The amendments to s. 5 of the new Copyright Act are merely technical and reflect the fact Canada is implementing 1996 WIPO Copyright Treaty.

Subsections (1.01), (1.02) and (1.03) of the Act are meant to give retrospective effect to protection of foreign works that may have originated from countries that become parties to international copyright treaties after the creation or the publication of the work in question.

The revised version of these subsections now takes into account that a WCT country also falls under the definition of a “treaty country”.

The practical effect of the amendment is, however, going to be zero, since today there is not a single country on the planet that is a party to the WCT but is not a party to the Berne Convention. Given that there are 165 parties to the Berne Convention and that WCT requires that all WCT members must comply with all substantive provisions of the Berne Convention, this situation is very unlikely to change any time soon.

BOTTOM LINE: Neutral. The changes are purely technical, and will have no practical effect on application of the Act

Copyright Modernization Act adds a new right that makes up the bundle of rights that is copyright. The new right is added as s. 3(1)(j) and it reads as follows: “‘copyright’ … includes the sole right, in the case of a work that is in the form of a tangible object, to sell or otherwise transfer ownership of the tangible object, as long as that ownership has never previously been transferred in or outside Canada with the authorization of the copyright owner.”

This provision goes against everything that copyright laws are about. It is Copyright 101 that ownership of copyright and ownership in the tangible object in which copyright may be expressed are two separate rights, which may or may not belong to the same person.

Granted, some European states provide the right to painters to receive remuneration for subsequent sales of their original paintings (droit de suite), but this right is protected as an add-on right, not as the substance of what copyright is defined as.

It has always been clear that granting a license to use copyright embodied in an object did not also mean the sale of the object, just as the sale of the object did not also mean the grant of a license to use copyright embodied in it.

The new provision muddies the waters and merges copyright in the work with ownership of the object.

The wording of the new provision is also unacceptably broad. It refers to works that are “in the form of a tangible object”. Most works are embodied in some form of a tangible object. Even if it’s merely a computer file. Because that file is stored on a tangible object, somewhere. However, the law refers to works that are in the form of a tangible object. Works protected by copyright have a separate life from the form in which they might exist. With respect to music, there is only one single copyright to a song – be it recorded on a CD, a tape, a computer file, or note paper.

Even more intriguing is the question why that provision was added to the Copyright Act. We don’t need the Copyright Act to tell us that whoever creates a tangible object will become its owner and will have the right to sell or otherwise transfer ownership in it. If I buy a canvas and draw something on it (or even if I don’t), then – even without the Copyright Act – I know that I can sell the canvas as a tangible object. This is what ownership is all about it. If you own it, then you can sell it. It does not require a separate provision in the Copyright Act.

On the other hand, it would make even less sense to add a provision to the Copyright Act that would somehow grant ownership in a tangible object to those who happened to embody their creative work in a tangible object previously owned by somebody else. If this was the case, then graffiti artists will be able to claim ownership of the houses on whose walls they are painting; strangers whom we ask to take a picture of us will be able to claim ownership of our cameras, or at least their flash drives; users of internet cafes will be able to claim ownership of computers they use to send literary works in the form of emails; etc.

Clearly, both situations are absurd. But really, either you own the object before it happens to embody a work of copyright or you don’t. The section 3(1)(j) is so poorly drafted that it can mean virtually anything to anybody, which is never a good thing for a provision that purports to form the definition of what copyright is.

BOTTOM LINE: Bad. Very bad. Whatever good intentions may have been behind this provision will probably be lost due to the poor wording. The added drawback is that this provision dilutes the clear line between ownership of copyright and ownership of physical objects in which copyright may be embodied.

Talk about crazy numbering of provisions.

Let me say that again: after the Copyright Modernization Act comes into effect, Canadian Copyright Act will have section 2.4(1.1) (proudly pronounced “section two point four subsection one point one”), which section effectively adds to Canadian copyright laws what is universally referred to as the “making available right”.

This right was first recognized in the 1996 WIPO treaties, where the right is worded as the right to authorize “any communication to the public of the works, by wire or wireless means, including the making available to the public of the works in such a way that members of the public may access these works from a place and at a time individually chosen by them.”

In Canada, by virtue of the new section 2.4(1.1) this right will fall under the umbrella of the previously existing right of “communication to the public by telecommunication”. This is done by including the “making available to the public by telecommunication in a way that allows a member of the public to have access to it from a place and at a time individually chosen by that member of the public” in the definition of “communication to the public by telecommunication”.

This may be a sound policy decision, since having two or more separate rights for the same action is confusing. It is enough that uploading of a counterfeit work to the internet may already be considered both a reproduction and communication to the public. Adding a separate right of making available would necessarily raise the question, “If we need a separate right for this, then it means that neither the reproduction nor the communication to the public covers the uploading to the web, and if so, any unauthorized uploads that took place before the new law came into effect must be legitimate.”

In 1996, it made sense to make it abundantly clear that use of works online is not off-limits. Therefore, the new “making available” right came to be. But now that no one is seriously questioning the general principle that unauthorized use of copyrighted works, online or offline, constitutes copyright infringement, using one of the pre-existing rights is a safer bet for continuing disputes.

BOTTOM LINE: Good. The making available right is introduced without disturbing the balance of other rights of copyright owners.

UPDATE: Jason J. Kee (@jasonjkee) made a valid point that folding the making available right into the communication right will have implications because of the existing collective licensing regime. Personally, I’m not a big fan of overreaching collective licensing scheme (or anything collective, for that matter), but I understand that from a practical standpoint it could have been easier to create a new tariff for a new right than to amend the existing tariff to reflect the expansion of the existing right.

Tariffs, albeit very important to most authors, are not what copyright law is about. As I argued in my post How Not to Fix Copyright – My Response to William Patry, copyright is not about getting paid, copyright is about control. Existing tariffs should not determine the right to control one’s works. It is the right to control one’s works that gives rise to tariffs, when necessary.

This will be the first post in a long series about amendments to the Canadian Copyright Act.

For ease of reference, I recommend that you open the Copyright Act with all revisions in a new window.

The first few changes are to Section 2 of the Copyright Act.

First of all, the definition of “moral rights” is amended to reflect the new reality that moral rights will now also cover performers’ performances. I will discuss this amendment as I get to the new s. 17.1 of the Act.

Second, the definitions section now also contains references to “WCT country” and “WPPT country”. The former means a country that is a party to WIPO Copyright Treaty, and the latter means a country that is a party to WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty. It would be logical to conclude that Canada, having signed the 1996 WIPO treaties on December 22, 1997 will finally implement them some 15 years later.

The term “treaty country” has been amended to also include WCT countries (but not WPPT countries). This is done because the term “treaty country” is only used with respect to copyright in works throughout the Act, not copyright in the other subject-matter.

BOTTOM LINE: the changes to s. 2 of the new Copyright Act are merely technical, so my assessment of the amendments is neutral.

On June 29, 2012, Copyright Modernization Act finally received Royal Assent. It is expected to come into force in the next few months by order of the Governor in Council.

I have also created a revised version of the Copyright Act consolidated with all amendments.

I have consciously refrained from commenting its provisions before it became final. In my opinion, the biggest problem with the Copyright Modernization Act is that it never answered the question of why we have copyright laws at all. I wrote about it in more detail in my article Modernization of the Inconceivable.

The current reform is hardly more than a spineless compromise. To me, it looks like it was borne out of a discussion went like this: “Let’s take this right from this group of people and give it to that group of people. But in order for us to be able to do it without creating too much of a stir, let’s also take this right from that group of people and give it to this group of people. Nobody’s going to be happy, but we have a chance of finally pushing this through the Parliament.”

The resulting Act is even more unreadable than the current one. The order of provisions and their numbering was and remains highly illogical. Only now it is even more so.

Some of the provisions are horrible from the linguistic point of view. For example, s. 19(1) now reads as follows:

(1) Right to remuneration – Canada

  If a sound recording has been published, the performer and maker are entitled, subject to subsection 20(1), to be paid equitable remuneration for its performance in public or its communication to the public by telecommunication, except for

(a) a communication in the circumstances referred to in paragraph 15(1.1)(d) or 18(1.1)(a), if the person entitled to the equitable remuneration is entitled to the right referred to in those paragraphs for that communication; and

(b) any retransmission.

Who’s entitled to what?

Unfortunately, regardless of what I or anybody else thinks about the new law, creators, businesses and lawyers will have to live by it.

This is why, having been silent on the changes to the Copyright Act before, I will now be publishing a series of blog posts explaining my position on each and every amendment, as to whether it makes the Act better or worse.