Copyright

384 posts

Mininova gone, who’s left and where are they located?

In August of this year a Dutch court ordered Mininova to remove all infringing torrents within three months. Yesterday, Mininova complied with the court’s order and disabled all torrents, except those in the licensed “content distribution” part of the service.

Mininova was the world’s second most popular unauthorized BitTorrent site. It facilitated infringement on a massive scale, with more than 10 billion downloads. Its demise follows Pirate Bay which was also ordered shut down following a decision by a Swedish court this past April which found Pirate Bay’s operators criminally responsible for copyright infringement.…

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OECD counterfeiting report misinterpreted to support myth of Canada as a low piracy country

On November 20th, the OECD published a report titled Magnitude of counterfeiting and piracy of tangible products – November 2009 update. The report is an update to a previous major study on counterfeiting undertaken by the OECD in 2008. The report confirms what has been known for a long time: that counterfeiting and piracy of tangible goods is a major impediment to global trade that is getting worse. The report estimates that global trade in counterfeit and pirated tangible goods more than doubled in this decade to approximately 250 billion US dollars in 2007, up from just over USD 100 billion in 2001.…

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Graduated Response Mapped out in UK Digital Economy Bill

The UK government continues to speed ahead with modernizing its copyright legislation to bring the UK into the 21st century. The latest development is the introduction the UK Digital Economy Bill.

Earlier this month the government published © the way ahead: A Copyright Strategy for the Digital Age. The report focused on the need to keep copyright consistent with public expectations and explored the desirability of making access to and use of works easier for consumers. It also recommended making orphan works easier to access and suggested extended collective licensing as a means of facilitating making works available to the public.…

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More Fickle than Fair: Why Canada Should Not Adopt A Fair Use Regime

Article from The Lawyers Weekly. November 20, 2009, by Barry Sookman and Dan Glover

In July, the Canadian government launched a nationwide consultation on copyright modernization, asking Canadians what changes should be made to the Copyright Act to best foster innovation, creativity, competition and investment, and position Canada as a leader in the global, digital economy.

During this process, advocates of copyright liberalization have called to replace Canada’s longstanding fair dealing provisions with a general fair use provision. In Canada, fair dealing is a defence to an infringement claim that allows a person to use copyright fairly for certain identified purposes.…

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Support for ACTA Urged by Over 20 Leading Organizations

On November 19, leading American entities representing the creative industries including representatives of authors, publishers, directors, artists, photographers, and distributors wrote to Chairman Patrick Leahy, U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee as well as to ranking members of various Senate and House Committees to express their strong support for ACTA.

The letter summarizes some of the reasons why ACTA is important. Here are some extracts from the letter, which are equally applicable to Canada:

“The United States is currently engaged in discussions with many of its major trading partners to negotiate a new agreement:  the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) — to enhance and strengthen the global fight against piracy and counterfeiting.  …

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Fear Mongering and Misinformation Used to Slag ACTA

Last week saw a lot of digital ink spilled over speculation about what the Internet Chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is going to contain.  Some opponents of ACTA including Prof. Geist helped to leak the contents of a two page confidential memorandum that contained a written account of an oral report on what was still being negotiated.[i]

Based on this two page preliminary document, ACTA opponents began a frenzied propaganda campaign against ACTA.  Prof. Geist led the feverish attack writing articles, blogs, tweets, giving a speech in Washington, and press and radio interviews.…

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OHRLP publishes leading submissions to the copyright consultations

The Osgoode Hall Review of Law and Policy has published 9 submissions covering divergent views on how the Copyright Act should be modernized.

The articles include submissions from Michael Geist, David Allsebrook, Sam Trowsow, The Writers Guild of Canada, Canadian Association of Research Libraries, Entertainment Software Association, and Laura Murray. The issue also includes my submission to the copyright consultations as well as a submission written by Dan Glover and me on Why Canada should not  adopt a fair use regime.…

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Google amends settlement with authors and publishers in U.S. litigation

On Friday, the parties to the Authors Guild, et al. v. Google Inc class action litigation. amended the Original Settlement in response to discussions with the United States Department of Justice and objections to the Original Settlement (the “Amended Settlement”). The Amended Settlement Agreement (“ASA”), an FAQ, as well as the original Settlement Agreement and the original Notice, may be found at http://www.googlebooksettlement.com. A summary of the main amendments are at http://www.googlebooksettlement.com/Supplemental-Notice.pdf.

Some of the key amendments include:

  • Amended Settlement Class.
…
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McCarthy Tétrault Co-Counsel: Technology Law Quarterly

Table of Contents
Internet/E-World ………………………………………………………………………. 1
E-COMMERCE …………………………………………………………………………………. 1
BC: Appeal Court Finds No Defamation Liability for Hyperlinking …………………………………..1
US: Linden Lab Aims to Make (Second) Life Easier for IP Owners……………………………………1
SPAM………………………………………………………………………………………….. 3
Canada: Industry Committee Amends Anti-Spam Bill ………………………………………………..3
Technology M&A……………………………………………………………………….. 6
TECH-RELATED M&A …………………………………………………………………………. 6
Canada: GPLv3 and Tech M&A………………………………………………………………………..6
Technology Contracting……………………………………………………………….. 8
TECHNOLOGY AGREEMENTS …………………………………………………………………. 8
Canada: New Protection for Licensees of IP — BIA and CCAA Amendments Come into Force ……..8
Canada: Harmonized Sales Tax — Timing Your Tech Purchases…………………………………… 10
OUTSOURCING ……………………………………………………………………………….
…
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Barry Sookman
This site is about technology, copyright, artificial intelligence, and privacy law.