Canada's Supreme Court Strikes Down Copyright Fees On Music, Video 58
An anonymous reader writes "Quick submission for all us Canadians: looks like the Supreme Court finally decided to rule on various copyright issues. No more fees to 'preview' a song. Another of these rule changes could save our schools a lot of money: no more fees required to photocopy material for students."
Oh uh! (Score:5, Insightful)
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The copyrighters already buttered the bread,
that's how the laws were enacted in the first place.
Good For You, Canadians (Score:5, Funny)
Signed,
Americans
Re:Good For You, Canadians (Score:5, Funny)
Word. The article is good, but lacks details on the Justices' favorite type of cookies and how best to mail some to them.
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Word. The article is good, but lacks details on the Justices' favorite type of cookies and how best to mail some to them.
Like pretty much any Justice... liberal amounts of Crown Royal.
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Not needed. Canada's fair dealing became almost as liberal as the US fair use. But not quite.
I'm not an American exceptionalist, but really, this is an area where the US excels. If you take part of a copyrighted work and use it for commentary, news, satire, or educational use without trying to make a profit directly from that, it is okay. There is a reason that Wikipedia is based in the US. The US fair use is far more liberal than fair dealing that is used in most of the world.
Re:Good For You, Canadians (Score:4, Interesting)
I like the idea of Fair Use, but as I understand it, it is only a defense, not a right. As a defense, I don't think it has fared very well in an age where digital media (that is easily copied) has become ubiquitous. It is slowly being eroded by all of these new laws (and attempts at laws) created because of knee-jerk reactions from lawmakers or as a result of lobbying from powerful media groups.
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In Canada fair dealing (different term, but similar concept to fair use) is not explicitly stated in the copyright law to be a right, but recent rulings by the Supreme Court DO clearly state it as a complementary right (user rights) to the rights the copyright holder has:
"It is important to clarify some general considerations about exceptions to copyright infringement. Procedurally, a defendant is required to prove that his or her dealing with a work has been fair; however, the fair dealing exception is per
Who is riding whom? (Score:1)
The consensus of opinion seems to be that the sharks in Hollywood etc are riding the lawmakers and the lawmakers are riding the feds.
But suppose it is the secret police who are riding the copyright laws.
It certainly seems an odd business practice that has gone on for far too long to be a case of sheer corporate stupidity.
Lala land has been a traditionally innovative force. And filled with people whose first idea is to make money.
Is it truly festooned with idiots and lawyers these days, so inept they are ali
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The problem with 'fair use' is that every single case is unique. There is no "well this case is just like this other case, so why are you suing?".
And you have to prove that it is fair use, rather than the company suing you having to prove that it's not.
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Re:Good For You, Canadians (Score:5, Informative)
They'll be replaced anyway.
3 of the Justices are due for retirement (SCC justices, like all other federal court justices, are subject to mandatory retirement at age 75) soon. Fish will be retiring no later than next year, LeBel no later than the year after that, and Rothstein by the end of 2015.
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There's actually 5 cases here, 3 of them decided unanimously, and the other two decided 5-4
All 3 of the soon-to-retired plus Cromwell dissented on ESA v. SOCAN
Fish and Rothstein plus Cromwell and Deschamps dissented on Alberta v. CCLA.
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> Mind if we borrow your Justices? Ours seem to be malfunctioning...
You can have 'em, but only if you take all our lawyers, too.
Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Funny)
[Sarcasm] you don't seem to understand! The *studio* that made the movie got permission to use that track, but the *theatre* that wants to play the movie wasn't involved in the contract process! The theatre wants to get free performance rights to some poor artist's work! How dare you call our attempts at seeking reimbursement for flagrant distribution of our client's works 'double dipping' and other pejorative terms! [/sarcasm]
This is what happens when you let lawyers run free and wild, and let them take everyone for a ride.
Seriously.
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This is what happens when you let lawyers/companies from the USA, run free and wild, and let them take everyone for a ride.
FTFY
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[Sarcasm] you don't seem to understand! The *studio* that made the movie got permission to use that track, but the *theatre* that wants to play the movie wasn't involved in the contract process! The theatre wants to get free performance rights to some poor artist's work! How dare you call our attempts at seeking reimbursement for flagrant distribution of our client's works 'double dipping' and other pejorative terms! [/sarcasm]
Sadly, this isn't sarcasm.
Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Informative)
"Did they actually expect consumers to buy a game for $x and then later get charged $y for the music in the game?"
Sure, they also expect you to buy the theatrical version of 'The Lion King' if you want to show it to your brat's birthday party invitees who are not related to you. Ditto for Peepaw's retirement home and the firefighter's room.
If you play recorded music for those occasions, same thing.
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Sure, they also expect you to buy the theatrical version of 'The Lion King' if you want to show it to your brat's birthday party invitees who are not related to you. Ditto for Peepaw's retirement home and the firefighter's room.
They tried to extort money from Mike because people were playing their car radios outside the beer garden at Felbers.
He told them to go fuck themselves. Seeing as how his bar is in a pretty dangerous part of town and is usually full of crazy, often armed drunks, I doubt the guy will
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Informative)
No, it was weirder than that. They expected royalties because the game was downloaded, as if the act of downloading a game should generate its own royalty in addition to whatever was paid as a license to play the music during the game. Just to be clear: the ISPs were expected to pay this royalty for the downloading as if it was another "performance", regardless of what the creators of the game had already paid the artists. Effectively artists (or more precisely SOCAN on their behalf) wanted to get paid twice: once for the download, and again for playing music during the game.
Some of the other cases they settled were somewhat similar. For example, for streaming music SOCAN was demanding payment for both streaming the music to the customer (e.g., from a company that had licensed music for customers to play) and from the ISP for downloading it to the customer.
Yeah, it was really stupid. Basically a big cash grab from the ISPs, which of course would have passed it on to the consumer..
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Some of the other cases they settled were somewhat similar. For example, for streaming music SOCAN was demanding payment for both streaming the music to the customer (e.g., from a company that had licensed music for customers to play) and from the ISP for downloading it to the customer.
Um, actually it says that streaming music still counts as a "public performance" and they get to continue charging the ISPs for that. It was file downloads that they no longer have to pay for. However, if that stream is only a preview (ie: for evaluation purposes only) then they don't have to pay.
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Yes, it should have been in the deal to begin with, and probably now will be, which might raise the costs of said goods. Or, alternatively we might see less major label music artists in video games.
This ruling doesn't say that separate payments to copyright holders for performance of the work is unconstitutional, it says that a discrete creative work cannot be broken into its constituent parts for financial double-dipping. Any individual creative works that are used must be licensed properly before the work
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By the way, the music is ALREADY paid for, since the movie producer most likely had to pay their own royalties to make it part of the movie in the first goddamned place.
Forget about being part of the movie or not, this is just a blatant attempt to double dip, once from the studio and again from the viewer.
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Situation 1:
Lisa: "Dad, can I take the bus downtown?" Homer: "No! Public transport is dangerous for a girl your age!"
Situation 2:
Lisa: "Dad, can I take a limo downtown?" Homer: "I'm not paying for a limo! Just take the bus!"
I look at this and think that they didn't actually expect to win, but it softens us up to the other stuff they do because it's not as bad. It's known as the Door-in-the-Face Technique http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door-in-the-face_technique
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I suspect this was the crux of the issue. A movie wants to use a song, so they get the rights to use it in their movie. Obviously this is going to be a lump sum payment. However, the rights holders of the recording may have been arguing that they should *also* get a cut of the ticket price (i.e. a percentage of gross revenue) for "performance rights". The movie industry isn't going to go for that. So this was likely a fight between two big media companies. It likely wouldn't have affected movie viewer
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DId France join the United Kingdom recently?
school photocopying? (Score:3)
I wasn't aware that a fee had ever been required for photocopying for school work? Isn't that a "fair use"?
(though I recall the photocopier at the library requiring a nickel per)
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Re:school photocopying? (Score:5, Informative)
Universities and schools in Canada have paid blanket fees to keep the leeches off their legs. No more. SOCAN et al just lost million$ of $.
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Yes and the amount of money received by the artists and content creators that they represent won't change a bit :(
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I wasn't aware that a fee had ever been required for photocopying for school work? Isn't that a "fair use"?
My university charges $23.50 per year for an 'Access Copyright Fee'. It's not a huge amount, but it'd be nice if they stopped levying that fee against students. My cynical side guesses that even if they do, other fees will increase by about the same amount.
Re:school photocopying? (Score:4, Informative)
It is now.
What happened was teachers and professors did this as they only used say, 1-2 pages of material out of one book because it was needed for the course, while the rest of the book was useless.
The publishers obviously got very mad at this since it deprived them of sales and convinced the copyright board that there should be something done about this.
If you go into a university library, take a look at the posters on the wall in the photocopier room - it'll usually describe what's happening.
Re:school photocopying? (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyway, in the past couple of years, something has changed and the CAN-COPY agreement no longer exitsts. Whoever has been getting money out of universities for this has decided to ask for more money and more restrictions (I think) because there has been a good deal of complaining about the new copyright agreement, and a number of canadian universities, including my own, have pulled out of the agreement and stopped paying fees of any kind. There are now new rules about what we can and can't copy, but I don't know them. We were told that someone (again, whoever is trying to extort money from us) will now be monitoring the courses at our university in order to make sure we are not infringing their rights. One suggestion I have heard is that we should password protect any course materials we have online, so that outsiders are not able to view them and scan them for potential violations.
Canada on Strike? (Score:2)
More Money...
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A number of open text books are now being created in response to this.
The publishers will get their wish and be destroyed in the process.
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Until the latest copyright change, Canada didn't have fair use -- it had fair dealing (similar, but different concepts).
The last copyright act specifically had a section about educational use which described how an educational institute had to do things. However, these educational institutes were restricted to universities. IIRC, other schools like high schools were not included. Looking at the copyright act, I would have bet my last dollar that photocopying in a high school was *not* allowed (not even u
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It is going to be interesting to see what impact the Supreme Court's decision is going to have on this:
http://media.utoronto.ca/media-releases/u-of-t-and-western-sign-agreement-with-access-copyright/ [utoronto.ca]
U of T and UWO both signed into this agreement while every other university in Ontario refused to sign and were willing to fight it.
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I wasn't aware that a fee had ever been required for photocopying for school work? Isn't that a "fair use"?
Many teachers' books are available in two versions, say a $2 book with tear-out pages, and a $10 book that's the same thing but with a license to photocopy.
You get to decide who pays for the printing costs that way. If you're a homeschooler, I imagine you appreciate the $2 version.
pay for preview wtf? (Score:2)
It Prevents Double Dipping by Copyright Holders (Score:4, Informative)
Before Ruling:
When you buy a song from iTunes a copyright/royalty payment is included in the purchase price. Then when you downloaded the already payed for song to you computer from the iTunes store you payed another copyright/royalty fee to your ISP because the song was carried by the internet from the iTunes store to your computer.
After Ruling:
When you buy a song from iTunes a copyright/royalty payment is included in the purchase price. You do not have to pay the royalty/copyright fee again because you download the music from the iTunes store over the Internet to your computer .
Ditto for computer games bought online royalties for music in the game are included in the price you do not have to pay again just because if arrived at you computer via the Internet.
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Might just be me (Score:5, Interesting)
Seems like there has been a trend (oracle vs. google, Apple vs. samsung) of Sudden Outbreaks of Common Sense lately in regards to Copyright/Patent trolling and now Fair Use. Perhaps the legal systems in the EU, US and Canada are beginning to wake up.
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Trend perhaps, but no landslide... have a look at http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2012/07/cls-bank-v-alice-corp.html [patentlyo.com]
Better link (Score:5, Informative)
Here is a preliminary analysis from professor Geist. It's slightly more technical and interesting than TFA.
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/6588/125/ [michaelgeist.ca]
C-11 (Score:3)
When will they repeal the "circumvention" part of C-11?
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Probably 20-50 years after the US repeals its counterpart in the DMCA. Such legislation was imparted to us by the US and its unlikely to be revoked without the blessing of the US. And even then, laws tend to take a lot longer to repeal than to implement in the first place.
Usually dead laws just get ignored into obscurity until some enterprising crackpot with too much legal knowledge decides to resurrect a law that hasn't been put in practice in 50 years and it gets stricken down by the judge at that point