Julianna Yau’s blog

Copyright

• Japan considers iPod tax (John Degen responds)
• Susan Scafidi shares a case where knockoff clothing directly impacted the value and saleability of the original
• Cory Doctorow on free-based business models
• Russell McOrmond gives a good summary of the content creator vs access provider debate

Orphan Works

• The Art Law Blog reports that the Orphan Works bill in the US has been passed
• Orphan Works blog posts on opinions and points to a summary of the debate between photo advocates

Art

• Making Art and Essential Part of Life
• Another government culture site bites the dust

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• Links - May 18, 2008 (0)
• Links & Update (0)
• Finding adoptive parents for “orphaned” works (2)

There are now reports that there will not be a levy for mp3 players:

• iPod Levy - Copyright Board decision quahsed by Federal Court of Appeal
• Federal Court of Appeal Kills iPod Levy
• Appeal Court rejects iPod levy

Geist indicates that “it also means that Canadians who copy music from their CDs to their iPods are not covered by the exception and thus arguably infringe copyright.” Perhaps I’m being blokeish, but I really don’t understand how that is the case because the Copyright Act currently includes a provision allowing copying for private use to not be infringement. I don’t understand how a tariff can be imposed on a legislated right. Although I am strongly against unauthorized distribution of a creator’s work, the mp3-player levy has been positioned as something to address private copy, not p2p sharing of music or other activities… at least, that’s what it seems like in the rather ambiguous presentation of the levy.

What also concerns me is the absence of any mention of the removable electronic memory cards in the Secure Digital, MultiMedia, and Memory Stick formats with more than 256 MBs of memory, etc which were part of the proposal. Is the tariff on those items a go or a no-go? As an artist (who recently purchased a new digital camera!), a tariff on digital media is extremely concerning to me because of the variety of uses of media. I use SD cards to store the photos of my own sculptures which I have taken, and USB drives and CDs to store my own files for business uses. Although I recognize that not everyone is as mindful of copyright as I am, I also find it very difficult to believe that, with the current prices and variety of mp3-players, many people are using anything but an mp3-player to store their songs (whether obtained legitimately or not).

Here is the letter I wrote in response to the Private Copying Tariff, sans address, for anyone who is interested in my original response/analysis of the proposal. Comments/critiques/etc are welcome…just keep it civil.

Update, later on Jan 11, 2008: Seems like I was being a bloke. Geist sent me a message on Facebook to point out that if I were to read the Private Copy section of the Copyright Act more carefully, I would have noticed that it applies to personal copies onto an “audio recording medium”… and the Federal Court of Appeal ruled that an mp3-player is not an audio recording medium. Damn.

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On October 16th, I attended Jessica Litman’s lecture on Copyright Liberties and the “Trumpet Problem”. The lecture was very exciting for me, because I recently finished reading her book Digital Copyright, which I loved. At the lecture, I was relieved that she knows her material well and is not only enthusiastic about it but also current. It has been a few years since I’ve attended a lecture, and many of my professors at the time were dull enough to drive me to the Independent Studies program at UWaterloo.

She touched briefly on having to distinguish the difference between distribution and making available, which I personally find to be two different but related concepts which the music and movie industries are all too eager to call one and the same.

Litman asked us, indirectly, to look more at the reason for copyright, rather than the forms and details of existing and past copyright laws. From her overview of the history of copyright law, it was obvious that the advancement of technology was moving much too quickly for the establishment of law, and I suspect that gap is increasing now that self-publishing of not merely artistic works but also technological works becomes easier.

For me, what was perhaps most interesting was a little tidbit she dropped: the RIAA doesn’t want an “ipod levy” because they don’t want to legalize personal copying. Hmm.

Related posts

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• Yoav Mazeh: Fixation in Copyright - part three: my thoughts (0)
• Yoav Mazeh: Fixation in Copyright - part two: the discussion (0)
• Yoav Mazeh: Fixation in Copyright - part one: the presentation (0)
• Russell McOrmond reviews “Canadian Copyright: A Citizen’s Guide” (0)