I recently attended a lecture by professor Bruce Ziff, of the University of Alberta Law School, where he described what he termed as his only original academic idea. He posited that the reason we as a society are so restrictive about property rights is because it is basically impossible to extinguish property rights that have […]
Geographical Indicators are terms used to define names that are affixed to predominantly agricultural products (although GIs are also used for other products such as crafts and jewellery, this kind of use is less common) originating from specific geographical regions where these products are grown and manufactured and from which they derive their quality and […]
When asked to think about the pop-culture zombie genre, classics such as George A. Romero’s 1979 film “Dawn of the Dead” (and its 2004 remake) and Peter Jackson’s 1992 creation “Dead Alive” come to mind. After all, the storylines read typically: man battling the undead for ultimate survival. Joining the genre is the popular video […]
In two months’ time, the estate of Jerry Siegel, co-creator of Superman, will finally take Time-Warner Communications (via its subsidiary, DC Comics) to trial over ownership of copyright. Siegel (along with artist Joe Shuster) created Superman in 1928, and DC Comics currently owns the rights. Of course, it’s not that simple. Last year, the Siegel […]
The Songwriters Association of Canada (SAC) recently proposed legalization of peer-to-peer music filesharing via the imposition of an obligatory $5 monthly fee on all Canadian broadband users. It is estimated that this would result in the collection of $500 million to $900 million per year, to be distributed to musicians and creators to compensate them […]
Advertising has always been, or has tried to be, “targeted” at potential and existing customers. The entire purpose of advertising has, and continues to be, to communicate the virtues of a product or services to consumers in the marketplace in an effort to turn potential consumers into actual customers. In the past, this type of […]
I’m going to show you how to be a millionaire. First, draw a line on a piece of paper. Great. You have just created a one-dimensional world. In this world, people can only move linearly since there are no ‘sides.’ So, they can’t see you even when you are next to them. Now add three […]
Mashup culture continues to expand and proliferate, especially in the online word. Many audience members are no longer content merely to consume media, but actively comment on it, interact with it and reshape it. The explosion of repurposed copyrighted material that appears online challenges old notions of the fair use doctrine, and suggests the need […]
Illegal file trading will likely exist on the internet for the foreseeable future. As a result we are faced with the challenge of upholding the notions of copyright online or changing the scope of such laws and legalizing, to some extent, file trading. The former is an objective which I believe Tariff 22A falls short […]
In 2005, two brothers in Kolkata, India launched Scrabulous, an online implementation of the board game Scrabble. With a few thousand regular players, it wasn’t about to replace World of Warcraft in the annals of online gaming. But in 2007, they took the suggestion of a regular player and spent just ten days writing a […]