Copyright The Most Lobbied Area Of Federal Policymaking

The government's last major round of copyright amendments, passed in 1997, earned the reputation of being one of the most contested bills in Canadian history. Sheila Copps, former Heritage minister who helped push through the 1997 omnibus copyright bill, in an interview, said it was "the single-most lobbied bill in the history of Parliament." Jay Kerr-Wilson, former legal affairs manager for the Canadian Cable Television Association, also said that it has become urban legend that interested parties spent more money lobbying on the 1997 amendments than on any other single issue in history. More than 80 stakeholder organizations got involved, to press their cases to government officials and attempt to win over MPs and ministers, all in the hope of influencing the legislation. Within this government-relations (GR) contest is the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA), one of the single most powerful and influential stakeholders in the copyright reform process. It represents the "Big Four" multinational recording companies of Warner, EMI, Universal and Sony-BMG, as well as some major independent labels in Canada, and controls 95 per cent of all music manufactured and distributed in Canada. CRIA's executive team consists of representatives from the Big Four, making it the primary vehicle for the GR activities of the major labels in Canada, and in the digital environment, it had a lot to lose. Industry groups, which have a large stake in copyright, have typically sat down with policy makers to describe their needs, argue amongst themselves, and help write the law. In the new economy, however, digital copyright laws affect many more actors, from high-tech companies to computer users, making the traditional approach to drafting copyright a more complex and taxing task. Technological developments have thrown the whole principle of copyright into question, asking to what degree copyright should extend into the digital age. The digital environment has brought forward great opportunities for the public–as the new creators and distributors of independent content–but it has also spurred traditional copyright stakeholders, such as the recording industry, to call on governments to rein in control and regulate the digital realm. Digital material is easily copied and distributed through the internet, and copyright owners see the advance of technology as a threat. The content industries want governments to respond by restoring their control over content, but this would come as a risk and detriment to emerging competitors and public freedoms in the digital age. In the digital environment, for example, content companies can use so-called "digital locks," or technological controls, to restrict access, copying and certain uses of digital works, and they argue that these technological controls need to be protected by copyright. Governments are faced with difficult decisions. Their traditional stakeholders, the content industries, want tougher protections, but stronger copyright laws could hand rights holders too much control over digital content at the cost of removing the new freedoms of the public and hampering competition in the digital economy. In 1997, the Canadian government signed the World Intellectual Property Organization's WIPO Copyright Treaty and WIPO Performers and Phonograms Treaty, informally known as the WIPO Internet treaties. The agreements, adopted in Geneva in 1996 under pressure from the U.S., would address many of the unanswered questions about copyright in a digital age. The U.S. implemented the treaties in 1998 with the passage of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which became known as a "maximalist" interpretation of the WIPO Internet treaties, far beyond the treaty requirements. In the ensuing years, the DMCA increasingly ran into controversy. The act had included provisions against the "hacking" or circumvention of technological controls on digital content, as well as legal remedies for the distribution or manufacture of a "device" (read program) designed to circumvent a technological control. A computer user who removed the technological control on a DVD, allowing it to be copied, had infringed copyright. If a computer user, or cryptography researcher for that matter, designed a program that removed a technological control on a piece of software, and then distributed the program, she had also infringed copyright. Within a few years it became evident that technological controls could be placed on everything from electric garage door openers to printer cartridges, and if companies wanted to make their products inter-operable with other products, they would have to break through the technological control–and break the law. Not only did the principle seem anti-competitive, but before long, cryptology researchers began to be sued or arrested for publishing research on copyright-protected technological controls. This is just one example of the controversial measures within the DMCA that the major labels hoped to see introduced in Canada. When Canada signed the WIPO treaties in 1997, it indicated its intention to implement their requirements, which presented an opportunity to the content industries. The major labels, as they had done prior to the 1997 amendments, set into high-gear their GR operations in Ottawa. As copyright law creeps into the digital sphere, observers suggest that it is largely the work of effective lobbying by industrial interests. http://www.thehilltimes.ca/html/index.php?display=story&full_path=/2006/september/25/lobby_nu/&c=1

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