Brandon Evenson is a 2010 JD Candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. He holds a degree in Computer Engineering from Queen’s University. Prior to attending Osgoode, Mr. Evenson consulted for some of the world’s leading technology firms in the area of contract risk and licensing compliance. Last Thursday, IP Osgoode hosted Chris Castle, managing partner […]
The Canadian Private Copying Collective (CPCC) continues to set forth its proposal of a levy on iPods and other digital audio recording devices. The CPCC is a non-profit agency that collects and distributes the private copying royalties to songwriters, performers, publishers and producers. Since 2000, the CPCC has been collecting levies ranging between 21 and […]
There was once an era where the music record industry existed in a symbiotic relationship with radio stations and broadcasters. Radio DJs could play what they wanted without paying royalties for every song played and radio play was free advertising for the record industry, enticing customers to purchase records from retailers. With the advent of the […]
42 years after playing the memorable organ solo on "A Whiter Shade of Pale", ex-Procol Harum organist Matthew Fisher has finally been awarded a share of the song's royalties. Despite penning the melody from the British band's most popular song, Fisher was never acknowledged as one of the song's authors. Now, in one of the […]
Despite the ominous verdict from the Swedish court which sentenced The Pirate Bay (TPB) operators to a year in prison and a penalty of US $3.6 million for facilitating copyright infringement, TPB may soon have new life breathed into the service. Global Gaming Factory X, a Swedish software company, has offered to purchase TPB for […]
A few months ago I got an email from Blogger.com regarding a blog I run in my spare time. It read: “Blogger has been notified, according to the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), that certain content in your blog infringes upon the copyrights of others.” Blogger had taken down a post that […]
Michael Jackson's death has the surviving members of the Beatles in knots. Not only because they just lost a fellow musician and entertainment icon, but also because Jackson's untimely death has left his estate mired in legal complexities regarding the future ownership of the publishing rights of the Beatles' catalogue. As co-owner of Sony/ATV Music […]
Virgin Media and Universal Music Group have taken the plunge into an ISP and digital music collaboration to provide customers in the UK with unlimited access to MP3 downloads and streaming of Universal label artists. Although the exact monthly fee for this service has yet to be determined, Virgin plans to provide the service for […]
Not more than ten years ago, intellectual property was divided by heated rhetoric on both sides. The changing technological landscape had given citizens unprecedented power to copy, manipulate, and distribute art. If you were to attend a panel on copyright back then, you might have heard from a number of traditionalists in the music industry […]
The four factors steering Fair Use (FU) exceptions to copyright infringement are found at s.107 of the U.C.C. FU seeks ‘to work its way through the relevant factors and be judged case by case’ (D 40), and unfairness in any one factor does not necessarily render the whole unfair. Precedent for FU indicates that US […]