James Gannon's IP Blog

As expected, the news of a motion to consider the extension of the private copying levy to digital audio recording devices has sparked a lot of debate online. While there are worthwhile points to be made on both sides of this issue (see my post from earlier this week for some of my own views), there does appear to be a lot of confusion as to what exactly was proposed on Tuesday.

One of the most popular sources for information on new developments in Canadian copyright law is the blog run by University of Ottawa professor Michael Geist. Prof. Geist is very quick with updates and will often report on these developments even before they appear in official sources.

However, a major problem I often see with Prof. Geist’s reporting is that he has a tendency to over-politicize many of the issues being considered by the Canadian government. I’ve written before on his polarization of the proposed amendments to the ECPA last fall and his recent comments on WIPO ratification also portrayed past copyright reform efforts as either a “conservative” bill or a “liberal” bill.

This seems to have once again been the case with Tuesday’s motion to consider a levy on digital audio recorders. The motion, from Bloc Québecois MP Carole Lavallée, was to propose that the amendment be added as an item of business for the House of Commons to consider for discussion at a future time.  To be clear, the MPs who voted in favour of this motion were not voting “for”, or signalling any kind of “support” for, this amendment to the Copyright Act, but merely voting for the House to consider the amendment at a later time.

In a way, it is unfortunate that so many Canadians receive their news from Michael Geist on these kind of topics. In his blog post yesterday, he once again sought to portray this motion as a highly politicized issue. First, the title of his post, “Liberals, Bloc, and NDP All Support Motion To Extend Private Copying Levy”, suggests that all three opposition parties all voted together to support the extension of the private copying levy. This isn’t the case at all. The 2 Liberal MPs, 2 Bloc MPs and a single NDP MP only voted for the House of Commons to debate the amendment at a later time (although to be fair, it is safe to assume NDP MP Charlie Angus supports the amendment itself as he introduced a similar private member bill himself in Bill C-499). However, there is absolutely nothing to suggest that Liberal MPs Scott Sims and Justin Trudeau, Bloc MP Roger Pomerleau, or the entire sitting caucus of the Liberal, NPD and Bloc Québecois parties, support the motion itself.

Prof. Geist then asserted that Committee Chair Gary Schellengerger’s vote in favour to consider the amendment is somehow “at odds with” comments from Heritage Minister James Moore or Industry Minister Tony Clement, who have both stated that they oppose these amendments. This is again an over-politicization of the actual facts. Mr. Schellenberger’s vote in favour of Lavallée’s motion is merely a reflection of the need to debate this issue at greater lengths – and with half of the MPs on the Committee signalling a need to do so, it was the obvious call to make. This does not put Mr. Schellenberger’s position “at odds with” either Ministers Moore or Clement, and neither does any MP’s vote in favour of this motion.

As the experience with ”Fox News” in the U.S. has shown, by highly politicizing debated issues, the public will often be tempted with a narrative with “good guys” on one side of the political spectrum and “bad guys” on the other. The actual merits of any proposed legislative reform will often get ignored by a highly partisan public. Not only was Prof. Geist’s reporting of this issue misleading by suggesting that MPs voted to “support” an amendment when they really just acknowledged that it requires further consideration, the emphasis on party affiliations and attempts to highlight either inter- or intra-party contentions does nothing to advance the debate of the important issue at hand.

(Note that a few corrections were made to this post from its original version. See this follow-up for more.)