I am often asked to share my comments about the amendments to the Canadian Copyright Act that are proposed in the Bill C-11.

In my opinion, they are nothing more than the result of an attempt to “balance” the interests which by definition cannot be balanced, to find a viable compromise between food and poison. Bill C-11 looks very much as if the drafters thought, “Let’s take a little bit from this group of people and give it to that group of people, and in order for it to be able to pass, let’s also take from that second group of people and give something back to the first group of people.”

What the law is and what the law should be are two separate issues. No matter what form the amended Copyright Act will take, I will be able to serve my clients’ best interests.

As to what the law should be, I am convinced that this question cannot be answered without first addressing the foundational question of why we have copyright laws at all. In this sense, William Patry is 100% correct in his new book, “How to Fix Copyright”. I am currently writing a long review of the book to show how wrong Mr. Patry is in his analysis and in the remedies he is offering.

Meanwhile, I decided to phase out my personal website at MINCOV.COM and repost some of my older posts from there that deal with the copyright reform and my vision of the philosophy of copyright.

The first one is about the parody exception to copyright. Unfortunately, Canadian legislators decided to include the parody exception in Bill C-11. I wrote that article before this proposal was made, and so I don’t address it in my article.