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Canada's Supreme Court Strikes Down Copyright Fees On Music, Video
An anonymous reader writes "Quick submission for all us Canadians: looks like the Supreme Court finally decided to rule on various copyright issues. No more fees to 'preview' a song. Another of these rule changes could save our schools a lot of money: no more fees required to photocopy material for students."
"Did they actually expect consumers to buy a game for $x and then later get charged $y for the music in the game?"
Sure, they also expect you to buy the theatrical version of 'The Lion King' if you want to show it to your brat's birthday party invitees who are not related to you. Ditto for Peepaw's retirement home and the firefighter's room.
If you play recorded music for those occasions, same thing.
Universities and schools in Canada have paid blanket fees to keep the leeches off their legs. No more. SOCAN et al just lost million$ of $.
No, it was weirder than that. They expected royalties because the game was downloaded, as if the act of downloading a game should generate its own royalty in addition to whatever was paid as a license to play the music during the game. Just to be clear: the ISPs were expected to pay this royalty for the downloading as if it was another "performance", regardless of what the creators of the game had already paid the artists. Effectively artists (or more precisely SOCAN on their behalf) wanted to get paid twice: once for the download, and again for playing music during the game.
Some of the other cases they settled were somewhat similar. For example, for streaming music SOCAN was demanding payment for both streaming the music to the customer (e.g., from a company that had licensed music for customers to play) and from the ISP for downloading it to the customer.
Yeah, it was really stupid. Basically a big cash grab from the ISPs, which of course would have passed it on to the consumer..
They'll be replaced anyway.
3 of the Justices are due for retirement (SCC justices, like all other federal court justices, are subject to mandatory retirement at age 75) soon. Fish will be retiring no later than next year, LeBel no later than the year after that, and Rothstein by the end of 2015.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Here is a preliminary analysis from professor Geist. It's slightly more technical and interesting than TFA.
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/6588/125/