ADVERTISEMENTS

Fresh upon the Conference Board of Canada fiasco, the Canadian Coalition for Electronic Rights (?CCER?) has pointed out what may well be two instances of censorship a the behest of third parties by the Business News Networks (?BNN?), a Canadian cable news channel with establishment ownership roots. Here?s who is behind BNN:

It seems that two videos of BNN interviews concerning Canadian copyright policy from May 8, 2008 and June 12, 2008 that have been posted on YouTube virtually ever since and got a lot of hits have been taken down. The first was an interview that included myself sparring with Stevan Mitchell, a Washington based VP of IP Policy at the Entertainment Software Association (?ESA?), which has three active lobbyist registrations in Canada.

The second was an interview with Prof. Jeremy De Beer debating Barry Sookman, a Canadian lawyer and registered lobbyist for CRIA and CMPDA, which are perhaps the two most active and energetic copyright lobbyist organizations in Canada, even though their main driving membership consists of American owned interests in both cases.

Here?s a link to the taken down YouTube clip of the interview with myself and Stevan Mitchell showing the ominous message:

And here?s the link to the interview with Jeremy and Barry with a similar message.

Needless to say, CRIA, CMPDA and ESA are all ?maximalist? content owner lobby groups that favour ultra- strong DMCA type protection in Canada. One of the features of DMCA is ?notice and takedown?, which can be used - or misused - or abused - for censorship purposes. See the terrific Chilling Effects site for thousands of other examples.

Could it be that pressure was brought to bear on BNN to send DMCA notices to YouTube to take down Jeremy?s and my critical comments? If so, I wonder by whom? If there was no pressure, then why did BNN do nothing for more than a year and why are there lots of other BNN clips still up on YouTube? If there was pressure, then these takedowns would appear to be QED examples of just some of what we can expect if lobbyist organizations such as CRIA, CMPDA and ESA get to dictate Canadian copyright policy.

In the spirit of fair dealing and fair use, not to mention freedom of expression, here are the clips copied from BNN, the Business News Network?s, transmissions. The original transmission of interview with Jeremy would have been on June 12, 2008 - the day that the ?Made Worse in Canada? Bill C-61 was tabled. The interview with myself was on May 8, 2009, just over a month before the Bill was tabled. It is very important to keep the substance of these two mini-debates in mind as we move forward to new bill, presumably later this year. These links are to CCER?s site:

HK

Bloggers, promote your law blog by nominating your blog for inclusion in USLaw.com's Law Blog Directory and RSS Reader. Benefits described.