Pauline Wong is the Assistant Director of IP Osgoode.
In light of the introduction on September 29, 2011, of Bill C-11, the current copyright reform bill in Canada, we would like to highlight again commentary by Carys Craig, Associate Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School and Member of IP Osgoode, on issues raised by Bill C-32. Bill C-11 is a re-introduction of Bill C-32.
Digital Locks and the Fate of Fair Dealing in Canada: In Pursuit of ‘Prescriptive Parallelism’ was published on the IPilogue. In the blog post, Professor Craig considered the threats posed by technical protection measures and anti-circumvention laws to fair dealing and other lawful uses of protected works. She adopted, as a normative starting point, the principle of “prescriptive parallelism” according to which the traditional copyright balance of rights and exceptions should be preserved in the digital environment.
Professor Craig also contributed a chapter in From “Radical Extremism” to “Balanced Copyright”: Canadian Copyright and the Digitl Agenda (Irwin Law: Toronto, 2010), a compilation edited by Professor Michael Geist of the University of Ottawa. Professor Craig’s Chapter Seven – Locking Out Lawful Users: Fair Dealing and Anti-Circumvention in Bill C-32 can be read on SSRN or on the Irwin Law website. The chapter examines the potential impact of the proposed fair dealing and anti-circumvention provisions in Bill C-32, which now also apply to Bill C-11.