[A2k] Globe and Mail editorial: Copyright shifts format

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

IN THE INTERNET AGE
Copyright shifts format

August 18, 2008

The federal government's current attempt to adapt copyright to the
Internet age, Bill C-61, makes a sound distinction between private
copying and distribution, though further deliberation is needed on
where to draw this line. But the bill should also have taken on the
perplexities of "fair dealing" and "moral rights."

Perhaps the Conservatives do not seriously expect Bill C-61 to pass in
this apparently moribund Parliament. Jim Prentice, the Minister of
Industry, has promised a consultation in the fall. It would have made
more sense to do this before the bill was introduced in June. Even so,
House of Commons and Senate committees may also examine it.

Critics say that the bill expresses too much the views of the
recording and movie industries (and their lobbyists) and is thus too
like U.S. legislation, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Still, Bill C-61 is right to build on an existing principle, that is,
that end-users should be allowed to make copies of a song or film for
themselves, but not to set themselves up in competition with the
lawful distributors of these works. Whether that distinction
corresponds precisely to the download-upload distinction remains
debatable. Mr. Prentice is right that "format-shifting," copying for
one's personal use from one technology to another, such as from DVD to
iPod, should not be copyright infringement, but there is some doubt
whether his bill achieves that goal.
Print Edition - Section Front

Section A Front  Enlarge Image
The Globe and Mail

What the bill does not build on is the long-standing principle of fair
dealing: A writer can quote another writer, not so as to effectively
republish someone else's work without paying for it, but rather to
report, criticize or comment, by embedding a quotation in a genuinely
new piece of writing.

This principle should be extended and adapted. A hundred years ago,
Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso began to use collage in their
paintings, around the same time that they invented cubism.
Photomontage followed. Later, William Burroughs applied to literature
the cut-up technique he had learned from Brion Gysin, an artist who
grew up in Edmonton.

New technology has made possible "digital sampling" of music. One
currently conspicuous example is Feed the Animals, the fourth album of
Girl Talk, the performance name of Gregg Gillis, an American laptop DJ
- issued by the legally provocative label Illegal Art.

In light of all this, the "moral rights" that protect a work's
integrity should be rethought. In 1982, the artist Michael Snow
brought a lawsuit that prevented the Eaton Centre in Toronto from
putting Christmas ribbons on the necks in his Canada geese mobile. But
artists, as distinct from shopping centres, should be in a position to
make works of art that include, like quotes, parts of other works of
art.

Bill C-61, in short, is a work that stands in need of some growth and
some refinement.

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Thiru Balasubramaniam
Geneva Representative
Knowledge Ecology International (KEI)
thiru@keionline.org


Tel: +41 22 791 6727
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