Professor Ysolde Gendreau from the Faculty of Law at the University of Montreal wrote an interesting opinion piece for the Montreal Gazette last week. The piece canvasses the history of the Copyright Act, and draws an analogy between the current debate and a similar reform process that took place in the 1950s. In her article, […]
A few weeks ago, while re-reading CCH Canadian Ltd. v Law Society of Upper Canada, [2004] 1 SCR 339 [hereafter CCH], I paused on a rather peculiar detail from this well-known Supreme Court decision. Intrigued, after a brief search, I was surprised to find that no one in Canadian copyright discourse seemed to have expanded […]
Featured here is the first section of a paper by Abraham Drassinower, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto. The paper was originally published in the Notre Dame Law Review. The full article can be found here. The idea that the purpose of copyright law is to provide incentives for creativity is among the most […]
Modern concepts of art and creativity pose a challenge for traditional notions of copyright law. Last March, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled on the legality of appropriation art.
After a little over a year and two failed attempts, the Legal, Financial and Administrative Services Agency of Sweden (Kammarkollegiat) finally officially approved an application in January made by 19-year-old Swedish philosophy student Isak Gerson to recognize the Missionary Church of Kopimism (Missionerande Kopimistsamfundet), and thus ‘Kopimism’ as a religion.
Looking at the current state of trans-border licensing of music inEurope, the European example can teach mainly what to avoid. Even more so, many of the issues discussed in the EU might even be totally irrelevant for Canada. Unlike Canada, the EU currently consists of 27 member states, and as of today, there is […]
Ben Farrow is a JD candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. It was a big day in the copyright enforcement world today as US federal authorities moved to shut down website Megaupload. The crackdown included charges against seven people as well as the seizure of over 50 million dollars in assets. As the internet’s most […]
Ben Farrow is a JD candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. As previously reported by the IPilogue here, the Supreme Court of Canada is not the only national court grappling with the term “communication to the public”. Similar to two of the internet copyright cases heard by the Supreme Court of Canada earlier this month […]
Brian Chau is a JD candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. In Canada and the United States, copyright owners may elect to recover an award of statutory damages for each work infringed instead of actual damages and profits. A wide range of statutory damages is possible and this has led to a series of troubling […]
Brian Chau is a JD candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. The Conservative majority government has placed a new copyright reform bill, “An Act to amend the Copyright Act” on the Notice Paper earlier today. This new bill is expected to be introduced tomorrow.