Do I care if CBC spends more money on a song? Yes, if it’s good value.
My thoughts on the news that the CBC may not renew its contract for the HNIC theme song.
There is no doubt that the CBC would be perfectly happy maintaining the brand image of HNIC by keeping the fabled theme song. However, we don’t know why they are considering not resigning an agreement with Ms. Claman. Perhaps she is asking for an unreasonable sum for use of the song, perhaps they are low-balling her. Maybe they think that because the song is so inextricably linked to HNIC, she couldn’t sell it to anyone else, so why not offer her very little? If that was the case, she could always license it under Creative Commons for anyone to use, or hell, sell it to Molson!
If she is asking an unreasonable amount for it, then I don’t blame CBC for saying “hey its just a song”, and moving on. CBC is a PUBLIC broadcaster. If they have to choose between spending a disproportionate sum of money for the theme song, as opposed to paying a composer a few thousand bucks for a new one, then they have little choice.
Legal Studies
CBC, HNIC, theme song
Sorry for the delay. Stop biting your nails, curl up in a comfortable chair with a hot cup of tea and read this final chapter of my essay.
So the Federal Court of Appeal made it clear that the area of downloading, hard drives and file sharing remains a very grey area. In future cases, which the CIRA will no doubt file in the coming months, these aspects of the Copyright Act will be tested. This foreboding was voiced in one of Sexton’s final comments: “[I] wish to make it clear that if this case proceeds further, it should be done on the basis that no findings to date on the issue of infringement have been made.” (Sexton, par.54) Read more…
Digital Music, Legal Studies
copyright, Digital Music, disintermediation, ecommerce, file sharing, retail, royalties
Please see (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3)
Part 3 ended with the trial judge explaining that copying music was ok, since we Canadians have to pay a tax on blank CDs that is supposed to be distributed to labels to mitigate the monetary loss made possible by the public’s God-given right to do what they want with what they buy. In addition, putting my tunes in shared folder, does not constitute a crime, because I am not giving you my Metallica, you are simply moving it to your device (which is not taxed, BTW).
Since this all appears to be legal, that does not justify ordering the ISPs to snitch on their clients. Therefore, the labels can’t sue us directly… yet.
The labels appeal…
Several months later in July 2004, the CIRA appealed the decision. Justice Edgar Sexton reviewed the case and the Federal Court of Appeal handed down its unanimous decision on May 19, 2005. The Appellant Judge dismissed the appeal, but “having regard to what must be considered as divided success on this appeal, there will be no order as to costs.” (Sexton, 2005 par. 56) Read more…
Digital Music, Legal Studies, Media Technology
, CIRA, privacy, private copy amendment, Sexton, sharing
Please see (Part 1 and Part 2)
Part 2 ended with the judge suggesting that file-sharing in this case, was not copyright infringement at all…
The Copyright Board of Canada in 2003 amended the Copyright Act’s section on private copying to include language for better definition of an “audio recording medium” and to define levies on the sale of these items. (CBOC, 2003) The point of the Private Copying amendment is to allow an individual to make copies of protected material strictly for their own use, while still paying artists for their work. This money is collected via a levy placed on blank media that is collected by the Canadian Private Copying Collective (CPCC) as royalties. Read more…
Digital Music, Legal Studies, Media Technology
, CBOC, CCA, copyright, CPCC, Digital Music, Geist, WPPT
Part one of this essay ended with the CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association) was putting forth a motion to force ISPs to give up the names of P2P file-sharers.
On this motion, the CRIA provided an affidavit from Gary Millin, President of MediaSentry, a company that specializes in detecting the distribution of materials on P2P networks. The record labels supplied MediaSentry with the names of songs that were to be investigated. The company then searched for and downloaded the songs, matched the sources of the files to specific IP addresses and took screenshots of the users shared folders to show the volume of copyrighted material being made available for download. Read more…
Digital Music, Legal Studies, Media Technology
CRIA, DMCA, file sharing, Finckenstein, ISPs, PIPEDA, privacy, RIAA, WIPO, WPPT
