Digital Copyright Canada

The International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) tipped their hand a bit in this years submission to the “Special 301" report process. While they again attacked Canada for having strong copyright law that is different than the USA, the most telling was their opposition to policies encouraging legally free of charge Open Source in their submissions for Brazil, India, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Encouraging legally free software is by far the best policy instrument to reduce software copyright infringement for the less financially rich countries and individuals of the world. For the vast majority of the worlds population the only viable options are to infringe royalty-based software or switch to royalty-free alternatives. The fact the IIPA is encouraging countries to have policies which increase infringement rather than have people switch to competing software is telling about their actual goals.

This is consistent with what past Microsoft business group president Jeff Raikes previously stated, "If they're going to pirate somebody, we want it to be us rather than somebody else".

I took the form at http://localtvmatters.ca as well as the CRTC form and sent the following intervention. The topic was the connections between convergence and the future of television, including local television. (See also: Michael Geist)

There are now only 4 days left to make your voice heard in the 2009 copyright consultation.

I was about to write about the policy and statistical laundering which can be seen with not only the 1996 WIPO treaties but also the Special 301 report. This is a report which special interest groups have managed to convince the United States government to abuse to pressure other countries into making radical backward-facing changes to their Copyright law.

I then read an article about a statement by Bell Canada about policy which I agreed with. Given I disagree with the phone and cable companies on most things, it is pretty special for me to find an area where I agree.

>> Read full article on the IT World Canada blog.

The recording industry likes to include the decline of the traditional music retailers in their statistics of the alleged harm from unauthorized music filesharing. The reality is that it is the ongoing transition to downloads (#1 Apple's iTunes, #2 eMusic) and big-box stores (#1 Wal-Mart, #2 Best Buy) that is the major influence.

A Canadian Press article says that, "HMV bought a full-page ad in the music magazine Billboard to laud superstar acts for refusing to go along with similar arrangements in Canada and asks that musicians refuse any distribution offers that would cut out traditional retailers."