HUGE day in internet law in Canada. No, really! The Supreme Court has issued a ruling that is a win for the ISPs (Bell, Vidéotron, etc.). Now normally I wouldn’t support anything that is a win for those robber barons, but in this case I’ll make an exception, because the Court came down for common sense. Deets after the jump.
Topic The Courts
Hot SCC copyright action!
This week at the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) is a HUGE one for copyright, and by extension for internet law. Today and tomorrow, appeals are being heard in five cases that will shape copyright law for years to come. Or until C-11 gets passed and that mess makes it to the Court. ANYWAY, Geist has a basic summary for you about some of the issues that are being heard. Here’s another one. And another. Sure, one more.
The big cases for the internet are SOCAN v. Bell, where the Court will decide if iTunes snippets for preview are fair dealing or not, and if they aren’t they then would be subject to a tariff (payment to the artist). There’s also Rogers v. SOCAN about streaming music and whether it’s “communications to the public” under the Copyright Act (which is important because it would then be protected as copyright in that stream, and subject to royalty payments). Finally, ESAC v. SOCAN (sensing a trend here?) will decide if music in video games downloaded over the internet should be subject to, you guessed it, royalty payments. (The other two cases are about copying works for use in the classroom and remuneration for music in movies and TV. Yawn.)
These are such an important two days in the copyright and internet law world I thought about live blogging the hearings. But I’m not insane (well…). You can watch the hearings here. Yay for an open Supreme Court! But dammit they need some onscreen graphics or something. Even I’m kind of clueless as to who’s who, or even what case is being heard.
UPDATE – good Tweeters to follow along the hearings: Geist, Hayes, Glick, me. #SCCcopyrightpentalogy
SCC FTW!
So recently we praised the CRTC; today we praise the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC). What is up with these institutions? Yesterday the Court granted some kick-ass protection to anyone who has ever linked to defamatory content on their site. Check out the details after the jump.
Twitter should sue the pants off of Facebook
Have you logged into Facebook in the last day or so? If you haven’t, go ahead and do it now. I’ll wait. (…) So did you see that new feed on the right hand side? It’s part of Facebook’s new “features” which are rolling out this week. Ugh. Forgetting the stupidity of some of the other features (bugs), let’s break down the all-new FB “ticker” after the jump.Continue reading
Face it downloaders, you’re (we’re) screwed
Have you got your torrent client running in the background right now? Do you think you’re just some anonymous person that the copyright holder will never find? Hahaha, I’ve got a surprise for you, thanks to the Federal Court of Canada. Find out what it is after the jump.
Allen
Mendelsohn
is me.
I am a lawyer specializing in internet law working out of Montreal, though sometimes I do it in front of the U.S. Capitol. That should tell you what you need to know about internet law in Canada. I also warp young legal minds at the Faculty of Law at McGill.
More about me