The Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) has requested me to prepare a Report in connection with the application by the FairPlay Coalition to the CRTC and its proposed website-blocking mechanism. PIAC asked me to assess the Applicants’ claims in light of the best available theoretical and empirical evidence. More specifically, to determine whether the academic literature and the Application itself substantiate the alleged harms of piracy and the efficacy and benefits of the proposed website blocking remedy. If you’d like to read my Report, here it is. If you’d like to read only the introduction and the conclusion, keep reading.

Yesterday, McGill’s Centre for Intellectual Property Policy and I filed a joint Intervener Factum in the CBC v SODRAC case before the Supreme Court of Canada. The Court granted us leave to intervene with respect to the question of whether tariffs that the Copyright Board approved can be imposed on users. In the decision below, the Federal Court of Appeal (“FCA”) held that a collective management organization (“CMO”) can ask the Board to approve a licensing scheme and then impose it on users. If correct, such users then have no choice other than to deal with the CMO, and must, as …

Why Tariffs Aren’t Mandatory: Now the Factum Read more »

Last week reports emerged that the Government is considering a new copyright exception for political advertising. The reports suggested that the exception would permit the use of news content by political parties without authorization. While most of the media coverage of this story focused on the copyright issue and the phenomenon of attack ads, documents that Sun Media obtained from the CBC (under an Access to Information request) reveal an even more interesting and more important story, both politically and legally. These documents, offering a rare glimpse behind the scenes of Canada’s major media organization, reveal a picture of a …

Attack Ads, Copyright, and Collusion: Have Canada’s Major Broadcasters Violated the Competition Act? Read more »