Museums’ licensing demands are a pernicious tax on scholarship

Game company wants to take down YouTube star’s livestreams after n-word incident.

Entering the public domain became the ultimate distribution tool

It was a crazy idea: Take the bulk of the world’s books, scan them, and create a monumental digital library for all to access. That’s what Google ...

Graphs/charts are less copyrightable than you might think due to "merger doctrine."

Two weeks ago, Justice Phelan of the Federal Court handed Access Copyright a huge victory in its lawsuit against York University.[1] I have followed the case closely and read the parties’ submissions and I have been constantly concerned that York … Access Copyright v. York University: An Anatomy of a Predictable But Avoidable Loss Read More »

Copyright law is the primary means by which society preserves and protects valued cultural heritage. There is a clear correlation between that which is protected and that which is valued by society for the continued enjoyment of future generations. However, this truth becomes troubling when it is considered that modern copyright continues to espouse antiquated ideals of acceptable cultural production, to the exclusion of the cultural property of many historically marginalized people groups. This article takes a critical look at copyright law to deconstruct the ways in which historical values and assumptions continue to color the modern protection of cultural creation, thereby confining cultural expression and barring protection to the cultural work of the marginalized.

For the past 13 years, Canadian copyright jurisprudence has followed a consistent trajectory. Starting with the Supreme Court of Canada's CCH decision in 2004, Canadian courts and tribunals have affirmed the need for balance in copyright and the importance of user's rights. That approach has been particularly evident in fair dealing cases. Much to the dismay of Access Copyright, from the Supreme Court's 2012 copyright pentalogy cases (including Alberta v. Access Copyright and SOCAN v. Bell) to the Copyright Board's rulings on copying in K-12 schools and governments to the Federal Court of Appeal (upholding the Copyright Board's decisions), the courts have upheld the need for balance and a broad, liberal approach to fair dealing.  Yesterday, however, five years to the day of the release of the Supreme Court's copyright pentalogy, Access Copyright found a willing taker for its legal arguments. Judge Michael Phelan of the Federal Court of Canada delivered a complete victory for the copyright collective, rejecting York University's fair dealing approach and concluding that an interim tariff is mandatory and enforceable against the university. The immediate implications of the decision are significant: royalty payments to Access Copyright (that will likely be kept in escrow pending any appeals) and the prospect of other universities re-thinking their current copyright policies. The decision will also have an effect on the copyright review scheduled for later this year. With the court's decision, there will be little reason to revisit the inclusion of the "education" purpose in fair dealing as it had no discernible impact on the court's legal analysis.

Last November, a crowd-funded Star Trek project got sued for copyright and trademark infringement by a major rights holder. No, not Axanar!  That was the previous year, silly (although the Axanar l…

How open technologies protect jobs; how copyright in software holds software users hostage.

The case of Colombian scientist Diego Gomez — on trial for copyright violation for sharing a research paper — is likely to reach a head later this month.

The problems of getting permissions.

Interesting theory-of-change case study?

The Australian copyright community has been shocked by a scandal involving the Copyright Agency, a copyright collective that diverted millions of dollars intended for authors toward a lobbying and advocacy fund designed to fight against potential fair use reforms. The collective reportedly withheld A$15 million in royalties from authors in order to build a war chest to fight against changes to the Australian copyright law. I wrote last month about my experience in Australia, where groups such as the Copyright Agency have engaged in a remarkable effort to mislead policy makers on the state of copyright law in Canada. A former director of the Copyright Agency describes the latest situation as "pathetic" noting that it was outrageous to extract millions from publicly-funded schools for a lobbying fund.  The Australian case is far from an isolated incident. A quick search reveals plenty of examples of legal concerns involving copyright collectives with corruption fears in Kenya and competition law concerns in Italy over the past couple of months as well as recent fines against Spanish collecting societies. In fact, Jonathan Band and Brandon Butler published an eye-opening article several years ago chronicling an astonishing array of examples of corruption, mismanagement, lack of transparency, and negative effects for both creators and users from copyright collectives around the world.

“Somewhere at Google there is a database containing 25 million books and nobody is allowed to read them.”

In a stunning development, OUP, CUP and Taylor & Francis just withdrew their copyright law suit filed against Delhi University (and its photocopier, Ram