James Gannon's IP Blog

Yesterday, I had the pleasure to attend a lunch and seminar organized by the Canadian Intellectual Property Council along with the International Chamber of Commerce. The keynote speech was delivered by Minister of Canadian Heritage James Moore who provided some excellent context for the importance of enacting copyright reform in Canada, in particular the recently-tabled Bill C-32.

His closing remarks about the importance of copyright in the perspective of international trade really struck me as putting the issue of copyright reform in the right context:

Canada, from the Hudson’s Bay Company to FTA and NAFTA to the G8 and G20, Canada always has been always will be a trading nation.  Our future and our past and our prosperity has always been dependant on investment into Canada, be it compliance with international standards, opening ourselves up to the world, welcoming investment and working with the world, not being an outlier in the world, disregarding international treaties like WIPO that we’ve signed, disregarding our obligations to protect foreign investment into Canada, Canadian investments into Canadian businesses.  We need to protect those investments, protect those jobs and make sure that those voices who try to find technical nonsensical fear-mongering reasons to oppose copyright reform are confronted every step of the way and they are defeated.  And when we do that, this Bill will pass and Canada will be better for it.

Minister Moore is absolutely correct that copyright is a trade issue. With the Internet rapidly emerging as the foremost distribution technology for creative works, the shortcomings of Canadian copyright law are felt by the creative industries all over the world. The ramifications of Canada’s weak copyright regime has impacts far beyond having the highest per capita rate of online piracy. Consider:

• Canada hosts more popular BitTorrent websites than any other country. Not per capita, but in absolute numbers. These websites, like the infamous IsoHunt.com, get more visits in a year than the entire Canadian population. They make available copyright-protected works from artists all over the world to downloaders from all over the world, including Canada’s main trading partners.
• Canada remains the sole G8 country not to have ratified the WIPO Internet treaties which ban the manufacture and sale of devices that circumvent copyright protections. This has had the unfortunate effect of creating a domestic cottage industry of modchip and hacking tool exporters who take advantage of Canada’s unique position of WIPO-holdout. Some of these companies have tried to disguise themselves as a legitimate consumer advocacy group called CCER and have been attempting to lobby the government (thankfully without much success) for an absurdly minimalist approach to WIPO-ratification. Make no mistake that these companies and individuals realize almost all their revenue from enabling copyright infringement on a global scale and are precisely what Minister Moore refered to when he spoke of groups who “will find any excuse to oppose this bill to drum up fear to mislead to misdirect and to push people in the wrong direction and to undermine what has been a meaningful comprehensive year-long effort to get something right”.

As the upcoming G20 leaders’ summit this weekend in Toronto emphasizes, Canada is indeed a trading nation, and more particularly a leading export nation. We gladly export our resources, manufactured goods, services and creative works all over the world. Yet when it comes to copyright protection, it cannot be denied that we have fallen short of our international trade obligations, including ratification of the WIPO Internet treaties. Not only has our government in the past failed to take decisive action against the alarming rates of copyright infringement within our borders, but our weak copyright regime has enabled the growth of a pirate industry that hurts artists, creators and creative industries on a global scale. I hope the important trade context to the copyright reform file is not ignored by the special “copyright committee” that Moore announced would be created this fall to consider Bill C-32 and the key amendments to Canadian copyright law therein.