Julianna Yau’s blog

I won’t be able to make it to this one, but it sounds like fun (to me, anyway!):

The Innovation Law & Theory Workshop

Presents

David Winickoff

Assistant Professor, Bioethics and Society, University of California, Berkeley

Topic: Justice and the Management of Genomic Biobanks: A Procedural Rejoinder to Benefit-Sharing

Date: Friday, September 26, 2008

Time: 12:30 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.

Place: Solarium, Falconer Hall, 84 Queen’s Park

Description: Assemblages of personal health information, human DNA, and other heterogeneous forms of capital known as “biobanks” remain controversial events in the ethics and politics of the life sciences. Recent disputes around property in medical records, genetic data, and tissue samples demonstrate that the now-famous Moore v. Regents case was but the tip of a large iceberg of normative unsettlement in this area. Even as new and larger biobanking initiatives are emerging across the globe, scholarship on biobank governance has comparatively ignored property in favor of focusing on consent, IRBs, and privacy. What is “genomic capital,” and how should it be structured in order to advance various goals? In this vein, governance in UK Biobank deserves attention and scrutiny, as it is staking out a new imagination of the genomic biobank as a common-pool resource. The talk will explore the ways in which, if pushed further, the ideal of “partnership” articulated in the UK might be translated into legal rights of joint control across funders, research participants, and research institutes. Such an approach seeks to advance notions of justice neither by soft norms of benefit sharing nor by rigid earmarks. Rather, such an approach seeks to create structural conditions for the negotiation of the potentially conflicting charitable goals of major participants—i.e., a procedural approach to just benefit distribution.

Bio: David Winickoff is Assistant Professor of Bioethics and Society at U.C Berkeley. Professor Winickoff develops policies for governments, foundations, universities and the private sector that help guide innovation to address the most pressing environmental and health problems. His bioethics scholarship spans topics of biotechnology, systems of property and intellectual property, race, environmental regulation, food safety, human subjects research, and public health. He has published 23 articles in leading bioethics, biomedical, law and science studies journals. In 2007, Winickoff was chosen to be a Greenwall Faculty Scholar in Bioethics, a national award to foster the careers to the most promising young faculty in bioethics. Winickoff is also Co-director of the Science, Technology and Society Center, and the founder and executive director of the Science, Technology, Ethics and Law Working Group at UC Berkeley. Winickoff has also taught at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Public Policy, and he holds degrees from Yale University, Cambridge University, UK, and Harvard Law School.

Lunch will be provided – No RSVPs are required
For further information please contact Andrea Slane at centre.ilp@utoronto.ca

Some exciting (for me, anyway) not-directly-related-to-art-but-still-kind-of-related opportunities arrived in my email today:

Social Technologies Summit: Call For Submissions — Deadline 5pm, 13 October 2008
13-16 May 2009
Manchester UK

Futuresonic’s acclaimed international conference, the Social Technologies Summit brings 500 opinion formers, futurologists, artists, researchers, technologists and scientists from the digital culture, technology and art communities together around shared issues to do with social media, society, art and the city.

Digital culture burns bright with social connectivity

Inviting proposals for talks, presentations, workshops and session themes. Submissions of innovative formats for social interaction and experimentation are encouraged.

Call For Submissions — Deadline 5pm, 13 October 2008

Download an application form / guidelines here:
downloads.futuresonic.com/social2009.zip

For further information contact
Lisa Roberts
Social Technologies Summit Programme Manager
FutureEverything
+44 161 237 9000
social09@futuresonic.com

See also — A GBP 5000 commission plus many other opportunities are available in the Futuresonic 2008 Art & EVNTS calls for submissions.
www.futuresonic.com/getinvolved

Stanford Law School Announces Center for Internet and Society and Stanford Constitutional Law Center Joint Fellowship

The Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society (CIS) and The Stanford Constitutional Law Center (CLC) announce a new joint fellowship for the study of the intersection of copyright and constitutional law. We are looking for an inaugural fellow to work with faculty and staff from both Centers on range of research and litigation projects addressing the relationship between the Constitution’s Copyright Clause, the First Amendment and the Fair Use
Doctrine.

The primary responsibility for the fellow will be to work on current CIS Fair Use Project litigation. In addition, the Fellow will also be an active part of the CIS and CLC communities, attending lectures and symposia, assisting with Center activities and working with students on related projects. The Fellowship will provide significant opportunity for the pursuit of individual research and scholarship in preparation to enter the academic teaching market. The fellowship position is offered for one year with the opportunity for renewal.

Applicant Requirements:

2-5 years of post-law school civil litigation experience with substantial experience in constitutional law (preferred) and
intellectual property (required) matters;
Excellent writing and analytic skills;
Demonstrated ability to direct litigation of impact cases; and
Demonstrated ability to work in a self-directed and entrepreneurial environment.

The position is for 12 months, with the possibility of renewal for a second twelve months. The start date is September 2008, although this may be flexible depending on the right candidates availability. Salary will be approximately $40,000 per year, with benefits.

Preferred submission deadline is September 8, 2008, however applications will be accepted until the position is filled.

Applicants MUST apply online via the Stanford Jobs website at
http://jobs.stanford.edu/find_a_job.html
Search “Job number 31382″

Applications may also be submitted by email to the following address:
Gelman@stanford.edu.

For more information about the CIS and the FUP, please visit
http://www.cyberlaw.stanford.edu.

For more information about the Stanford Constitutional Law Center, please visit our website at
http://www.law.stanford.edu/program/centers/conlaw/

The past week has reached a pinacle of maddess for me, with my studio still in transition and my computer’s ethernet card not playing nice with Linux. I’m determined to get caught up by the end of the month, both in terms of sculpting and email/blog/etc reading. In the meantime, here’s an exciting press release from CARFAC:

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Since October 2007, CARFAC-RAAV have been involved in a productive ongoing discussion with representatives from the Copyright branch of Library and Archives Canada (LAC), concerning a new standard licence for visual artists. You will remember that in the fall of 2007, we publicly recommended that artists not sign the old contract because we strongly felt that it contained unreasonable requests regarding the use of artists’ copyrights, and that they had few options to negotiate its terms. In particular, we objected to the fact that artists were asked to make their work publicly available without financial compensation, and that there was significant potential that their moral rights could be mistreated.

Following our public release, LAC communicated that they were willing to create a contract that is more respectful of the artists they work with, and demonstrated a desire to collaborate with CARFAC-RAAV and CARCC to draft a new contract to ensure that fair practice is upheld. We are pleased to report that this effort has been successful, and that a new contract has been prepared.

First we would like to underline the fact that the new contract is much improved over the previous version, and we commend LAC for working with us to prepare a contract that allows copyright holders to decide upon what terms their works should be used by LAC. It is clear from the new language in this contract that it is negotiable and flexible for the artist, and that the artist’s right to choose is respected at every step. For example, the artist can cross out all the uses he or she is not permitting LAC to use an image for. The artist can also establish the duration of the licence and whether financial compensation is requested or not. Moreover, the information letter of introduction accompanying the licence has been expanded and modified in order to better explain the nature and conditions of the request made by LAC to use copyrighted material.

There is one article in particular that we had questions about, and which the artist has the right to authorize or not. This is regarding the use of an image by educational institutions. The dissemination of content for educational purposes is part of LAC’s mandate, and as such, teachers and students frequently use their online materials for the purposes of study and research. The new licence requests permission from the artist to allow educational institutions to use an electronic image of an artwork, which they may post on the institution’s website, reproduce, present, or publish for educational uses. It is LAC’s practice to make low resolution images available for this purpose. The licence allows for non-commercial uses only, and if someone asks to reproduce it for commercial or advertising purposes, the copyright owner must be consulted and permission must be obtained apart from this licence. Under this article, the artist is given the choice to give authorization or to deny it, and we recommend that artists carefully consider the full implications of giving such permission. CARFAC-RAAV also welcome artists who have questions about any contractual agreement to consult with us about what their options are.

All in all, this new contract is a drastic change from the initial one and we are glad that the action we took brought about a change in LAC’s approach regarding visual artists’ rights. Following this conclusive experience, CARFAC-RAAV look forward to collaborating with LAC in the future.

For more information:
carfac@carfac.ca
1 (866) 233-6161
www.carfac.ca

Today, I was informed that the Orphaned Works bill in the US has been resurrected. One of the problematic aspects of the bill is its assumptions that any unregistered work can be considered orphaned. This is a huge change to the way copyright currently works, and is a chilling proposed solution to the problem of locating a copyright holder (which I mentioned yesterday).

Some things to consider:

1. Currently, all works in the US (like in Canada) are automatically copyrighted to the creator. No registration is required. This greatly reduces the financial and administrative burden of some creators, and increases the financial and administrative burden of creators who appropriate/creatively reuse work. It also increases the financial and administrative burden of any other party who wants to use a copyrighted work in a context outside of fair use.
2. The Orphaned Works bill proposes that works which are not registered will be considered orphaned, and therefore not be protected by copyright or moral rights. This will allow greater access to works outside of the context of fair use, but swing the financial and administrative burden to the creators.
3. The cost of copyright registration in the US is currently $45 per work. For me to register the copyright in the US (if I were working from the US) for my modest collection of 27 sculpture would cost $1,215. For some, this could be seen as part of the cost of producing work and/or securing their ability to further generate income from their work. However, this would be impossible for artists who generate any amount of income based on a low overhead.
4. Registration of copyright in the US requires the submission of a copy of the work. This is not the case in Canada (and, oddly, Canada’s registration fee is substantially higher at $65 per work for most types of work).

A quick search on Google shows that this is has been a concern in the US for some time. As Mark Simon noted, this is also happening in Europe (although I am having a difficult time tracking down information about that, amidst all the US content).

Locating the creator of a work is certainly an issue, but these proposed changes are not the solution… primarily because the solution shouldn’t create a whole host of problems for those who used to be protected.

I’m a bit under the weather this week, so I won’t be blogging unless it’s some sort of conference-related announcement.

A preview of some of the things to come:

• Summary of Ann Bartow’s excellent lecture on colour and trademark law
• …I also missed posting my thoughts on Darin Barney’s presentation, “Innovation Nation: Public Pedagogy and the Politics of Technology”
• An update on my XO after some more usage, including an Eee vs XO comparison
• Some stuff on droit de suite

Donn Zaretsky points to an article by Nancy Wolff which outlines some of the idiosyncrasies of the application of copyright law to photographers. On the other hand, Georgia Harper writes about how natural it is for people to take pictures of public art.

The Media Law Resource Center, Stanford Publishing Courses and Stanford Law School Center for Internet & Society are hosting Legal Frontiers in Digital Media, a conference on the emerging legal issues surrounding digital publishing and content distribution.

The conference is on May 15 and 16, 2008 at Stanford.

Yesterday, I attended the 2008 Grafstein Lecture in Communications at the University of Waterloo. This year’s presenter was Jessica Litman, on the topic of rethinking copyright.

The topic of rethinking copyright was exciting on its own. I have a great deal of respect for Litman’s work, so being able to attend the lecture was something I was looking forward to for several weeks.

Litman started the lecture with some background information, which was mostly “common knowledge” for anyone who has studied copyright and all of which was a precursor to the crux of her position. She reiterated the fact that many creators are trying to manage the changes in the way their work is distributed, accessed and copied with the new technologies available to us, and that the internet is putting some copyright owners out of business and creating opportunities for other copyright owners (primarily creators who wouldn’t have publishers under the old model of creation and distribution). She then reminded us that the costs of paper publishing, both historically and presently, require that much of the revenue go toward the publisher, who is an intermediary between the creator and the user.

Litman stressed the need for a reallocation of the priorities in copyright, with a focus on enhanced rights for readers of works. She reminded us that the dominant businesses in the creative industry are lobbying for change because the current copyright law does not work well for them. In particular, current US copyright law makes it very difficult to license digital copies of music.

Among the distribution problems is the one that creators often have little control over and income from their works. This, I believe, is a problem more common in creative works meant for mass distribution (e.g. literature, movies, software and music), rather than something like visual art where the work is meant to be unique and limited in its distribution.

A very interesting (and under-reported) point that Litman mentioned is that 4 years ago, the Supreme Court of Canada passed a judgement which states ““Research” must be given a large and liberal interpretation in order to ensure that users’ rights are not unduly constrained“. This decision, she felt, should be giving lobbyists for user rights adequate support for their cause.

One of her great observations is that the technology for distributing/copying/publishing is overlapping with the technology for reading/watching/listening. This is where the old concepts of how people interact with creative works shifts, because the technologies create temporary and permanent copies of copyrighted works.

The following are the three ongoing problems she listed as prime examples:

• webcasting
• what falls under private copying
• law suits for secondary liability (read some of these recent posts by others for a taste of the issues)

The question Litman posed to us is where do readers, listeners and viewers fall into copyright?

One of the problems she has with current discussions on user rights is that we are rolling all users of copyrighted materials into one category: both the corporate users (e.g. Disney) and the individual readers, listeners and viewers. Note that in the Q&A which followed the lecture, someone asked where Litman would place the new breed of users, which I’ll call the creators of user-generated content. Litman replied that she would draw the line between commercial and non-commercial use. Although I tried drawing that line in the past, I’m still not certain whether that’s the correct or most accurate distinction.

Litman stressed the need to use the distinction of “readers, listeners and viewers” rather than “consumers” (because of the inherit implication that money is involved) or “enjoyers” (because the work may not necessarily be enjoyed, per se). From this point, I’m just going to use “RLV” because I’m too lazy to type “readers, listeners and viewers” every time.

To drive home the need for us to rethink copyright via user rights, Litman argued that the RLVs interact with works and thereby complete the creators’ interests. While I find this notion somewhat romantic, I do agree that the creation and existence of works seems very hollow without anyone on the receiving end. Like having a conversation with yourself, creating a work without an audience is often unfulfilling for the creator.

Litman recognizes that it’s difficult for many people to think about user rights because that’s not normally how we think about copyright. The difficulty I have with thinking about user rights is not the resistance to it, but not knowing what exactly those rights ought to be and which ones are related primarily to copyright.

Personally, I found Litman’s comments about the relationship between the creator and the RLV to be a crucial concept which needs to be explored much more, both within and outside of the realm of copyright. At the Visual Arts Summit, there was discussion of needing to connect audiences with art, and I’m now wondering how much creators have been disconnected with the people for whom they are creating/the people who interact with their creations. Litman likened the trio of creators, publishers an RLVs to an ecosystem which depends on each other, and it was unspoken that there is an imbalance in the ecoystem.

A humorous and true insight from Litman was that while we all agree that there is an imbalance in the amount of power and control allotted to the creators, distributors and RLVs, the disagreement is who has the upper hand. Each side feels that they are being cheated by the other two, and each demands for their rights to be protected. But when their interests conflict, whose rights prevail?

Throughout the lecture, the dominant thought I had was that we need to start rethinking, not copyright, but the entire sphere of creative output and its support systems. To date, most of us have been treating the problems of copyright as the result of changes in technology. But I’m starting to think that we need to see the inadequacies of current copyright law as a symptom of a much greater phenomenon: the very rel change in the way works are created, distributed and read/listened/viewed. Perhaps we can’t come to any resolutions and keep discussing unrelated issues as copyright issues, not because they are unrelated, but because we are starting from the wrong place.

Before I start, I would like to reinforce that this is my personal blog and that the opinions to follow are my personal opinions. I am on the Board of Directors for CARFAC Ontario, and was involved in some of the later discussions on the platform with the CCC in December.

Of course, that disclaimer is mostly in the interest of CYA because I wouldn’t be able to, in good conscience, advise CARFAC to sign onto the platform if I didn’t agree with it.

And while I agree with the platform (mostly… I have some reservations about the levy issue overall, not just within the context of the platform), I think there are some things which need much more attention than what has been afforded in the document.

1. The WCT and TPMs

What I have found most frustrating about copyright is the politics. And part of it is this whole business of signing treaties and ratification which means incorporating all aspects of the treaty. From the perspective of someone who is more philosophically-minded than politically-minded, this doesn’t make much sense. But there it is, and here we are, bickering over the inclusion of a clause that deals with technology and business models which are in constant evolution. My personal perspective on the WCT? Implement the rest of it (yes, it does actually deal with something other from TPM!) and tackle TPM on its own. Either we end up ratifying the treaty or we don’t, but there are other parts of the treaty which seem to be agreeable and creators would benefit from seeing them implemented.

2. Levies

The CCC also recommends “the expansion of the private copying regime to include all categories of work covered by the Copyright Act”. I support the concept of a private copying levy, but feel we need an in-depth and independent study of both private copying practices and the technology used in private copying to be completed prior to any expansion of the private copying levy. While it is immensely valuable for creators to have a system for being reimbursed for private copying (in lieu of the more distasteful option of suing consumers, which is happening in the U.S.), it is imperative that the levy be applied in such a way that it covers actual copying activity (versus perceived activity) and that the levy amounts are appropriate. There also needs to be more analysis around the private copying which ought to be levied and what ought not—an analysis which needs to involve both creators and consumers, and consider not merely proper remuneration to creators but clarification on what products and licences a user has acquired when they purchase a creative work.

I would also like to highlight some parts of the platform:

From the introduction

Increasingly legislators have turned to exceptions in the law as a way of providing guaranteed cost-free access to the public, even though the targeted problems, such as the need of teachers to use the Internet in the classroom, have more to do with budgets (too small) and clearance systems (too complicated) than with copyright law. It is important to remember that professional artists are users as well as creators. We, too, want reasonably priced access to the copyright-protected works of others but sometimes experience unduly high fees for access from other rights holders, often including government institutions and agencies. Creators are, therefore, looking for changes to the copyright law that would facilitate the clearing of permissions, wherever practicable, through collective societies.

Also from the introduction

The CCC recognizes that some creators choose to provide access to their work free of all technical protection measures and, instead, depend on the force of copyright law alone as their sole defence against unwanted use. Many contemporary creators are choosing to closely define the rights they wish to reserve through new licences such as those provided by the Creative Commons. For some creators there simply are no unwanted uses and, so, they provide their work licence-free as a gift to the public commons. The CCC recognizes and celebrates all of the many ways creators choose to relate their work to the current copyright system. We feel there is no need to alter the fundamental principles of the law to reflect these choices by introducing exceptions. Copyright stands as a definition of specific and limited rights for creators. Whatever rights individual creators choose to reserve are entirely an individual choice. In instances where copyright uses are licenced, the CCC recognizes the right of authors to choose whether or not to participate in that licensing regime.

On the suggestion of a notice and takedown system:

Serious and authoritative provisions need to be built into the law to protect all parties from fallacious and/or frivolous notices. Conditions for notices, and serious penalties for notice misuse must be built into the Canadian system.

And for those of you who don’t want to muddle through the entire document, here is a summary (pulled from the document itself; this is at the very end of the document) of the variety of issues being addressed:

1. The CCC asks that the Copyright Act be amended to strengthen and extend moral rights. These are rights that should allow creators to maintain respect for their work and their name. Moral rights should be unwaivable, inalienable and unassignable. Additionally, as well as being transferable only on death either to any person named by will or to an heir by intestate succession, moral rights should be perpetual.

2. The CCC asks the Government of Canada to incorporate the provisions of the WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT) into Canadian law.

3. The CCC recommends that the system of exceptions for all forms of ephemeral recordings* or transfer of format not be extended.

4. The CCC asks that Section 3(1) of the Copyright Act be amended to provide that copyright in a work means “the sole right to produce or reproduce the work or any substantial part thereof in any material form whatever, to transfer the work or any substantial part thereof to another medium, to perform the work or any substantial part thereof in public, or, if the work is unpublished, to publish the work or any substantial part thereof …”

Section l3(4) of the Copyright Act should have a corresponding modification to read : “The owner of the copyright in any work may assign the right, either wholly or partially, and either generally or subject to limitations relating to territory, medium transfer, sector of the market or other limitations relating to the scope of the assignment, and either for the whole term of the copyright or for other part thereof, and may grant any interest in the right by licence, but no assignment or grant is valid unless it is in writing signed by the owner of the right in respect of which the assignment or grant is made, or by the owner’s duly authorized agent.”

5. The CCC recommends that section 29 of the Copyright Act, which concerns fair dealing, be reformulated in order to specify clearly that fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research does not infringe copyright provided that it is not for commercial purposes and is accompanied by sufficient acknowledgment.

6. The CCC recommends the expansion of the private copying regime to include all categories of work covered by the Copyright Act.

7. The CCC asks that the government oblige publicly funded exhibitors to comply with the exhibition right as provided for in the Copyright Act, and pay visual and media artists for all uses of their work.

8. The CCC asks that paragraph 3(1)(g) of the Copyright Act be modified to extend the exhibition right to all visual works that are not in the public domain.

9. The CCC asks that the Copyright Act be amended to include a droit de suite that would be a non-transferable and inalienable right in the original artwork giving the creator an economic interest in successive re-sales of the work concerned.

10. The CCC asks that in all cases copyright be accorded to photographers, printmakers and portrait artists, and that all reproduction of these works require a licence from the creator.

11. The CCC asks that any future specification in the Copyright Act respect the general attribution rules that make creators the primary rights holders of the audiovisual work. Assigning authorship of the work, in whole or in part, to the producer is contrary to the spirit of the Act.

12. The CCC asks that Section 29.5(a) be struck from the Copyright Act so that playwrights and other authors may regain their right to receive fair remuneration when their works are performed by students in educational institutions in the context of pedagogical activities.

13. The CCC asks that Section 32.2(1)(d) be struck from the Copyright Act so that authors of literary and dramatic texts may receive fair remuneration when a substantial part of their work is read or recited on stage.

14. The CCC asks the government to:
recognize in the wording of the Act that ISPs share in the responsibility for the content of the transmissions that customers circulate on their networks;
-ensure that this responsibility be conveyed through the recognition of shared liability for copyright infringement when an ISP neglects to withdraw illegal content after being advised of its presence by the copyright holder;
-specify that ISPs must not undertake, directly or indirectly, any activity that approves, sanctions, allows, favours, or encourages an activity involving telecommunication to the public or reproduction of content without appropriate compensation to creators/copyright owners;
-adopt the “notice and takedown” procedure advocated by the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage;
- limit the concept of “Internet service provider” to entities whose commercial activity is the provision of Internet services; and
- provide conditions for notices, and serious penalties for notice misuse to avoid any legal intimidation of fair-dealing uses by rights holders.

15. The CCC recommends that further changes to improve the general licensing system and facilitate collective administration be applied, and that this system be preferred over one which would have the effect of maintaining and extending the current system of exceptions.

16. The CCC asks the Government of Canada to adopt a system of extended collective licensing that covers all works except those explicitly withdrawn.

17. The CCC asks that:
performers be accorded a full and complete right of reproduction, and that this right extend to all performances not in the public domain, and
section 17 of the Act be repealed.

18. The CCC recommends that:
-the private copying regime and its remuneration system be extended to include audiovisual works and their constituent performances;
-the law clearly indicate that the private copying regime can be applied to all technologies that permit private copying; and,
the current private copying system be maintained until the possibility of making unauthorized copies is effectively eradicated, or otherwise monetized.

19. The CCC asks the Government of Canada to incorporate the provisions of the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty (WPPT) into Canadian law, and to ensure that the rights accorded performers cover all performances not in the public domain.

20. The CCC recommends the repeal of section 68.1(1)(a)(i) of the Copyright Act, which provides for the payment of a sum as low as $100 per year on the first $1.25 million of broadcasters’ annual advertising revenues.

21. The CCC asks the Government of Canada to provide performing artists with moral rights in all their performances, including existing performances, and that these be inalienable, unwaivable and unassignable.

22. The CCC asks that transitional measures be included which will prohibit the possibility of any grant, waiver or assignment before the new provisions come into force.

23. The CCC recommends the regime provided for in Section 32.5 of the Copyright Act be replaced by a notification system more suitable to Canada.

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* “Ephemeral recordings” referenced here are strictly those addressed in section 30.8 of the Copyright Act. They are not ephemeral copies that are privately made during the normal course of information transfer and that are not made for the purpose of facilitating the telecommunication to the public of a performer’s performance or a sound recording.

I finally found some time to read Russell McOrmond’s review of Canadian Copyright: A Citizen’s Guide. He has spoken highly of the book, and it is now on my reading list (two or three books from Wired Shut, which is the one I’m very slowly working through…not because of readability but the limited reading time I have).

Some of Russell’s comments are a bit concerning, with the misunderstanding of Creative Commons being the most concerning for me. I know many people who kind of know that there’s this thing called Creative Commons and that it has something to do with alternative copyright licensing, but few have a good understanding of how it works. I’ve been distressed by people who present it as something which makes that type of license possible rather than the fact that Creative Commons licences make using that type of license much more accessible. I’ve also been distressed by a lawyer explaining that it has a code which allows the license to follow the work, in terms of something similar to a digital rights management technique rather than a licensing provision. I’m sure it’s all a result of a broken-telephone transmission of information, but it doesn’t excuse people from not going to the source to check their facts.

Although I have used the term “copyleft” in the past, after some discussions with Russell I am better understanding the complications which can arise from using the term. Russell’s comments on the term in his review of Canadian Copyright: A Citizen’s Guide are quite concise, and our discussions leave me puzzling over a more suitable term.

In reading the comments on “harmonization”, it became clear to me that the problem is creators want to be (and should be) treated equally in the Copyright Act. Unfortunately, it seems that well-meaning but ill-informed persons end up using harmonization to achieve equality. I have been guilty of that breakdown in logic in the past, but have been slowly moving away from that perspective. In my continual thoughts on the fact that not all creative works are the same, it is becoming more apparent that equal treatment needs specialized attention rather than harmonization (which could potentially do more harm than it was intended to).