On Friday, March 25, 2011, the Conservative government lost a non-confidence motion bringing the current session of Parliament to an end and setting the stage for a Spring election, called for May 2.
The government's fall signals the demise of a number of bills, including Canada's copyright reform bill, Bill C-32. Notwithstanding the extensive consultations on Bill C-32, and passing first reading, long-awaited amendments to Canada's copyright legislation are again delayed indefinitely. This will be the third time that efforts at copyright reform have failed in the past five years.
The last substantive amendments to the Copyright Act were in 1997. The way Canadians use copyrighted material has changed significantly since then. Balancing the rights of copyright owners and users in a rapidly changing digital world is difficult, however given Canada's stated desire to adhere to the WIPO Copyright Treaty, there has long been a need to address digital locks and the ability to transfer works between media, the rights and obligations of Internet service providers (ISPs) and the bounds of fair dealing for educational institutions in our copyright legislation. It will remain to be seen if copyright reform will be a priority after the election.
While Bill C-32 is consigned to the recycling bin, the debate in the courts continues as to whether ISPs engage in the kind of broadcasting activity that would require payments under tariffs set by the Copyright Board, or oversight of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).
On March 24, 2011 the Supreme Court of Canada indicated that it would hear an appeal that will determine whether ISPs are engaged in broadcasting when music is downloaded from an Internet server. The appeal stems from a decision of the Copyright Board, which found that downloads of music files from an Internet server to an individual computer amounted to the communication of that file to the public by telecommunications and thus were the proper subject for a tariff setting out the royalties that would be payable for such a communication. Notably, transfer of the file to a single user constituted "communication to the public". This decision was upheld by the Federal Court of Appeal. Such a decision is added to a line of prior decisions in which point to point communications, such as emails, were not considered communications to the public.
The Supreme Court has not fixed a date for the hearing. This is expected to be a closely watched decision, particularly as more individuals access music, television and film through their computers and not traditional radio and television broadcasters.
Like copyright reform, any law reform in a number of other important fields will also, for the time being, occur before the courts and tribunals and not through legislative action of Parliament.
Other legislation of interest to the IP and technology sector which also died upon the dissolution of Parliament includes: