From the Twelve-inch Single to Online Music Services – A Semester at the Canadian Musical Reproduction Rights Agency

ccraig — Thu, 19 Dec 2019 17:29:31 +0000

This semester I was a part of the Osgoode’s. As a major part of that intensive I spent 11 weeks working at the Canadian Musical Reproduction Rights Agency Ltd. or the .

The is a collective society which administers mechanical (reproduction) rights in Canada. They administer these rights on behalf of music publishers and record labels through the licensing, collection and distribution of royalties for a significant amount of songs sold and broadcast throughout Canada as well as those distributed through online music services.

At the start of my placement, I was eased into my role with assignments and concerns that were more familiar to me through my previous exposure to IP issues in general and the in particular. Those topics included things such as reviewing old reciprocal agreements and I was given the opportunity to research extended collective licensing regimes and review the difference in current and proposed tariffs that were before the Copyright Board.

Over time the types of legal issues and research projects I completed became more varied. They could run the range from whether or not contracts were valid and more general contract review, to privacy issues in Canada and abroad, to more novel investigative issues on topics I would not have thought of myself.

A particular favorite exercise that I completed was a comparison between the two reports released this past year reviewing the Copyright Act by the standing and the . The focus was on how the proposed changes could have an effect on the CMRRA’s business depending on which issues and recommendation are chosen by the next sitting of Parliament, if any, after the election. In particular, the goal was to contrast the potentially complimentary or conflicting recommendations made by the two committees and how the underlying evidence presented to the committee resulted in the findings and recommendations that they concluded with. While this was a long term project that ended up being one of the longest reports I had ever written, it was a rewarding experience in itself as it gave me a new perspective on how to examine different issues in copyright from stakeholders I would not have considered.

This variety in the work I completed at the CMRRA gave me an appreciation for the work an in-house lawyer does. As an in-house lawyer, your role is not that of a traditional lawyer that law school attempts to prepare you for. Instead, you become an advisor of sorts to the company covering everything from business decisions, licensing agreements, company policy, discreet HR matters, records management and a plethora of other issues.�� You deal less often with more traditional or stereotypical matters, such as litigation, and instead send that out to external firms. This aspect of the experience was invaluable to me, as this was not an appreciation I would have gotten through more traditional law jobs.

Written by Matthew Drinovac, Osgoode JD Candidate, enrolled in Professors D’Agostino and Vaver 2019/2020 IP & Technology Law Intensive Program at Osgoode Hall Law School. As part of the program requirements, students were asked to write a reflective blog on their internship experience.

The post From the Twelve-inch Single to Online Music Services – A Semester at the Canadian Musical Reproduction Rights Agency appeared first on IPOsgoode.

The Precarious Position of Streaming Video Games – Potential Repercussions from the European Copyright Directive

ccraig — Wed, 27 Nov 2019 16:30:25 +0000

Esports and video game streaming have become a popular pastime and a big business with gaming platforms such as Twitch and [i] attracting millions of viewers apiece and tournaments for popular games such as .[ii]

This leads to the assumption that streaming is a safe legal activity. Instead, most streamers are in a [iii] through the public performance of a copyright protected work. While this can be rather surprising to the public who would expect that activities that are likely illegal would not develop into a growing mainstream business, the tolerance of infringing content by the game publishers is logical in this instance from a business standpoint as streaming is free advertising that could help grow the game.

A potential issue for the future of streaming, however, is the European Copyright Directive. A throughout the process of drafting was Article 13[v] which critics have held will lead to the censoring of the internet.

Article 13 has since been passed as and is concerned with the sharing of protected content online by service providers.[vi] Article 17 moves away from the framework provided by the DMCA and its safe harbour provisions. Instead, it changes the landscape for service providers or content hosts by explicitly choosing to hold them liable. Online services that distribute content must obtain a licence from a rights holder. Beyond this requirement, require online content providers to make best efforts to prevent copyright protected work to be uploaded, or reuploaded in the future.[viii]

So, the main question at issue here will be enforcement. If enforcement will be done on a discretionary basis requiring a complaint to be made than the streaming industry can persist barring future issues. to take down streams in Europe support the position that takedowns will occur on a complaints basis. [ix] Especially as some of the takedowns which are on done on a copyright basis have been filed for reasons outside of the purely economic sense of copyright law but out of disgust for certain streamers behaviours while playing games such as.[x] It is inevitable for some rights holder to take issue with some streamer or any of the individual streams in the future.

Even if complaints are made, it is possible for the state of affairs to continue as they are as the text of ) states that the rights holders have to have “provided the service providers with the relevant and necessary information” before content can be blocked as infringing.[xi] If no details are provided, it is possible that no requirement to block the stream or other content need take place.

If, however, the European Union or one of its member states take a more proactive approach to ensuring services operating within it are compliant, as they are staring to do with,[xii] streaming services such as Twitch could become more limited in scope and functionally become a live game streaming version of Netflix or be blocked in Europe altogether.

Written by Matthew Drinovac, Osgoode JD Candidate, enrolled in Professors D’Agostino and Vaver 2019/2020 IP & Technology Law Intensive Program at Osgoode Hall Law School. As part of the course requirements, students were asked to write a blog on a topic of their choice.

��

[i] Leo Sun, “Microsoft’s Mixer is Catching up to Amazon’s Twitch and Google’s YouTube” (6 October 2019), online: .

[ii] Chris Bumbaca, “16-year-old Kyle ‘Bugha’ Giersdorf takes home prize for Fortnight World Cup win” (28 July 2019), online: .

[iii] Scott Alan Burroughs, “A Twitch In Time” (5 September 2018), online: .

[iv] Julia Alexander, “YouTube CEO says EU regulation will be bad for creators” (22 October 2018), online:

[v] Cory Doctorow, The Final Version of the EU’s Copyright Directive is the Worst One Yet” (13 February 2019), online: .

[vi] European Union Directive 2019/790, online: .

[vii] Digital Media Law Project, “Protecting Yourself Against Copyright Claims Based on User Content” (2014), online: .

[viii] European Union Directive 2019/790, online: .

[ix] Raj Shah, “Twitch Bans Several�� Accounts for Unauthorized CSGO Berlin Major Streaming” (27 August 2019), online: .

[x] Owen Good, “Firewatch creator vows DMCA retaliation against PewDiePie for racist slur used in stream” (10 September 2017), online: .

[xi] European Union Directive 2019/790, online: .

[xii] Victoria Arnold, “What the latest GDPR fines reveal about authorities’ attitude” (30 September 2019), online: .

The post The Precarious Position of Streaming Video Games – Potential Repercussions from the European Copyright Directive appeared first on IPOsgoode.

Matthew Drinovac Archives - IPOsgoode

From the Twelve-inch Single to Online Music Services – A Semester at the Canadian Musical Reproduction Rights Agency

The Precarious Position of Streaming Video Games – Potential Repercussions from the European Copyright Directive