Friday 10h30 [Video]

Moderator: Daniel Gervais

Speakers:

• Teresa Scassa, Originality and Utilitarian Works: The Uneasy Relationship between Copyright Law and Unfair Competition
• Jessica Litman, Internet Sharing

Teresa Scassa: Copyright on utilitarian works and the impact in Canada.

Unfair competition is alive and well in canada in the copyrights.

The INS case: 2 rival news companies in the US in WW1. One (AP) had reporters overseas. The other was being denied access to front lines by the govt. They copied news from AP bulletins.

The court prefered to separate copyright from unfair competition.

The standard mirrors the canadian test for originality: skills labour and judgement.

Purpose of copyright in Canada: nothing in constitution or the act. In Theberge, the CSC drafted a statement. There are competing views.
Map charts and plans were originally included: not artistic, had to be exclicitly mentionned to include them in litteary works.
« Originality is not copied ».

No copyright in ideas, only in original expression. When the idea is merged with the expression, there is no copyright.

Facts, being copied from the word around us, are not copyrighted.

In the US Compilations can be protected based on originality of the arrangement. Not sweat of the brow.

In Canada: sweat of the brow: if someone want it, it has value, must be protected. Law society decision.

See also Slumber magic, BC jockey club. The Teledirect decision, following feist in the US, reread Slumber Magic. Essentially similar to Feist: the canadian position shifted, away from the protection of facts.

Canadian case law is moving towards unfair competition giving protection to underying facts, especially when there is business rivalry.

Litman: Internet sharing, p2p, facts.

What has arisen from sharing has lessons to teach us when we reflect on how to deal with p2p.

Copyrights was about mass dissemination: it used to have a big cost. therefore the law is designed to channel revenue to distributors. Internet distribution allows to reconsider these assumptions.

Digital sharing is a more efficient distribution mechanism than conventional distribution. Therefore, we should encourage it.

For revision process, the digital ressources are more flexible.

Easy to create. Lots of garbage. Weblogs/participative revision and corrections, Invaluable pool of ressources. Replication/quoting
The driving force is not money then: most of the information is posted by enthousiastic volunteers.
Or not so amateurs: BNA law news by Professor Geist/Politech by Declan McCullagh

The information/expression dichotomy is essential to the existence of a valuable information space.

P2P distribution creates a superior market for the distribution of facts.
Why not try to see if that model can bring some things to the music distribution model.

There are huge costs saving: distribution channels, payola, production costs. Money could be chaneled to paying artists.
Facilitating the sale of copies is not the goal. It’s the means law has choosen to facilitate the goal: wide dissemination of works.

Proposals for revenue generation: EFF, Fisher…
The consumer pay fees for file sharing.

I don’t want the music place to turn into a giant encyclopedia britannica in the sky.

q. (Counsel for CIRA) shoudn’t your model be extended to books? In a internet book club, shoudn’t a person be able to scan the pages and send them to participants?

a. I didn’t get the exact answer.