Canadian minister promises to fix copyright law

In response to the recent court decision in favor of p2p file sharing of music, Canada's Federal Minister of Heritage, Helene Scherre, has stated publicly that she will make changes to Canadian law in order to outlaw music file sharing. The minister is correct on one point, Canadian copyright legislation is badly in need of modernization in order to clarify a number of points raised by new technology. New Zealand, for instance, has rewritten their aged intellectual property legislation from the ground up. Notably, it is clearly legal to download and make digital backups of copyrighted music for personal non-commercial use in New Zealand.

No April fools blog post

I thought that I would buck the trend and not put up an April Fools Day blog post. There were some good ones out there, however. Here is my favorite: Mandatory subdermal RFID tags for the homeless.

More on the recent file Canadian file sharing decision

The morning papers have brought a flood of information and opinion to light. The Calgary Herald reports that the court likened p2p file sharing to libraries placing a photocopier in the midst of copyrighted material - a legitimate tool for personal non-commercial use of copyrighted information. I am overjoyed that the court made this analogy, as the publishing industry has been grumbling about photocopiers in libraries for years. BBC news reports that the court further decided that p2p networks do not constitute "commercial distribution" and thus do not violate Canada's concept of fair use of copyrighted material.