The Author:
James Gannon is a lawyer at the firm McCarthy Tétrault. The views expressed here are his own.
Tag Archives: Digital Music
Bill C-11, “Digital Locks”, and Copyright Reform: What Kind of Business Models Do We Want to Encourage?
Posted by on February 1, 2012
Many arguments over the merits of various copyright reform policies often devolve into a debate over competing “business models”. Copyright reform opponents and abolitionists often argue that amendments to copyright law “preserve outdated business models“, while supporters of progressive reforms argue that they are in fact required to protect emerging models of digital product distribution. [...]
Getting it Right with Cyberlockers and Safe Harbours
Posted by on August 30, 2011
Michael Robertson runs a pair of websites that are clearly designed to help users build libraries of illegally copied music files. Of course, his websites don’t fly pirate flags on the front page or openly mock content owners who ask that their works be taken down like The Pirate Bay, but expert witnesses in his website’s [...]
New York Times article surveys success of graduated response
Posted by on January 26, 2011
The last Sunday Edition of the New York Times contained a detailed piece that reported on the impact that graduated response systems have had now that they’ve been in place for a number of months in countries like France and South Korea. Last year, I wrote a post examining music sales in countries that had [...]
EMI Records v UPC Communications: A call for graduated response in Ireland?
Posted by on October 12, 2010
In what is being called a “major victory” by an Irish ISP against record label EMI, a judge of the Ireland High Court has ruled that ISPs are under no legal obligation to sanction users found to be participating in illegal downloading over the Internet. The headlines are stating that this decision represents a major [...]
The full picture on Michael Geist’s “facts” about Canadian copyright
Posted by on September 27, 2010
On his blog last week, Michael Geist speculates about a trip by a Canadian music industry group to the U.S. which was designed, in his words, to “embarass [Canada] into changing its laws”. He then lists a number of “facts” that he is “guessing that the discussion did not focus on” at a number of [...]
Maia Davies Speaks Out on Copyright Reform
Posted by on August 13, 2010
Maia Davies, of the Montreal band Ladies of the Canyon, has a great op-ed piece in the Montreal Gazette today: As artists, we are nothing but grateful and thankful for the chance to do for a living what motivates our entire beings. It is a passion that we are only too glad to share. But [...]
Bill C-32 – User Exceptions and Digital Locks
Posted by on June 17, 2010
In the past couple of weeks, some news articles and blogs have been highly critical of the proposed amendments to the Canadian Copyright Act found in Bill C-32. Much of the criticism has focussed on the issue of TPMs, or “digital locks”, despite these provisions being almost identical to those that were found in the [...]
Top 5 Myths About the New Copyright Bill and Digital Locks
Posted by on June 3, 2010
So copyright is big news again. Shortly after the Copyright Amendment Act (Bill C-32) was tabled yesterday, mainstream news outlets began running stories trying to summarize the myriad of changes to Canadian copyright law proposed in the Bill. Surprisingly, many news stories chose to highlight above all the provisions in the Bill related to Technological [...]
Two big copyright cases last week
Posted by on May 17, 2010
A couple major copyright cases that came out last week to check out: A summary judgment in the Limewire litigation out of the Southern District of New York. The court found that Limewire was liable to the record labels for inducing the copyright infringing acts of its users. The labels also won on the issues [...]
Graduated Response as a deterrent
Posted by on May 6, 2010
As a follow-up to last week’s post, I want to draw attention to a magazine article somebody sent me from France: It’s from the magazine Pleine Vie, which markets itself as a magazine for senior women. The article is titled “”Si votre-petit-fils télécharge illégalement depuis votre ordinateur, voici, étape par étape, la procédure prévue par [...]
