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International Law

: Excess Copyright

The iPod "Tax": Misinformation re Heritage Committee's Report

By Howard Knopf, Esq.

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It seems necessary to dispel certain inaccurate and misleading blog commentary about what actually happened in the Heritage Committee yesterday concerning the NDP's proposed iPod ?tax?.

It is simply not correct to state, as James Gannon puts it in his blog, that:

To be clear, the MPs who voted in favour of this motion were not voting ?for?, or signalling any kind of ?support? for, this amendment to the Copyright Act, but merely voting for the Committee to consider the amendment at a later time.
That's not what happened. Here is what actually happened - according to the official source, which is Parliament itself. This, according to the Committee's official website, is what the Heritage Committee actually said:
Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), that the Committee report the following to the House as soon as possible:
That the Committee recommends that the government amend Part VIII of the Copyright Act so that the definition of ?audio recording medium? extends to devices with internal memory, so that the levy on copying music will apply to digital music recorders as well, thereby entitling music creators to some compensation for the copies made of their work.
(emphasis added)
That seems pretty clear to me and quite clearly contradicts Mr. Gannon's speculation. Here are the minutes of the meeting, which back up the Report.

The rest of Mr. Gannon's blog is largely a polemic against Prof. Michael Geist for "an over-politicization of the actual facts" and other various allegations.

However, all that Prof. Geist did in his blog was to describe succinctly and accurately what happened in the Committee, and the party affiliation of the members involved, along with the position of the two responsible Ministers of the Crown. That is essential information for anyone who tracks legislation. How exactly the provision of such information is "politicization" is quite incomprehensible.

Ironically, Mr. Gannon's blog is entitled ?Depoliticizing the iPod levy?. Even more ironically, his concluding paragraph begins with this otherwise agreeable sentiment:
As the experience with "Fox News" in the U.S. has shown, by highly politicizing debated issues, the public will often be swayed into a narrative with "good guys" on one side of the political spectrum and "bad guys" on the other.
It strikes me that Mr. Gannon is the one who is being rather too political in this instance.

Mr. Gannon, who was called to the bar in 2009, is an associate at McCarthy, Tétrault, working under Barry Sookman, a well known lawyer/lobbyist for some very politically savvy clients, i.e. CRIA, CMPDA, and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. While Mr. Gannon may very well have been speaking on his own, Mr. Sookman was very quick to tweet a link to his blog.

HK

Full post as published by Excess Copyright on March 17, 2010 (boomark / email).

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