The Author:
James Gannon is a lawyer at the firm McCarthy Tétrault. The views expressed here are his own.
Tag Archives: wipo
Is Revoking Internet Access a Violation of Human Rights?
Posted by on June 6, 2011
Last week, the United Nations Human Rights Council published a Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression. The goal of the report was to make the argument that Internet access should be considered a human right that is necessary to ensure free expression, and to condemn [...]
TPMs: A comprehensive guide for Canadian copyright law
Posted by on November 9, 2010
Based on last week’s debate in the House of Commons, it appears as though one of the more contentious elements of Bill C-32, the Copyright Amendment Act, are the provision pertaining to digital locks, or technological protection measures (“TPMs”) as they’re called in the Bill. Although I earlier pointed to many errors the NPD critic made with [...]
Bill C-32 TPM Provisions: What Do the WIPO Treaties Require?
Posted by on November 3, 2010
Yesterday, the House of Commons debated Bill C-32, the Copyright Amendment Act. One aspect of the Bill that was brought up by members of Parliament for every party was the legal protection for digital locks (or “TPMs” as they’re called in the Bill) pursuant to Canada’s obligations under the WIPO Internet Treaties. A statement from [...]
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 [...]
Moore: “Canada always has been and always will be a trading nation”
Posted by on June 23, 2010
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 – 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 [...]
CCER: “omg, canadian government totally not paying attention to game pirates!”
Posted by on May 10, 2010
The Canadian Coalition for Electronic Rights (CCER) are a group of modchip manufacturers that earn a living selling little chips that allow video gamers to play pirated games on their consoles. I’ve written before about their attempts to inundate the Canadian Parliament demanding copyright reforms that keep their piracy-enabling business models alive. CCER recently posted [...]
Entertainment Software Association of Canada publishes digital strategy report
Posted by on April 15, 2010
The Entertainment Software Association of Canada yesterday published a report titled “Game On, Canada! Playing to win in the digital economy“. The report sets out 10 recommendations for the Government to “support the production and distribution of content and the growth of robust domestic creative and digital media industries”. The recommendations cover a wide range [...]
Captcha hacking found to violate DMCA anti-circumvention laws
Posted by on March 24, 2010
A new copyright case out of the Northern District of California highlights the need for a robust “related acts” implementation of WIPO anti-circumvention provisions. In Craigslist, Inc. v. Naturemarket, Inc, the defendant sold software that would “auto-post” to Craigslist, allowing users of the program to spam the popular classified listings website. In order to do [...]
