[Foundation-l] Canadian consultation on Trans Pacific

[Ray Saintonge]

On 01/16/12 8:10 AM, Marco Chiesa wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 16, 2012 at 3:15 PM, David Gerard<dgerard at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> On 16 January 2012 14:08, Federico Leva (Nemo)<nemowiki at gmail.com>  wrote:
>>> WMIT is interested, too, because the board has decided to move the
>>> semi-free and PD-Italy content hosted on biblioteca.wikimedia.it to
>>> wikilivres and we'd like Canada to be still able to host it...
>> PD-Italy is broader than PD-Canada - would Wikilivres be able to?
> Basically, WM-IT hosts a small library with works of Italian authors
> which are PD in Italy but not in the US. Basically, in Italy it's PD
> 70 years after the author's death, but the works were published after
> 1923, so they are still (c) in the US. The idea is to avoid
> duplicating efforts when wikilivres is already there.
> Cruccone
>
Much to the dismay of the copyright industry Canadian copyrights for 50 
years after the author's death. Amazingly, despite having a conservative 
government there is broad support for the currently pending changes to 
the Copyright Act, except in one key area. The changes would, among 
other things, expand fair dealing and distinguish between commercial and 
non-commercial infringement.  The penalties for non-commercial 
infringement would be significantly lower.  The one area of raging 
controversy has to do with digital rights managements (DRM). This would 
make it illegal to break digital locks even when the purpose for doing 
so has nothing to do with copyright infringement. In the near 
foreseeable future this is not likely to affect Wikilivres to any 
significant extent.

Negotiations have started on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) 
agreement, mostly at the behest of the United States. This would cover a 
broad range of trade issues to the benefit of US industry. Patents and 
copyrights are only a part of it. Canada has not heretofore been a party 
to these negotiations, but the government wants to join. Most recently, 
the US wants to see Canadian law changed to remove different irritants 
relating to intellectual property before it gives its consent to join 
the talks. See http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/6243/125/#comments

I don't see any clear direction developing on TPP for quite some time.  
Towards this the government has already dissolved the Canadian Wheat 
Board (a grain marketing consortium) but that is facing court 
challenges.  How much controversy can they withstand?

Ray