Michael Geist Archives - Barry Sookman

Fact checking Michael Geist’s criticisms of the FairPlay site blocking proposal

The FairPlay coalition comprising more than 25 organizations representing hundreds of thousands of members of Canada’s creative community made a reasonable proposal to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), Canada’s telecommunications and broadcast regulator, to address the scourge of online copyright infringement.[1] The proposal, which involves website blocking, was immediately attacked by anti-copyright activist Michael Geist (“Geist”) in a series of articles and interviews. As I showed in a prior lengthy blog post,[2] his criticisms were unfounded and overblown.…

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Fix the value gap – a reply to Michael Geist

Here is an Op-ed of mine that ran earlier today in the Hill Times. The post below includes endnotes not in that article.

In his Hill Times Op-ed (Canadian copyright reform requires a fix on the fair dealing gap, Dec. 5, 2016) Michael Geist takes issue with the need to address the “value gap” that is hurting Canadian artists, writers, and other members of the creative class. He argues instead that Canada faces a need to address a “fair dealing gap” in our copyright laws.…

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Geist
TPP

Grasping at straws: the trouble with “The Trouble with the TPP”, a further reply to Michael Geist

I recently had the privilege of speaking about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) at the Fordham 24^th Annual Intellectual Property Law and Policy Conference, a stellar international IP conference. The other speakers on my panel were Probir Mehta (lead U.S. negotiator of the IP portion of the TPP), Pedro Velasco Martins (lead EU negotiator of the IP portion of the TTIP), and Daren Tang (lead Singapore negotiator of the IP portion of the TPP). The title of the panel was “Examination of TPP & TTIP”.…

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Does the TPP Protect Canadian Cultural Policy?

This is a guest post by Peter Grant. Peter S. Grant is Counsel at McCarthy Tétrault LLP. He is an expert on communications and cultural policy, and the co-author of Blockbusters and Trade Wars: Popular Culture in a Globalized World (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 2004), a book focused on the interrelationship of trade law with cultural policy.

There is an inherent conflict between free trade agreements and cultural policy. Unless measures that support local culture are exempted from these agreements, there is a risk that the principle of “national treatment” (the free trade rule that foreign products must be given the same treatment as local products) might override those measures.…

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Michael Geist’s attack on artists over Tariff 8

On May 16, 2014 the Copyright Board released its decision certifying Re: Sound Tariff 8 setting royalty rates for webcasting services in Canada. Re:Sound promptly filed an application for judicial review of the decision, calling it a “significant outlier in the world” that “greatly disadvantages the Canadian music industry in the globalized market place.” Re:Sound’s application was met with a blizzard of support when 70 music organizations released a joint statement publically denouncing the Copyright Board decision. They called it “a serious setback for the music community in Canada” and “for artists and the music companies who invest in their careers”.…

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CASL

Michael Geist’s defense of Canada’s indefensible anti-spam law CASL

Michael Geist loves Canada’s anti-spam law (CASL). He was one of the first witnesses called by the Government to support it (then Bill C-27) when it came before the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology. He told the Committee to resist attempts to change it. He later urged Minister Moore not to listen to the tsunami from across all sectors of Canadian society to fix CASL calling the criticisms Festivus grievances, Now that CASL is law and the public is ridiculing it calling it, among other things, a Monty-Python-esque farce and Spamaflop, deeply stupid, and a sledgehammer that is ludicrous regulatory overkill, he once again tries to defend it.…

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CASL
Geist

Michael Geist on CASL: flaws not Festivus grievances

Last week Michael Geist published a blog post summarizing his remarks to Industry Minister Moore as to why the almost universal criticisms of Canada’s anti-spam/malware law CASL are unfounded. He suggested it is intense lobbying by “squeaky wheels” with “knee jerk” “greatly exaggerated” and “Festivus” grievances about CASL” that has delayed bringing the law into effect”. He acknowledges that CASL creates new compliance obligations but suggests they are not onerous and even standard internationally (when referring to “opt-in” for spam) and that there is not much more to CASL than “a simple proposition – obtain customer consent and you can do pretty much whatever you like.”…

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Even more on Access Copyright and the Supreme Court: eviscerated or not?

My mother warned me to be suspicious when people give gratuitous compliments. So, I read with some suspicion the recent blog post by Ariel Katz, who responded to my post Did the Supreme Court eviscerate Access Copyright’s business model? A reply to Michael Geist, generously calling me a “well experienced lawyer” and a “smart well-trained lawyer”.[[1]]

In that post I argued that Michael Geist’s claim that the Supreme Court’s decision eviscerated Access Copyright’s business model did not stand up to scrutiny.…

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The Andersen P2P file sharing study on the purchase of music CDs in Canada

In 2006, the highly regarded economics professor Prof. Liebowitz, Director of the Center for Economic Analysis of Property Rights and Innovation at University of Texas, surveyed the entire field of econometric studies on file sharing. On the basis of his comprehensive review (which displayed a remarkable consensus on the issue), he concluded that “file-sharing has brought significant harm to the recording industry”. Prior to that in a comprehensive article published in 2005 Prof. Liebowitz criticized the theory that unlicensed file sharing helps copyright owners.…

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My remarks to the Senate Committee studying Bill C-11

The following are my opening remarks to the Senate Committee studying Bill C-11 earlier today. The link to the webcast can be found here.

I would like to thank the committee for inviting me to appear today to provide input on Bill C-11.

Before starting my remarks, I would like to give you some background about myself.

I am a senior partner with the law firm McCarthy Tétrault.
I am an adjunct professor at Osgoode Hall Law School where I teach IP law.

…

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