As Michael Geist reported yesterday, in its new annual report on foreign trade barriers, the US Trade Representative has identified certain Canadian regulations and policies restricting cross-border personal data flows as a new trade barrier. According to the USTR,
The Australian Law Reform Commission has finally published its long-awaited Report. This is an impressive and important report, and I am proud that I had some opportunity to contribute to it in a short submission that I made last summer. In my submission I referred to two issues that I have discussed in two recent papers: fair use, and orphan works. Therefore, I was very pleased that the Commission’s recommendations with respect of those two issues are consistent with my views. Since the Commission received more than 1000 submissions, I was even happier that the Report quoted my submission a few …
The ALRC Report on Copyright and the Digital Economy (and me) Read more →
The Competition Bureau announced today that it has signed a consent decree with the four major book publishers, which is expected to lower the price of ebooks in Canada. According to the Bureau’s media release, the agreement between the Bureau and Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Macmillan, and Simon & Schuster follows an 18-month investigation into the ebook industry in Canada.
Earlier this week the Federal Court of Appeal overturned a decision of the Competition Tribunal that had dismissed the Commissioner of Competition’s case against the Toronto Real Estate Board last year. The case involves an Application made by the Commissioner of Competition pursuant to section 79 of the Competition Act (dealing with ‘Abuse of Dominant Position’) for orders prohibiting the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB) from engaging in a practice of anti-competitive acts in the Greater Toronto Area and requiring TREB to take steps which will overcome the effects of that practice.
The Varsity last Monday published a story with the headline “Post-Access Copyright era off to a rocky start“, and the sub-headline “Professors confused, frustrated by new copyright rules”. Great headlines, for sure, but in reality, that’s probably an exaggeration. My impression, which I have confirmed with colleagues in the UofT library system and the Faculty Association, is that so far the transition to the post-Access Copyright era has actually been even smoother than expected.
Conventional wisdom holds that the European Union has opted to apply its competition law to the exercise of intellectual property rights to a much greater extent than has the United States. In a new article, published in Vol. 79(1) of the Antitrust Law Journal, Paul-Erik Veel and I argue that, at least in the context of copyright protection, this conventional wisdom is false.
On May 15, 2012 the University of British Columbia announced that it would not sign a license agreement with Access Copyright, and immediately was inducted into Canada’s Fair Dealing Hall of Fame. “We believe we are taking the bolder, more principled and sustainable option, which best serves the fundamental and long-term interests of our academic community”, said David H. Farrar, Provost and Vice President Academic (Vancouver) and Doug Owram, Deputy Vice Chancellor and Principal (Okanagan). Yes, they did.
The Jerusalem District Court has approved yesterday a settlement agreement between the Hebrew University and two publishers, the Bialik Institute Publications, and Schocken Books (Schocken is also the publisher of Israel’s Haaretz newspaper). This settlement agreement is a remarkable achievement to the Israeli higher education community, as it contains a mutual recognition that most of the principles that Israeli academic institutions have developed in their Code of Fair Use Best Practices are indeed fair use. Specifically, the Publishers have recognized as fair use the inclusion of digital excerpts from books and full articles in e-reserves systems, provided that access is …
Israeli Publishers and Hebrew University Reach Historic Agreement on Fair Use Read more →
While many in the library, research, and technology communities have hailed Google’s recent fair use victory, some have expressed skepticism about who is the real beneficiary of the ruling. Some librarians have wondered whether their enthusiasm about the ruling should not “be tempered by the understanding that Google is not the do-no-evil corporation it once represented itself as being?“
Google has won an important victory today. In a ruling issued this morning, US Circuit Judge Denny Chin ruled in favour of Google, finding that its scanning of millions of books in its Google Books project is fair use. “In my view”, Judge Chin wrote “Google Books provides significant public benefits. It advances the progress of the arts and sciences, while maintaining respectful consideration for the rights of authors and other creative individuals, and without adversely impacting the rights of copyright holders.