of the Trumpian onslaught, and the recent rediscovery that perhaps Canada is not so “broken” after all, if ever there was a need for this national institution, it is now.

The third basket of issues raised in the CDCE position paper relates to copyright concerns, which get very little traction among the general electorate but are important to the creative and cultural community. Once again, the CDCE reminds parties of the lack of an Artists Resale Right in Canada (noting previous promises to establish this measure), as well as some other longstanding issues like fair remuneration for writers and publishers for the use of their works in the education sector and extending the private copying regime to electronic devices. This would impose a small levy (about $3) paid by manufacturers and embedded in the cost of a smartphone to compensate for unregulated widespread copying of music on these devices, with the funds flowing back to music creators.

The final bucket deals with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and copyrighted content. At the present time there are some 40 lawsuits in the US pitting rightsholders against AI developers, and even a couple of cases in Canada. Canada has been slow off the mark in addressing this issue; at the moment there is no Text and Data Mining exception in Canadian copyright law and both rightsholders and AI developers are not clear on the ground rules. The CDCE is asking that a legislative framework be adopted that includes the key principles of (1) Authorization (by the rightsholder) (2) Remuneration (payment for use of copyrighted content) and (3) Transparency (the establishment of disclosure rules as to what training data is used in AI systems and ensuring that all AI-generated content is clearly identified). These are reasonable asks but there is no guarantee they will be respected.

In the US, AI developers are pushing the Trump Administration to give them a pass on respecting author’s copyright, notwithstanding the cases before the courts, using the argument that the US will lose the AI race to China if US developers cannot help themselves freely to the content of others. OpenAI (which is being sued by the New York Times) and Google argued in submissions to the US government that giving them unfettered access to data, including content owned by others, is essential for national security. Described by blogger David Newhoff as “tech bro bombast”, OpenAI’s attempt to wrap itself in the national security blanket is a cynical ploy to get around the inconvenient fact that it and other AI developers are hijacking the creative work of authors, artists, and musicians without permission or compensation while creating outputs that in a number of cases can compete with or even displace the original works that contributed to their training. A similar situation is developing in the UK where the creative community is pushing back against the original copyright carte blanche that the UK government seemed inclined to give to the tech community, in the name of AI competitiveness. Canadian governments are not beyond succumbing to the siren calls of the AI community and it is timely to establish some guiding principles, of which Authorization, Remuneration and Transparency are a good place to start.

However, while AI and copyright are not going to become election issues, national identity, which is closely intertwined with cultural sovereignty, surely is. Indirectly, copyright will be important as it is one of the foundation stones of cultural sovereignty, an issue that would have played second fiddle to economic issues like food inflation, carbon pricing, cost of housing, fuel and utility costs etc until Donald Trump started spouting his annexationist nonsense.

Frankly, had Trump really wanted to absorb Canada (eventually) he should have brought Canada inside the US economic tent and made the country even more reliant on the US market, by providing it with an exception to his attempts to take on the world trading system. Instead, he has woken Canadians from a restful, dependent slumber brought on by three decades of relatively uncontroversial free trade and economic integration and made them realize that they have no one to depend on but themselves. In doing so, he has revitalized a sense of nationalism that will play out in this election. Who can best defend Canadian interests has become the litmus test for Canadian voters, leading to a remarkable resurgence for the Liberal Party under new leader Mark Carney after the political corpse of Justin Trudeau was removed from the electoral scene. This may or may not change during the course of this short campaign. One thing is certain; while copyright issues per se will not get much profile, cultural identity issues will certainly be in the spotlight. This is a shift in emphasis that in the long run is likely to benefit the creative sector.

© Hugh Stephens, 2025. All Rights Reserved.

Donald Trump’s Tariff Threats: Their Potential Impact on Canada’s Cultural Industries

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With a general election in Canada now set for April 28, attention will be focussed south of the border to see what Donald Trump says and does next. Apart from his tiresome and insulting trope about Canada becoming the 51st US state, how best to deal with the economic fallout from the imposition of unilateral US tariffs on Canadian exports to the US will be the big election issue. Indeed, the drumbeat of tariff threats emanating from self-proclaimed “Tariff Man” is becoming overwhelming, both in terms of tariffs already applied, but also regarding potential future tariffs. As we have already seen, the uncertainty and almost daily changes, (government by tweet), are roiling markets and undermining investor confidence. With respect to Canada there have been repeated threats of what is to come while some tariffs, such as those on steel and aluminum that were applied globally, are already in force. Then there are the threatened 25% tariffs on all Canadian (and Mexican) imports, except for energy products which will be taxed at a 10% level, imposing additional costs on US consumers. (The example of potash, an essential product needed by American farmers is an interesting case study. It is basically only available from Canada, unless you import it from Russia, Belarus or China. The US does produce a small amount but 85% of US potash consumption comes from Canada. So much for President Trump’s mantra that Canada has nothing the US needs. When US farmers squealed loudly, the duties on potash were suddenly lowered from 25% to 10% and then suspended completely under an exemption for all products covered by CUSMA).

The 25% tariffs designed to hinder the export of automobiles and car parts (amongst other products) manufactured in Canada from being shipped to the US —a measure which incidentally contravenes the terms of the US-Canada-Mexico Agreement (USMCA/CUSMA)—are temporarily on suspension given the representations made by US auto manufacturers who had to explain to the White House how integrated North American supply chains work, but any products not covered by USMCA/CUSMA are still subject to the 25% tariff. The pretext for this violation of a ratified trilateral trade agreement is supposedly the “national emergency” created by the flow of fentanyl and illegal immigrants from Mexico and Canada. The only problem with this rationale is that, in the case of Canada,  there is a greater flow of illegals from the US to Canada than vice versa, and the seizures of fentanyl at the northern border by US officials in 2024 totalled less than 20 kilos, less than one percent of the amount seized on the southern border. Thirteen grams (that’s less than half an ounce) were seized in January. This year, US border officials have caught more people smuggling eggs from Canada into the US (where the price of eggs has shot up owing to avian influenza in US poultry flocks) than fentanyl. But the facts appear irrelevant to the Trump Administration; what is important is to create a pretext to violate the USMCA.

That pretext was used to trigger the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). This legislation allows the President “to deal with any unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States, to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States”. It was first enacted in 1977 and is designed to deal with acts of terrorism or other threats to the security of the United States. It confers wide, albeit temporary, powers on the Executive Branch and has been used in situations like the Iran hostage crisis in 1979, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and to deal with various identified terrorist groups. Using it to punish Canada because under 20 kg (43 lbs). of fentanyl were seized in the course of a year at the Canada-US border is clearly an abuse of the intent of the Act. Notwithstanding, that is what Trump used to impose USMCA noncompliant tariffs on Canada.

The temporary suspension of the 25% tariffs on Canadian (and Mexican) imports will apparently end on April 2, when Trump plans to impose reciprocal tariffs on a global basis. How these will be calculated is anyone’s guess. The President has indicated that in addition to whatever tariff irritant he can find, he might also include other measures in US calculations that in his view discriminate against US goods and services. Thus, while most US products enter Canada tariff free (with the notable and unfortunate exception of most dairy products, which are subject to Canada’s outdated supply management system), Trump could take aim at other policies he doesn’t like. For example, while many US banks operate in Canada, none of them are full-service retail banks allowed to take deposits (but nor are they required to have the same capital requirements). Then there is the fact that Canada, like the EU, imposes a value-added tax (VAT) on most products (basic foodstuffs being the primary exception), called the GST (Goods and Services Tax). This is another potential target even though it is applied without discrimination to US, Canadian or products from any other country. Likewise, longstanding measures that provide protection and subsidies for Canadian cultural industries, like broadcasting (AV and music) content quotas or more recent mandatory financial contributions to Canadian content funds, along with funding obligations to support local journalism, could potentially become targets.

Would Google try to reopen the commitments it finally made to support Canadian journalism in order to avoid designation under the Online News Act? Will the mandatory “contributions” to Canadian content creation that the CRTC has imposed on foreign streamers become an issue? A prominent US trade association, the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), went so far as to claim that ”the CRTC’s structure of mandatory contributions contravenes Canada’s commitments to the United States under CUSMA”. While I think that claim is doubtful, if the Trump Administration regards the CUSMA as just a piece of paper to be ignored at will, US industries should think twice about using it as a lever against Canada. In any event, in my view the best approach is to continue to stress the value of cooperation and mutual benefit, as Canada has been trying to do by explaining to the Trump Administration why tariffs are self-defeating. In terms of AV production, the contribution that US content producers make to the Canadian production industry is significant even if there are disagreements about the extent to which US production in Canada helps or hinders creation and distribution of Canadian content.

It is important to note that all countries impose investment or trade restrictions of one sort or another, and the US is no exception. These restrictions are weighed in terms of the balance of reciprocal benefits when trade agreements are negotiated, including the current USMCA/CUSMA signed by Trump himself in his first term. But if you are not inclined to respect the commitments you have made, and intend to ignore carefully negotiated and signed treaties, then any domestic measure can become a target. Uncertainty as to what could happen next is a major concern. Two Canadian cultural industries that are keeping their heads down and hoping for the best are art dealers and book publishing.

Earlier this month, the Globe and Mail reported that art dealers and galleries are facing slowdowns in the face of the uncertainty brought about by the Trump tariff threats. Books, art and other informational materials were granted an exemption when Trump first imposed the tariffs on Canada, using the excuse of fentanyl trafficking. Buried within the legislation used to suspend USMCA/CUSMA obligations, (the IEEPA referred to in paragraph 3 above) is a provision that creates certain exceptions, amongst which is “any information or informational materials, including but not limited to, publications, films, posters, phonograph records, photographs, microfilms, microfiche, tapes, compact disks, CD ROMs, artworks, and news wire feeds”, unless controlled by some other authority. (Section 1702 (b)(3)). While US Customs noted the exception when publishing its Notice of Implementation, the on-again/off-again tariff implementation has created anxiety and uncertainty, not least of which is the possibility that any random Customs officer can hold up a shipment based on an individual (mis)interpretation of the regulations. Compounding the issue is the announcement by Canada of 25% retaliatory tariffs that include, among other things (the targets of the retaliation are wide covering everything from toilet paper to drones), “Paintings, drawings and pastels, executed entirely by hand”.

Book publishers are also exempted under the IEEPA and are keeping their heads down, as noted by another article in the Globe. Many Canadian publishers do not ship much to the US but some do, including companies that are exclusively printers rather than full service publishers. In the case of Friesens Corp, a printer in Manitoba, the bulk of their business is from US customers. However, now a new threat has risen for Canada’s independent book sellers. Books have been included on Canada’s retaliation list, and if books from the US are subjected to a 25% retaliatory tariff, the cost will be passed on to bookstores, and ultimately consumers. Independent bookstores already work on very thin margins and an additional charge will likely affect sales. Harm to Canadian business and consumers is the flipside of punishing US exporters, just as harm to US consumers will result from US tariffs on imports. Surely it would be best to leave a cultural product like books out of the trade war.

What happens next with regard to tariffs on exports to the US, from Canada or elsewhere, seems to depend on Donald Trump’s mood of the day. The expected announcement of “reciprocal tariffs” on April 2 will create further uncertainty and likely retaliation, further feeding the spiralling trade war. The fact that import tariffs are levied on the importer and are largely passed on to consumers seems not to have registered with the Trump Administration. They can certainly raise revenues, but if the end goal is to impede imports so that all production is reshored to the US, then presumably the revenue windfall (largely ultimately paid for by US consumers) will ultimately disappear. To depend on tariff revenues to fund more tax cuts in the US is ultimately a self-defeating strategy. In the meantime, the US economy will have suffered the impact of increased prices on all imported goods.

The Trump tariffs have had the effect of causing maximum disruption and chaos, and if that was the goal, then Donald Trump has succeeded. In the meantime, Canadians have until April 28 to figure out which political party and leader is best equipped to help navigate the treacherous waters ahead. Whatever happens, copyright and cultural industries are unlikely to escape getting wet.

© Hugh Stephens, 2025. All Rights Reserved.

This post has been updated to include reference to potential Canadian retaliatory tariffs on US book imports and the impact this will have on independent bookshops in Canada.

How AI Can Destroy Local Journalism

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We all know that local journalism is under extreme pressure. Long established regional newspapers are closing or are being turned into little more than franchise operations where a bare bones local newsroom contributes a modicum of local news to a newspaper fleshed out with filler from national wire services or mother publications. The regional titles in Canada owned by PostMedia are a prime example of this phenomenon. Some digital startups have helped fill the gap, but they too are struggling. There seems to be a reluctance on the part of many to pay for news through subscriptions, while small online publications are forced to compete with everyone from Google and Facebook on down for ad dollars.

One of the supposed remedies, at least in Canada, has been to create various funds to support local journalism. There are a range of programs including the government funded Local Journalism Initiative, launched in 2019 to encourage local news production in “news deserts” and underserved communities, administered by News Media Canada (an industry group), tax credits to offset journalist salaries if the organization is a “Qualified Canadian Journalism Organization” (QCJO), and most recently the Google-funded $100 million fund for media outlets. This was established as a result of Google’s deal with the government to get a five year exemption from being designated under the Online News Act. According to recent reports, the Google fund’s annual contribution to a journalist’s salary will be in the range of C$13,000 to C$20,000 depending on the number of applying journalistic enterprises deemed to qualify.

All these Band-aid measures are designed to staunch the loss of print and digital publications, which has created news deserts in many parts of Canada and the US. In a 2023 report from Northwestern University’s School of Journalism, as reported by Forbes, it was estimated that almost 3000 print newspapers out of approximately 9000 in the US had ceased publication since 2005. The average loss of newspapers in 2023 was 2.5 per week. In my home province of British Columbia alone, Global News reported that the number of daily papers dropped from 36 to just 13 in the six years from 2010 to 2016. According to the Local News Research Project housed at Toronto Metropolitan University’s School of Journalism, over 500 local radio, TV, print and online news operations shuttered in 345 communities across Canada since 2008 although during that time, around 200 new local news outlets, many of them exclusively digital offerings, launched in 152 communities. However, just one opened in 2023. The decline of local news in Canada was well documented in a study released in February of this year by the Public Policy Forum, “The Lost Estate”. The study examines a number of possible remedies, including philanthropic engagement, community foundations, better targetting of government support programs and increased government advertising in local media.

The reasons for the decline of local news are many; the rise of social media, the migration of ad revenues to giant online platforms like Google and META, the reluctance of a younger generation of consumers to pay for news (especially digitally provided content), unauthorized password sharing (even by government!), rising costs of print, and so on. Newly launched digital outlets have tried to fill the gap, but they are facing challenges in getting sufficient ad revenue or subscriptions. In Canada, some will qualify for tax credits or funding from Google, but it will depend on whether they employ at least 2 full time journalists. For many of these digital outlets, their principal modus operandi is to aggregate content from other sources, provide a quick rewrite summary and then insert a link to the original source, thus avoiding copyright infringement. There is some but not a lot of original local journalism.

I have no doubt that with the growing use of AI, some of this initial screening is done through use of artificial intelligence. AI may even be being used to create summaries and rewrites. This saves time and money—but unfortunately cuts down on the need for real journalists. The evaluation of AI’s utility in local journalism is typical of its use in many other areas, from screen writing to auditing to medical diagnoses. It can be a useful tool to enhance productivity, but often at a cost somewhere else, such as with respect to employment. Even if an experienced employee can employ AI to enhance what they are working on, AI could eliminate the beginner or training jobs that help develop the required experience to do this. These challenges are not new and not unique to local journalism.

What is new is the use of AI to take the aggregation model followed by many small local online journals a step further and go nation-wide, a development discovered and highlighted by the Neiman Lab. The Neiman Lab is part of the Neiman Foundation for Journalism, established in 1938 at Harvard. It administers what is proclaimed to be the oldest fellowship program in the world for journalists. The Foundation also publishes a quarterly magazine, Neiman Reports, dedicated to a critical examination of journalism and other journalism-related programs. In an excellent piece of investigative sleuthing, the Lab discovered that “Good Daily”, which operates in 47 states and 355 towns and cities across the US, targeting small town America, is run by just one person, Mathew Henderson, armed with an AI program. If this seems hard to believe, read on.

According to Neiman’s investigation, Henderson operates his “media empire” out of New York. He uses an AI bot to scan the news daily in each local market. The AI program curates the most relevant stories, summarizes them, edits and approves the copy, formats it into a newsletter, and publishes it. The same day! Readers in these 355 towns are led to believe that this is a local publication. It has local testimonials, although the same testimonials, slightly tweaked, appear in various editions around the country. The publications also share the same “About” information and the same mission, which is “to make local news more accessible and highlight extraordinary people in our community.” Henderson claims his automated newsletter is actually helping local publications by driving traffic to them. This is the same argument put forward by META when refusing to pay for news content that it uses on its platform to attract and retain viewers (and sell ads).

Henderson’s business model is to sell advertising and solicit readers for donations. The advertising pie is not infinite, so it is obvious that his “local” newsletters are just one more source of competition for local media chasing ad dollars. Just to be clear, there is nothing illegal about what Henderson is doing. Aggregating content and linking to it is not a violation of copyright law. The lack of full disclosure is a bit disconcerting but I am doubtful if there is anything illegal about having a corporate veil. What is problematic is the cannibalistic nature of his business model, enabled by AI.

This kind of operation, fuelled by AI, can only operate if there is local content to aggregate. The Good Day publications contribute nothing, absolutely zero, to content creation. They, like Facebook, are the ultimate cannibalistic free riders. They can continue to operate successfully, free riding on content created by others, so long as those “others” remain in the business of producing content. However, the more successful businesses like Good Day become, the less viable will be the local journalism sector that produces the content its free-riding competitor subsists on. In the end, the result will be an ouroboros. (Great Scrabble word by the way). The AI driven aggregator will in the end devour the very source of its content. That may be a few years down the road, but logically that is what will happen. It’s like eating your seed grain.

Is there a solution? Many remedies have been proposed, but if there is a silver bullet, I don’t know what it is. For many in the media, finding a way to get the big platforms that benefit from media content to contribute financially to journalism is one avenue, but as we have seen in Canada, Australia, and California, the platforms will pull out all the stops to prevent being required to do so, especially META, which has thumbed its nose at Canada and, now, Australia.

Government subsidies, such as Canada’s Local Journalism Initiative, are resisted by many journalists lest the industry become beholden to government handouts. Holding government to account is one of the key functions of the media, the so-called “Fifth Estate”. Can a subsidized media be trusted to do so? On the other hand, without subsidies will there be any viable local media left? Maintaining its independence is one reason why the small Ottawa-based online publication, Blacklock’s Reporter, that is locked in a David and Goliath struggle with the Government of Canada over the government’s abuse of password-sharing, is opposed to initiatives like the Online News Act. (For the record, that is their view, not mine, but it is a position I respect). Potentially another option could be a tweaking of tax laws to encourage businesses to place ads on local media rather than with the giant international platforms, but in the end business will and should be able to spend its ad dollars where it believes it will get the best results.

For every potential remedy to the problem of keeping local journalism alive, there is a potential downside, just as there is with AI generally. For all its potential advantages AI also has the potential to destroy journalism. Good Daily may be the canary in the coalmine, a fully legal but particularly egregious use of AI putting yet another nail in the coffin of local journalism.

© Hugh Stephens, 2025. All Rights Reserved.

Using Copyrighted Content to Train AI: Can Licensing Bridge the Gap?

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The struggle between authors (writers, artists, musicians) and AI developers over the unauthorized and uncompensated use of copyrighted works to train AI applications continues, both in the courts (here is a summary of the current state of play in the US where most of the litigation is taking place) and in the political arena, such as the UK government’s latest initiative to put its thumb on the scale in favour of the AI industry, now slowed down by opposition within Parliament. The creative industries in Britain are still nervous, however, as demonstrated by the coordinated “Make it Fair” campaign organized by leading UK newspapers on February 25. While the courts may provide some guidance, it is unlikely to be dispositive and is almost certainly to be somewhat contradictory and lengthy, given the appeal process that will play out. With new applications being rolled out every day, AI appears to be unstoppable. Let’s accept that this is the case. If so, what then will be the rules governing the use of AI training content, particularly content that is protected by copyright, such as books, journalistic output, paintings, musical compositions etc.?

It is already apparent that at least some of the AI output trained on these materials will compete in the marketplace with the original works. If that is the case, then surely some of that additional value should be shared with those who helped create the content initially. The way this will most likely be done is through licensing in the form of payment and permission for use of the copyrighted creative output that enabled the training to take place. Licensing would also help resolve another potential issue, the possibility that the final product produced by the AI algorithm infringes on the copyright of the works on which it was trained. This is unlikely to happen in the case of written works but is certainly potentially possible with graphic or musical works.

While many have called for licensing as a solution, there are many challenges to be overcome to make it work effectively. Yet some licensing is already taking place between AI developers and owners of well delineated data sets. As an example, various newspaper and magazine publishers have already reached licensing agreements with AI providers. OpenAI has signed licensing deals with the Wall Street Journal, Times of London, the Financial Times, Time, Le Monde, Axel Springer and others. This is in marked contrast to OpenAI’s relationship with the New York Times, which has led to one of the most prominent lawsuits in the field, with the Times suing OpenAI for copyright infringement. The reason for this lawsuit, of course, is because licensing negotiations between the two entities broke down. Some photo and image licensing companies have concluded AI deals (Shutterstock is the most prominent example) while others, such as Getty Images have not. (Getty is suing StabilityAI in the UK). Eventually most of the institutional or corporate holders of valuable content in one form or another will likely reach, or attempt to reach, licensing deals with the major AI developers. But that still leaves out an awful lot of copyright-protected content.

The conundrum is how to deal with the millions of individual creators who produce content in different formats, and tie them into a workable licensing regime. The first challenge is how to even figure out who is producing content that is likely to be used by AI developers. The second is to calculate how much that use is worth. Then there is the challenge of how to administer a collective licensing scheme in a way that is both practical and affordable and where the small amount of royalties for individual works are not swamped by the administrative costs of collection and disbursement. Finally, there is the question of how to resolve the issue of competing licensing organizations in order to provide more or less one-stop-shopping for the AI industry.

It is worth noting that one-stop-shopping currently does not exist in any area of collective licensing. Different collectives represent creators in different fields so music, publishing, art, broadcasting and visual arts licensing are all represented by different organizations, in some cases with more than one collective in a given field. The Copyright Board of Canada lists 36 copyright collectives on its website. I haven’t seen a definitive list for the US but this university website lists about the same number.

Whereas users of music only have to deal with a handful of CMOs (collective management organizations), and users of text based content (online or offline) need only to acquire a reprographic license from the major licensing collectives for published works, such as the Copyright Clearance Center in the US or Access Copyright in Canada, AI developers access the full gamut of content. It will be challenging to make access easy for the AI development industry, a point developed by Dr. Pamela Samuelson of the University of California, Berkeley, well-known copyright scholar (and skeptic, let it be added). In her recent paper in the UCLA Law Review (“Fair Use Defenses in Disruptive Technology Cases”), Samuelson focuses primarily on the question of fair use—as suggested by the title—but also examines the issue of a collective licensing regime for generative AI development. She manages to raise just about every objection conceivable (see pp.80-86 of the document for more details);

–generative AI uses all forms of content therefore the licence would have to be very broad
-an issue would arise as to whether content for training was used just once, or on repeat occasions
-it would be very difficult and costly to administer given that there could be literally billions of creators involved
-creators would get very little revenue; the bulk would go to the administering agencies, the CMOs
-it would be difficult to determine value and to set a price on each transaction
-what about orphan works?
-differing national regimes might create confusion; alternatively some countries might not require a licence payment, giving them an unfair advantage
-it would be unfair to startups since the incumbents have already scooped volumes of content without payment.

She notes that creators may lose out, but since AI will affect the livelihoods of so many others, this is not exclusively a copyright problem. Tough luck creators.

Clearly Dr. Samuelson is not in favour of a collective licensing regime for content appropriated by AI developers, yet despite her firehose of cold water, there are a number of promising developments in this area. For example, the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) in the US recently announced it would provide AI re-use rights within its Annual Copyright Licenses, making the CCC’s licence “the first-ever collective licensing solution for the internal use of copyrighted materials in AI systems.” Note the caveat. While covering re-use of content for AI applications, the CCC makes it clear that;

“The license enables participating rightsholders to fulfill the needs of companies that require an efficient way to legally acquire the rights to use copyrighted materials within AI systems for internal use.”

Not training. The Copyright Agency in Australia has done something very similar.

“Starting from February 2025, Copyright Agency will extend its Annual Business Licence to cover staff of licensed businesses who include third party material in prompts for AI tools (and) copy and share outputs from AI tools with colleagues”.

However, it does not apply to AI training and does not allow capture of the content outside the business, such as by an externally provided AI tool.

Likewise, the Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) in the UK issues a Text and Data Mining (TDM) Licence. The CLA’s website explains that TDM “is the process of transforming unstructured content into a structured format to analyse, extract and identify meaningful information and insights. By using TDM, organisations can harness the power of vast volumes of information and data, capturing and revealing key concepts, trends, and hidden relationships.” Sounds quite a bit like training generative AI, but it’s not.

“CLA’s TDM licence extension includes rights covering use of published content for TDM purposes. This does not cover the use of content in training or prompting Generative AI models.”

Canada’s equivalent CMO, Access Copyright, is actively examining the issue, as it notes in its new strategic plan for 2025-2028;

“Like collective rights management organizations around the world, we will actively explore how we might enhance our corporate licence offerings to include uses related to AI, providing Canadian rights holders who wish to participate in the emerging market for AI licensing to do so, either in Canada or by virtue of reciprocal agreements with sister organizations.”

It is clear that these Reproduction Rights Organizations (CMOs by another name) are cautiously feeling their way forward to find the appropriate role for collective licensing. Meanwhile the private sector has not been sitting idly by. Forbes reports that so many content aggregation startups have been established that they have formed a Data Providers Alliance. Recently launched “Created by Humans” is another commercial entrant that is pitching itself to authors.

“Take control of your work’s AI Rights and get compensated for its use by AI companies.”

As these new enterprises enter the market, it threatens to become quite crowded. Just as there are more and more AI companies, including new entrants like DeepSeek, a proliferation of new sector-specific content-aggregators will make licensing more challenging. If the CMOs wait too long, they will face entrenched competition. Not all these new aggregators will survive. In the end, AI developers will not subscribe to multiple content licensors; they will go with the ones that provide the broadest coverage. It will be a Darwinian selection process.

While this is happening, other countries are experimenting with the concept of extended collective licensing for AI content. This allows CMOs to grant licenses on behalf of both their members and non-members alike. An extended collective licence is not a compulsory licence but it could lead to such a system being established. Spain was first out of the gate, but has since pulled back after the proposed Royal Decree attracted the criticism from many rights holders that it would proscribe their options. Yet it is one of many solutions being tested.

The recently released US Copyright Office report “Identifying the Economic Implications of Artificial Intelligence for Copyright Policy” includes an extensive discussion of licensing possibilities, including examining the pros and cons of a new statutory blanket licence. This would need to include a provision excluding rightsholders (such as entities that have already reached licensing agreements with AI developers) who have the ability and wish to issue voluntary licences that generate greater remuneration than a statutory payout would earn. This raises thorny opt-in/opt-out issues. Compromises will be required, but the challenges are not insurmountable.

The trick is to devise a system that will capture as much content as possible while allowing some flexibility to rightsholders, allocating payments in way that is fair and efficient (the USCO paper suggests that revenues associated with a work could serve as a rough proxy for its relative value), at the same time minimizing administrative costs so that expenses do not exceed potential revenues for rightsholders holding limited content inventory. Can it be done?

Despite the many obstacles identified by Dr. Samuelson and others, I am convinced that in the end collective licensing for content used in AI development and applications will become as accepted as the collective licensing regimes for use of various forms of copyrighted content today. The way forward won’t be straightforward; there will be zigs and zags. The courts and legislatures will play a role, as will authors, publishers, and the AI developers themselves. But in the end we will get there. Licensing, including some form of collective licensing, is the inevitable bridge that will bring AI developers and copyright holders together.

© Hugh Stephens, 2025. All Rights Reserved.

Site Blocking is Back on the US Agenda: It’s Long Overdue


Image: Shutterstock

It seems as if I’ve been writing about site blocking (what I prefer to call “disabling access to offshore pirate content sites”, although this is a bit of a mouthful) forever, certainly since it was effectively pioneered by the UK, Australia and various EU countries a decade or more ago, followed later by Canada and others. The first blog post on the topic I wrote back in 2016 (“Blocking Offshore Pirate Websites: It Can be Both Effective and Manageable“) cited a study from Carnegie Mellon University that examined the effectiveness of internet site blocking to control copyright piracy in the UK. It showed that the measures caused a drop of 90% in visits to the blocked sites, leading to a 22% decrease in total piracy for all users affected by the blocks while increasing visits to paid legal streaming sites. Building on this research, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), a Washington, DC, based industry think-tank, expanded on the study to extrapolate the UK example to the (then) 24 other countries that maintained some form of internet site blocking against offshore copyright infringers. Today more than 50 countries do so–but not the US. That may be about to change, and that change is long overdue.

The 2016 ITIF study (“How Website Blocking Is Curbing Digital Piracy Without “Breaking the Internet”) very effectively ran through and debunked the range of arguments that site blocking opponents put up to oppose instituting reasonable and transparent measures to protect copyrighted content on the internet, content being exploited by copyright infringing pirate offshore websites operating beyond the reach of domestic law. These objections included;

(1) too costly (for ISPs) to implement,
(2) technically difficult and might cause disruptions in the functioning of the internet
(3) can be easily bypassed,
(4) interferes with the free flow of information on the internet
(5) violates net neutrality…

And so on. All hogwash and horsefeathers.

A year later I was writing about site-blocking again, but in an Australian, EU and Asian context. (“Disabling Access to Large-Scale Pirate Sites (Site Blocking)—It Works!“). Australia was one of the pioneers of site blocking, bringing in its first legislation in 2015. At first there was the usual opposition from ISPs, but as the regime began to work and costs kept nominal, the results started to speak for themselves. The opposition dropped away and the legal process around obtaining site blocking orders became routinized. Several European countries were also experimenting with site blocking models, notably Portugal, Italy and France. In Asia, Singapore, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand brought in site blocking mechanisms, either through court orders or administrative tribunals.

In Canada, the courts were reluctant to wade into the issue absent explicit authority to do so. In response, a coalition of content owners put together a proposal for an administrative agency to adjudicate and administer a site blocking regime, called Fair Play Canada. Predictably, the “usual suspects”, such as TechDirt in the US and Canada’s own anti-copyright crusader Michael Geist, came out in opposition. I rebutted these arguments at the time, as did others (probably more effectively). Regrettably, the telecoms regulator, the CRTC, whose authority was required to enable Fair Play to set up an administrative tribunal, ducked the issue, claiming it did not have the authority under the Telecommunications Act to make such a decision. Michael Geist claimed that the absence of a court order was a fatal flaw. And then, voilà, something unusual happened. The Federal Court of Canada (FCC) decided to exercise its authority. The so-called “fatal flaw” of a lack of a court order was remedied.

In its groundbreaking GoldTV case, the Federal Court issued an order requiring all of Canada’s major ISPs to undertake domain name server (DNS) and IP address blocking against the defendants, GoldTV.biz and GoldTV.ca, who naturally, being offshore pirate sites, failed to appear. The order was unopposed by all the ISPs with one exception–Teksavvy, a small reseller of internet access. (The appeal was joined by CIPPIC, the Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic at the University of Ottawa, founded by Michael Geist). The appeal was dismissed, and the issuance of site blocking orders in Canada by the FCC has become as routinized as in Australia, the UK and elsewhere. The orders have proven effective as one tool amongst others to protect investment in content and fight online piracy, and have been expanded to include dynamic injunctions. Dynamic injunctions target the content rather than a specific Internet address, thus allowing the blocking order to shift to whatever address the pirated feed is coming from. So effective has the site blocking mechanism in Canada become that it was recently cited by the US based Digital Citizens Alliance as a model of what the US should adopt.

The US content industry has not been able to deploy the tool of site blocking ever since the PIPA/SOPA fiasco killed that option more than a decade ago. The “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA) had wind in its sails and seemed likely to pass Congress without significant opposition until attacked by cyber-libertarians stoked up by Silicon Valley. The main argument to sow panic was the discredited argument that site blocking would “break the internet”. This has been shown time and again to be nonsense as highlighted in a fairly recent study released by ITIF, “A Decade After SOPA/PIPA, It’s Time to Revisit Website Blocking”. That was back in early 2022. Now something is finally happening in the US Congress.

At the end of January, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) introduced the Foreign Anti Digital Piracy Act (FAPDA). Under this draft legislation, a blocking order would apply only to illegal content and would have to be issued by a US court, with due process and judicial oversight, supported by clear evidence of copyright infringement. Sounds reasonable to me, yet it has brought out the old arguments against it. (Lofgren herself opposed the original SOPA proposal but now believes the safeguards are adequate and the scope sufficiently targetted). One example of the opposition to FAPDA comes from Micheal O’Reilly, former FCC Commissioner, claiming that site blocking comes “with a host of problems”. ReCreate, “Innovators, Creators and Consumers United for Balanced Copyright” also opposes it.

“FADPA and similar ‘site-blocking’ proposals would give Big Content the internet killswitch it has sought for decades. Copyright is hotly contested and infamously easy to use as a cudgel against free speech online.”

More offbase hyperbole.

In response, the Copyright Alliance published a detailed blog post written by Kevin Madigan, SVP for Policy and Government Affairs. Labelled “The Facts About Judicial Blocking of Foreign Piracy Sites”, Madigan goes through and carefully rebuts with facts the misleading arguments put forward by O’Reilly. (I note the term “site blocking” has been replaced with “judicial blocking”, which I think is a sound idea as site blocking is a misleading term, playing into the hands of extreme “internet freedom” advocates).

The facts, as outlined by Madigan are:

• Judicial blocking is consistent with free speech
• ISPs face no legal risk for complying with judicial blocking orders
• Judicial site blocking is highly effective
• Judicial site blocking is entirely consistent with net neutrality

It is slightly amusing, but extremely frustrating, to see the necessity of having to rebut, yet again, the specious arguments put forward against a judicial blocking regime. The same tired old arguments were trotted out in Australia, Europe, and Canada to try to scare legislators and consumers, claiming that selective, judicially supervised and mandated blocking of access to illegal offshore websites would somehow violate free speech, lead to violations of privacy, would break the internet and be contrary to net neutrality–and would not work anyway. As Madigan puts it in his blog, this is “balderdash”.

Whether the term is hogwash, horsefeathers, balderdash or hyperbole (not to mention misinformation and disinformation), the opposition to judicial blocking of carefully selected offshore pirate websites is hard to understand—unless I guess you are a cyber-libertarian. But the internet is not a rule-of-law free zone. Illegal content, especially when hosted offshore beyond the reach of domestic courts, does not deserve special protection. The experience of countries around the world has shown that blocking access to offshore pirate sites works in terms of fighting piracy and encouraging take up of legitimate content, without breaking the internet or infringing on basic freedoms. It is time the US joined the club.

© Hugh Stephens, 2025. All Rights Reserved.

Canadians React to Donald Trump’s Tariff Threats and 51st State Nonsense by Boycotting American Goods and Services–But US Streamers Seem Immune

Ontario Premier Doug Ford wears his Captain Canada hat. Credit: CBC (Justin Tang/Canadian Press)

As Donald Trump continues his tariff threats against Canadian products, but more specifically doubles down on his “Canada should be the 51st state” nonsense, he has succeeded in doing what Prime Minister Trudeau has been unable to do over the past few years—uniting Canadians. Some Canadians are so incensed that they have taken to calling their favourite coffee beverage a “Canadiano” instead of an “Americano“. That’s extreme but hey, if Donald Trump can unilaterally change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, anything goes. While Trump apparently has spoken to some Canadians who are allegedly “interested” in the idea of annexation (did he find them on a golf course in West Palm Beach?), Canadian leaders and members of the public have made it plain that becoming part of the US is a non-starter.

In recent polls in Canada, opposition to Trump’s plan ranged from 90-94%. But of course that hasn’t stopped Donald Trump from publicly musing about the idea, although he seems to be just about the only person in the US who is actually interested in it, and he certainly didn’t campaign on it. Even if Canadians were interested, which they are not, the domestic political obstacles in the US to absorbing the world’s second largest country, with 42 million people, several million of whom have French as their first language, are insurmountable. It’s worth noting that Canada has more people than the most populous US state (California) and is 15 times geographically larger than the largest continental US state by size (Texas), and seven times bigger than the largest (Alaska).

However, the current issue is not whether or not Canada would ever become part of the US but rather what actions individual Canadians are taking to show their opposition to the idea. A recent public opinion poll from the respected pollster Leger reported that a large majority of those polled indicated they were prioritizing buying Canadian and consciously avoiding US products. More than half said they had cancelled trips to the US or would not travel there. The US Travel Association reported that in 2024 Canadians made more that 20.4 million visits to the US (the most from any foreign country), generating $20.5 billion in spending and supporting 140,000 US jobs. Thus a 10% reduction would mean $2.1 billion in lost spending and a loss of 14,000 jobs. The top states that Canadians visited were Florida, California, Nevada, New York and Texas. If your winter temperatures hit the minus 30s, as they do in many parts of Canada, Florida and California are understandable escapes, although there are alternatives. Mexico is a prime example.

When it comes to US products like alcohol it is also not that difficult to find good alternatives. California wine may be great, but there is Australia, Europe, Chile—even Canada itself as a source of supply. Some foodstuffs might be difficult to substitute, however, given the close integration of supply chains between the two countries. While people have started to boycott US brands, one has to ask what is a US brand, or a Canadian brand, these days? Canada Dry has long been a US product and is owned by Dr. Pepper. However, many US branded products are actually produced in Canada, so it takes some perspicacity to realize that Heinz ketchup is (once again) produced in Canada, at least for the Canadian market, as it loudly proclaims. (Canadians may remember that back in 2016 Heinz pulled out of Canada. After a widespread boycott of the product, the company rethought its policy and returned in 2020). The effectiveness of consumer boycotts is clearly illustrated when businesses such as A&W and Boston Pizza are sporting signs in Canada proclaiming that they are proudly Canadian owned and operated. Interestingly, that all-Canadian icon donut shop Tim Hortons is ultimately controlled by RBI, a US-Brazilian corporation, although most of its franchisees are Canadians and it is headquartered in Toronto.

These intricacies and nuances help explain why it is difficult for consumers to correctly identify the source of a product in order to accurately target their ire. And then there is the inconvenience of avoiding products you like, which can lead to all sorts of rationalizations. After all, most Americans don’t want to annex Canada and even if they voted for Trump, taking over Canada wasn’t part of the reason. So why try to punish them? The Province of BC took that a step further by announcing that it was going to pull all liquor products off the shelves of provincial liquor stores, but only if the products were from “red states”. We could still buy the Oregon pinot noir or that luscious California red blend with a clear conscience! (In the end, the wines have not yet been pulled because Trump postponed the tariffs on Canada for 30 days).

While Canadian consumers wrestle with whether they should cancel their trip to Disneyland or give up Florida orange juice for BC apple juice, the one thing they seem to be mostly united on is the need to leave their favourite US content streaming services out of the equation. According to the Leger survey, less than 30% said they would consider cancelling a US streaming service. (the recent price increases by Netflix might be a more compelling reason). Thus Netflix, Disney +, Prime, Apple TV and others seem safe. It’s easy to see why. Lack of real alternatives.

Bell Canada offers a domestic streaming service, Crave, but what is its prime attraction? Access to HBO. HBO does not operate a streaming service in Canada, at least not right now. It is more profitable, presumably, for the company to license its content to Bell for streaming on Crave. CBC offers an ad supported and an ad-free subscription streaming service, CBC Gem, but in the eyes of many consumers, it doesn’t stack up. Moreover, Netflix offers Canadian content if you want it. There is even a button highlighting how to access it. Besides, many of the most popular shows on Netflix are not US shows. There is Squid Game from Korea, many Nordic shows, Spanish, Italian, French and British productions abound, along of course with a range of US content. Netflix may be US owned but it has become an international platform to showcase content from around the world. It, and other US producers, also spend a lot of money producing content in Canada, some of it (a small minority) recognizably Canadian. As for the rest, it helps keep production in Canada growing. So, if you wanted to make a point, cutting off your US content nose to spite your Canadian entertainment face doesn’t seem like a very good idea. Most Canadians appear to have reached that sensible conclusion.

Will any of this stop the Trump tariffs? Consumer boycotts can have some impact, and retaliatory tariffs promised by Canada against imports of US products will hurt US exporters, such as the farming community, which is politically influential. US tariffs on imports of Canadian products, including imports that cannot be easily sourced elsewhere (think BC lumber to rebuild houses destroyed in the California fires) will increase costs to US consumers and drive up inflation in the US. That might be a more powerful reason why the Trump Administration in the end may back off somewhat. However, Donald Trump seems unlikely to stop spouting his disrespectful 51st state mantra, and the more he does, the more he will convince Canadians to come together and push back—but it seems that changing viewing habits is unlikely to be part of this.

Now if Trump really wanted to bring Canada to its knees, he would block all US streaming content, television and sports broadcasting. No Super Bowl, No NBA, No Netflix, No Disney.

We surrender!

© Hugh Stephens, 2025. All Rights Reserved.

This post has been updated to reflect the obvious fact that Alaska is the largest US state geographically, not Texas. Sorry Alaskans.