As I've noted previously, in 2009 the Canadian government set about "modernizing" the Copyright Act. Canada was in an enviable position as copyright law had not been touched since 1997. The twelve years of waiting allowed for a more nuanced understanding of the challenges and opportunities wrought through digital technology and world-wide networks. Yet the amendments proposed in June 2010 showed a striking resemblance to the DMCA of 1998. Complete obedience to technological protection measures was the order of the day.

An aspect of change that looked promising was expansion to the permissible categories of fair dealing. Parody, satire, and education were added. The last item unleashed a storm of protest by writers' groups and copyright collectives; they insisted that this would lead to wholesale appropriation of works used in educational institutions. Even though within a month of the proposed amendments, the Federal Court of Appeal issued a decision affirming that the existing practices of payment for works used in K-12 education would continue. The FCA decision should have reminded everyone that the category of use is not enough for the use to be deemed fair. (A framework of questions, similar to the implementation of fair use in American law, was instituted by the Canadian Supreme Court in 2004.)

Nevertheless, the campaign of misinformation continued; the year closed out with a full-page advertisement in a national newspaper. Readers were left with the impression that the inclusion of "education" as a potential exception to copyright was a never-before-tried proposal and that such an action places Canada's creative potential in jeopardy, with consequences for the digital economy and the entire country.

In any event, the furor will make little difference one way or the other. If the bill passes as proposed, TPMs rule supreme. Even if the use of a work would have been deemed non-infringing.

Next step: the Special Legislative Committee is once again seeking seeking input on Bill C-32.

Via Mike Mansick over at Techdirt -

The unauthorized 'sequel'/commentary on J.D. Salinger's Catcher In The Rye can be published and sold around the world, EXCEPT for the U.S. and Canada.

So much freedom of the press or the notion that America is freer than any other country in terms of what you can publish. The bizarre arrangement is the result of a settlement agreement between Swedish author Fredrik Colting and the Salinger estate over a copyright dispute over Colting's book 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye.

More details here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-12181223

My previous thoughts on the outrageousness of the Salinger copyright claim can be found here:

http://www.againstmonopoly.org/index.php?perm=593056000000001176

This latest development is a double insult in light of the disastrous 4-4 Supreme Court split in the case of Costco v. Omega. Unless the Supreme Court revisits the issue, what this means is that you can still be held liable for IP infringement if you buy copies of 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye overseas or via the Internet (as I have done) and then try to resell such copies to others here in the U.S. who might want to read this new and original work.

Quite amazing...and pathetic.

The New York Times David Leonhart drinks the IP piracy Kool Aid when he writes that our most important economic problem with China is its piracy of our intellectual property link here.

Instead, he says "The No. 1 US problem with China's economy is probably intellectual property theft. Technology companies, for example, continue to notice Chinese government agencies downloading software updates for programs they have never bought, at least not legally."

He then goes on to add, "Next on the list, say people who work in China or do business there, is the myriad protectionist barriers China has put up. These barriers make this country's recent efforts at 'buy American' protectionism look minor league. In some cases, Beijing has insisted that products sold in China must not only be made there but be conceived and designed there. The policy goes by the name "indigenous innovation."

Such trade policies don't guarantee an export surplus however. Instead, the yuan still has to be relatively cheap.

Leonhardt is right that the exchange rate isn't the only trade problem. But he ignores the full effect of the rate. When the rate is right, the US not only exports to China but becomes more competitive making import substitutes for Chinese exports to markets in the US and around the world.

Finally he totally ignores the effect of China's intervention to weaken its currency, in leading other big Asian exporters to keep their currencies low. The list of such countries includes Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia, all of which add to the US trade deficit.

The response to a drop in foreign currencies will not be instantaneous, because it will take time for US producers to expand output. Thus, it is unlikely to have a rapid impact on current unemployment, but our exchange rate is important in our current large job losses and in worsening our income distribution.

"Criticism will survive even if no one's paying for it. Obviously it's better if people are paying for it. But the fact that artists weren't able to make a living from their work hasn't detracted from the quality of that work. Charles Ives was the second greatest composer in American history and he worked in insurance his whole life." - Ignatiy Vishnevetsky

"Who is Ignatiy Vishnevetsky and why should I care?" you ask?

Read about his background here:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/movies/2011/01/roger-ebert-pbs-show-critics-ignatiy-vishnevetsky.html

[Lest anyone be confused, I'm generally in favor of paying artists for work and creating rational incentives. I'm just against the current irrational copyright regime and intellectual monopolies.]

The Director of Harvard's University Library, Pforzheimer University Professor Robert Darnton, is pushing it link here. In a meeting of 42 representatives from research libraries and other institutions from from around the country, the idea was strongly backed.

"[T]he library would be "the digital equivalent of the Library of Congress…bringing millions of books and digitized material in other media within clicking distance of public libraries, high schools, colleges, universities, retirement communities, and any individual with access to the Internet."

The project would "digitize all books in the public domain (no longer in copyright) as well as so-called orphan books (those published between 1923 and 1964 for which no copyright owner can be found)."

"Darnton hopes that bipartisan support in Congress may eventually lead to some sort of accommodation or change to copyright laws that would allow more books still in copyright to become part of the digital library. Innovative technological solutions that enable limiting the number of loaned copies of books in digital form may also play a role in facilitating a digital public lending library."

Other countries are ahead on this. The Dutch, for example, are on course to digitize every Dutch book, newspaper, and pamphlet from 1470 to the present.

This activity will put new pressure on copyright, particularly of books, given that ebooks may replace hard copies for most readers. They are much cheaper but can still be profitable for authors when the publishers cut is eliminated.

Opponents of the state monopoly privilege grants that the state and supporters propagandistically call "intellectual property" use a variety of alternative terms, in attempt to better describe these "rights" without implying they are valid, as the word "property" seeks to do.

Boldrin and Levine, in Against Intellectual Monopoly, use the term "intellectual monopoly." The benefit of this term is that it calls attention to the fact that IP rights are not property but monopoly grants by the state (see Are Patents "Monopolies"? and Intellectual Properganda). I sometimes still call it IP, simple for communicative efficiency and out of semantic inertia, but of late I tend to just say "patent and copyright," to isolate the two main state legislated rights schemes that fall under the IP umbrella. In the past I have proposed the term "pattern privileges" (see Renaming Intellectual Property) and sometimes call IP advocates "intellectual properteers."

The term intellectual poverty occurred to me the other day. It has several advantages: it is disparaging and pejorative; it rhymes with intellectual property; and it implies both intellectual impoverishment (which results from the censorship and restriction on ideas, which are the results of patent and copyright law) and material impoverishment caused by all state invasions of genuine property rights.

[Mises cross-post]

A very nice presentation by Nicholas Gruen about the Web 2.0 - including the rather important issue of copyright.

The Facebook story has attracted a lot of attention (for example, link here at Wikipedia). The boy genius programmer and now billionaire, Mark Zuckerberg, remains in the news with the Winklevoss legal suit link here. They want to reopen the negotiated settlement they accepted some time ago for several millions, thinking that they might now get billions, given the rise in Facebook's stock price.

Their claim for any cut, much less a bigger one, seems questionable, given their argument that Zuckerberg stole their idea while he coded for their idea (actually a dating site rather than the social network that Facebook has become).

I wasn't aware that an idea was property, much less protected property, so I suppose that Zuckerberg capitulated rather than carry on fighting to avoid unnecessary unpleasantness. He must regret that decision now.

In any case, the real story with Facebook is how this kid created this major success story in websites. The idea for it is a tiny part of the total. The real genius was in creating the organization that has gone on to be so hugely popular -- finding the right people to staff it and the financing for a really expensive investment -- to become the major public spokesman for the company, to get the technology right, and to make most of the many difficult decisions along the way. Unless he had a guiding partner, he has to be considered brilliant.

This is a case in point, supporting the thesis of Techdirt's Mike Masnick that concept always plays second fiddle to execution. Someday, the story on how it was done will have to be written in a lot more detail than we have been given so far. It should be a great read.

It also seems to be a lesson in how intellectual property rights can get abused by the threat of legal proceedings that lead the party in the right giving up.

You can see all the Nina cartoons at http://mimiandeunice.com/