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 Harper to succumb to U.S. bullying on copyright law
November 22, 2007
Posted by Stuart Trew
According to an entry on the Slyck.com news website, and a recent article from CanWest columnist Deirdre McMurdy, Canada is about to announce a revised Copyright Act to bring its intellectual property regime in line with stricter (and some say unreasonable) U.S. standards.
Intellectual property reform, "has been flagged as the biggest economic issue between Canada and the U.S. since the end of the softwood lumber war a year ago," wrote McMurdy in her column on November 16, and it, "recently surfaced as a priority in the throne speech and there have been renewed efforts by the officials in both the Industry and Heritage departments to put together a bill that will be able to withstand the inevitable political pressure."
That pressure, which is coming (as usual) from the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), led to the Intellectual Property Action Plan announced at this year's SPP summit in Quebec. A summary of that strategy can be found on a blog entry by University of Ottawa professor Michael Geist, a specialist in Internet and e-commerce law.
According to Geist, who has been following Canada's struggle with copyright law for years and is critical of the U.S. regime, "All of these measures [in the SPP's IP plan] were entirely predictable, given that they are precisely what the North American Competitiveness Council recommended earlier this year."
They are also coming out of the U.S. embassy at high volume.
McMurdy interviewed U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins who repeated the misleading statement that, "Canada is known for having the weakest copyright protection in the G8," and that, "no one expects the law to be identical, but hopefully it will be compatible." That would mean, "implementing an international treaty signed in 1997 (WIPO), as well as incorporating some of the elements of the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)."
Slyck.com posted a letter from Craig Carson, senior policy advisor for the Minister of Canadian Heritage, that states, "The Government of Canada, led by the Minister of Industry and the Minister of Canadian Heritage, Status of Women and Official Languages, is working toward bringing Canadian copyright policy into conformity with the World Intellectual Property Organization Internet Treaties."
This isn't just pandering to U.S. demands, it would be a bad move for Canada, said Geist in a column in the Toronto Star from this past April. "While the USTR report and its supporters seek to paint Canada as a laggard on copyright, this rhetoric ignores the fact that Canada is compliant with its international obligations and that Canadian law is consistent with the laws in most countries around the world," he wrote.
As reported by Slyck, "Other organizations such as CIPPIC (Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic) and ORC (Online Rights Canada) also oppose DMCA-like laws from being imported into Canada."
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