Unravelling the Canadian Copyright Lobby

Especially impor­tant to every­one in Canada — but impor­tant to every­one around the world, since copy­right and IP are increas­ingly inter­na­tional issues due to attempts at har­mo­niza­tion (WIPO, for example) — comes this expose by Michael Geist on the undue influ­ence pro-​​copyright lob­by­ist orga­ni­za­tions have had on Canadian pol­icy documents:

Although there are many groups involved in copy­right lob­by­ing, at the heart of the strat­egy are two orga­ni­za­tions — the Canadian Recording Industry Association and the Canadian Motion Picture Distributors Association. CRIA’s board is made up the four major music labels plus its direc­tor, while the CMPDA’s board is com­prised of rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Hollywood movie stu­dios. Those same stu­dios and music labels pro­vide sup­port for the International Intellectual Property Association, which influ­ences Canadian copy­right pol­icy by sup­port­ing U.S. gov­ern­ment copy­right lobby efforts.

In addi­tion to their active indi­vid­ual lob­by­ing (described here), CRIA and CMPDA have pro­vided finan­cial sup­port for three asso­ci­a­tions newly active on copy­right lob­by­ing — the Canadian Anti-​​Counterfeiting Network, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce’s IP Council, and the Ontario Chamber of Commerce (there are other fun­ders includ­ing phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies and law firms). Those groups have issued vir­tu­ally iden­ti­cal reports and in turn sup­ported seem­ingly inde­pen­dent sources such as the Conference Board of Canada and paid polling efforts through Environics.

via Michael Geist — Unravelling the Canadian Copyright Policy Laundering Strategy.

Regardless of where you fall on the copy­right debate, this is an impor­tant arti­cle, and one I rec­om­mend read­ing for use­ful back­ground on clas­sic “rent-​​seeking” behav­iour by entrenched inter­ests. Any fab­ri­cated or overly biased infor­ma­tion reduces the chance we will make pos­i­tive deci­sions that ben­e­fit soci­ety as a whole — which, at least in the British/​American/​Canadian tra­di­tion of IP, is a main point of copyright.

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