Copyright in Canada
July 17th, 2012 at 10:00 am by David FarrarThe NZ Herald reports:
In another of the rulings Thursday, the justices said online music stores will not have to pay royalties on song previews to publishers and songwriters.
The high court ruled song previews what a customer would listen to before purchasing digital music from online retailers such as an iTune constitutes research under copyright legislation and thus the consumer should not pay a royalty.
“Short, low-quality previews do not compete with, or adversely affect, the downloading of the works themselves. Instead, their effect is to increase the sale and dissemination of copyrighted musical works,” said the ruling.
I’m not sure what is more scary – the stupidity or the greed of the music studios in trying to get people to pay for previews. I often listen to a song preview before buying it – it helps me decide whether to buy it. The previews are never the entire song, and I’ve never heard of anyone copying the previews, as they are incomplete.
The fifth ruling found that photocopying textbooks for classroom use in public schools does not infringe copyright laws, and should not be subject to a tariff
I’m not sure if this means entire textbooks can be copied, but it should allow chapters to be photocopied for academic use.
Tags: Canada, copyright
July 17th, 2012 at 10:10 am
These music/film/tv studios are getting out of control in protecting their business model and preventing changeing to what consumers are demanding
Vote:July 17th, 2012 at 10:33 am
What’s really stupid is that one can easily download and convert YouTube videos to mp3 and have a complete high-quality copy of a song which was published by the record companies themselves. Of course that’s if you can be bothered getting a copy from YouTube rather than downloading the whole album from the Pirate Bay or some other nefarious source.
Vote:July 17th, 2012 at 10:49 am
Which Iwi is running the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers I wonder.
Vote:July 17th, 2012 at 11:10 am
The case of course doesn’t directly affect NZ. Our copyright laws are different.
There is already a limited right to copy materials for educational purposes under the Copyright Act, section 44. Institutions that want to go beyond this limited right usually need to seek a licence from Copyright Licensing Limited (for literary works, at least).
Vote:July 17th, 2012 at 11:24 am
Canada is negotiating, along with New Zealand, to be part of the TPP.
Vote:Watch this all change.
July 17th, 2012 at 1:03 pm
@SBY, quite right but it’s not just literary works, it’s all books from textbooks to children’s readers. All tertiary institutions and pretty much all schools have a licence from CLL.
Vote:July 17th, 2012 at 1:31 pm
Stephen, apologies, I should have been clear that I was using the Copyright Act definition of “literary work”, which includes all of those things.
Vote: