Copyright Notice: We don't think much of copyright, so you can do what you want with the content on this blog. Of
course we
are hungry
for publicity, so we would be pleased if you avoided plagiarism and gave us credit for what we have written. We
encourage you not to impose copyright restrictions on your "derivative" works, but we won't try to stop you. For the legally or statist minded,
you can consider yourself subject to a Creative Commons Attribution License.
Canada has permanent-residency on the 301 Watch Lists prepared by the Office of the United States Trade Representatives. A disgrace earned by the state of our domestic copyright law. As Michael Geist revealed this week, the EU has an equally dismal view of Canada. Ongoing efforts to negotiate a trade agreement between Canada and the EU came with a scolding. Here are some of our sins:
1) We provide a copyright term of life plus fifty years, instead of life plus seventy.
2) We insist that ISPs are not liable for the conduct of their users.
3) Our law is antiquated (last major revision was in 1997, as compared to the DMCA of 1998).
4) We have not acceded to WIPO Internet Treaties (which obscures the mundane detail that Canada is compliant with international obligations.)
5) Our current law is precise on one disturbing point: copyright is a set of limited rights. So said our Supreme Court (four times).
6) Instead of listening to our trading partners (current and potential) with respect to changing Canadian law, our Federal Government chose to engage with Canadians. In summer 2009 Ministers James Moore (Heritage) and Tony Clement (Industry) embarked upon a national consultation. 8,000 letters later we are still waiting to see what shape the next law will take, but in the meantime Canadian media industries are holding their own.
PricewaterhouseCoopers recently published their 2009-2013 projections of global media and entertainment industries. In their comparison of consumer spending on media and entertainment in North America, PWC writes:
Canada will be the fastest-growing country, with projected 2.2 percent compound annual increase compared with 1.2 percent compound annual growth for the United States.
Notably, in the category of recorded music (the realm of active copyright lobbyists) both countries show a declining compounded annual growth rate. But Canada's decline is projected to -1% whereas its American counterpart shows -4.7%. Similar comparisons to U.K (-3.9%), France (-7.4%), and Germany (-1.9%) all place the Canadian music scene as more stable. This, despite the state of our copyright law.
The upcoming documentary, Copyright Criminals, shows how copyright has outrageously criminalized the use of sampling, which has been disproportionately popular in hip hop music. In this, it calls to mind the racially disproportionate impact of drug laws on minorities...
Rebellion in the Red: Manifesto (google translation) notes Spanish legislation allowing the suspension of Internet service to users "to safeguard the rights of intellectual property" has caused a huge backlash. Journalists, bloggers, users, professionals and Internet developers have put forth a statement "In defense of fundamental rights on the Internet", which includes:
1. Copyright can not be above the fundamental rights of citizens, including the right to privacy, security, the presumption of innocence, to effective judicial protection and freedom of expression.
People are beginning to recognize the growing conflict between individual rights and "intellectual property"--and, if forced to choose, are choosing real, individual rights over IP. Hopefully it won't stop here.
On the latest This Week in Tech, guest panelist and sci-fi author Jerry Pournelle has an interesting anecdote about his involvement with a copyright squabble between Fox and Universal in the 1970s concerning Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica. As noted on Wikipedia:
Battlestar Galactica was finally produced in the wake of the success of the 1977 film Star Wars. In fact, 20th Century Fox sued Universal Studios (the studio behind Battlestar Galactica) for copyright infringement, claiming that it had stolen 34 distinct ideas from Star Wars. Universal promptly countersued, claiming Star Wars had stolen ideas from the 1972 film Silent Running (notably the robot "drones") and the Buck Rogers serials of the 1940s.
Pournelle says [go to about 1:15:45 of the TWiT episode] that after Universal was sued by Fox, he was paid $20,000 by Universal to help show that BG was not too similar to Star Wars. Pournelle says that to write a brief showing there was no plagiarism. He says,
I looked at it, and said, why, that's easy. If you ask me which is the better movie, then no question, Star Wars is the better one. But if you ask me which is the most original, there ain't an original frame in either one of 'em! They're both derivative from fiction that was published centuries ago--for instance the male-pair bonding between Han Solo and Luke Skywalker was echoed in Battlestar Galactica--I said, yeah, and they both got it from Homer, didn't they?
I just came across this older youtube video discussing a six-second drum loop from 1969 that became to basis of hip-hip and the subsequent genres based on sampling, the "Amen Break." The video shows how the lack of enforcement of copyrights allowed new genres to emerge and musical creativity to flourish. Of course, there is a company laying claim to a copyright at some point, of course unrelated to any involved artist.
Economic Logic points out a paper that shows that shorter copyrights stimulate artistic creation. Indeed, copyrights mainly benefit the big stars among artists, and the monopoly power they gain is diverted toward promoting a select few. This discourages others to become artists and there are fewer and less diverse artists. Shorten copyrights, and you get more artistic creation.
The proposed Google book scanning deal has provoked a great deal of opposition. Google co-founder SERGEY BRIN, defends it link here. He makes a reasonable set of points:
"This agreement aims to make millions of out-of-print but in-copyright books available either for a fee or for free with ad support, with the majority of the revenue flowing back to the rights holders, be they authors or publishers."
"...rights holders can at any time set pricing and access rights for their works or withdraw them from Google Books altogether."
"For those books whose rights holders have not yet come forward, reasonable default pricing and access policies are assumed. This allows access to the many orphan works whose owners have not yet been found and accumulates revenue for the rights holders, giving them an incentive to step forward."
"...nothing in this agreement precludes any other company or organization from pursuing their own similar effort. nothing in this agreement precludes any other company or organization from pursuing their own similar effort."
I remain most concerned about the lack of present competition. But I remind myself that possible future competitors can come forth should Google et al price themselves too richly.
In the meantime, getting a deal that makes the books available is the critical point. Brin reminds us that even library books don't survive fire and flood.
Opponents of copyright will remain opposed on principle. That strikes me as quixotic, even as I agree in principle.
