jkoblovsky

Interesting development -> Bell Media Removes Two CTV News Video’s Used In Fair Dealing Copyright Debate: http://canuckpolitics.com/2014/10/14/bell-media-abusing-copyright-law/ So apparently it's not just politicians they have problems with.

An excellent blog from Geist posted today on this issue. A must read by all: http://www.michaelgeist.ca/2014/10/broadcaster-copyright-misuse-collusion-criticism-governments-political-ad-copyright-exception-may-pointed-wrong-direction/

Ariel Katz Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, who also holds the Innovation Chair in Electronic Commerce, produced an excellent blog this morning on how the media consortium might also be infringing on the competition act: Katz also went on to state (emphasis added): So in addition to my complaint on illegal bias in the reporting on this, the media could be potentially dealing with a violation of the Competition Act. I've also updated my own blog on the matter, regarding the amendment of fair dealing: http://jkoblovsky.wordpress.com/2014/10/14/conservatives-propose-to-amend-fair-dealing-not-replace-it/

I think other characters have mislead the public on that as well, for whatever political purpose I'm not sure. Conservatives aren't "changing" or "replacing" the fair dealing laws to just allow free speech by politicians, they are "amending" or adding on too existing laws around fair dealing in the copyright act. That's quite clear to me, from someone who follows public policy very closely (often criticizing Harpers policies around civil liberties and copyright on my blog) and has studied closely the leaked documents below. Last paragraph from the leaked documents from the Conservative Cabinet on this: http://cdn.michaelgeist.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/copyrightexceptiondoc.pdf "If supported, the amendment would be incorporated into the budget implementation act and enter into force upon Royal Assent" Conservatives could have done a better job communicating this to the public. They could have stated the amendment was to the copyright act, not the budget implementation bill. However the documents listed above were leaked internal cabinet documents. I don't think they were expecting these to become public, and most likely part of a conversation around how to deal with a threat from the media companies, on not complying with fair use, which is a much bigger threat to civil liberties and free speech in this country, than communication missteps from the Conservative Cabinet on this. I’m not at all excusing the miscommunication from the Conservative Cabinet, however I’m also not excusing media’s role in it either. I'm independent, so I'm not looking at this situation with any political bias. That maybe hard for some people to do on this fourm.

CTV's nightly news cast "CTV National News" the day the story broke and the day after didn't air any guests with opposing views to the narritive of the story. Lisa Laflamme's reporting on this sounded an aweful like something coming from a lobbiest of a union, than it did from a journalist. In fact, many journalists belong to the writers union of Canada, which BTW had issues with fair dealing in 2010 and was heavily involved in lobbying the government against fair dealing. Back in 2010, the NDP came up with a notion to expand fair dealing provisions for everyone. Writes Union of Canada took exception to that fact, and attacked in a very similar way as Laflamme's reporting: http://www.michaelgeist.ca/2010/03/twuc-on-fair-dealing/ I'm not at all insinuating that Laflamme is part of this particular union. There are a lot of writers unions, media lobby groups who disagree with fair dealing provisions in the copyright act. Not one of the major networks broke the story with opposing views on "fair dealing is stealing" while internal documentation suggested they all knew the fair dealing argument wouldn't fly legally. The situation has to be investigated ahead of an election to ensure broadcast media will remain independent throughout the next election. The initial reports from all the major networks, Laflamme's language she used to describe fair dealing, the lack of follow-up from the CTV National News Program, and most importantly internal documents from the CBC on this issue strongly suggests an effort to distort news reporting and mislead Canadians on the issue of fair dealing to believe it's stealing, so the networks can get paid for any use of their material by any political party. There are too many questions that need to be answered as a result of how this has played out by the media to ingnore ahead of an election.

In broadcast journalism there are laws regarding independence and bias. If the major parties decry bias in broadcast news reporting, they are free to complain to the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council [CBSC] (or the CRTC if the the CBSC doesn't properly inforce the law). Here's my complaint into the CBSC filed yesterday:http://jkoblovsky.wordpress.com/2014/10/11/my-canadian-broadcast-standards-council-complaint-on-media-consortium/ This rarely happens by political parties because they don't put actions to thier words and follow up on complaints of bias in broadcast media to the CBSC because more often than not they are full of shit, and accusations of bias is a political escape from having to fully respond to facts on a particular or uncomfortable subject. Print news however, isn't regulated and thus less reliable as far as information and bias is concerned.

As I stated in my blog post which I linked too a few pages back, the grown up thing to do is to introduce legislation or comitt to an election platform that deals with the decorum in Canadian politcs for all parties. Canadians aren't stupid, the low information voter bit is a bit insulting to the electorate. The polls are showing that the last attack ads backfired on the Conservatives. I think (especially after following this story over the past week) the vast majority of Canadians are fed up having to deal with them. Politically I think it would be a great strategic error on the Conservatives part to run attack ads even though the law says they can. I think it'll cost them the next election. We also need to ensure that going into the next election, our free press isn't holding a political adgenda and trying to influence votes based on what thier shareholders believe or want at a time of great importance on public policy as it relates to civil libertiese, at a time of war and mass surveillance. They have a hugely important role to ensure independence on public policy, and on political messages during a time of the election campaign. To interfere with that, would be to interfere with the independence of information so that the electorate can make an informed vote. Their role in a democracy is to provide independence of information and not take a political position. If that's no longer the case, we won't have a free and fair election, which after the robocalls scandal, the electorate will be monitoring a lot more closely than in recent years. They'll be monitoring all players of democracy on that, and all parties.

Simple don't attack fair use, so you can freely criticize government without fear they will take exception to any criticism, and take down any news content through a copyright complaint they don't agree with.

Actually you are mistaken on that when it comes to broadcast journalism. We have laws regarding the independence of our broadcast media. http://www.cbsc.ca/english/codes/jic.php In fact Sun News challanged those laws a few years ago: http://www.michaelgeist.ca/2011/01/crtc-on-false-news/ The CRTC thew the case out on complaint from the very media organizations and journalists red about not getting paid for attack ads, stating it would severely impact the credibility of broadcast journalists. The CRTC has specific regulations on media independence which are somwhat referenced in the CBSC link I posted above. I'm in the process of reviewing the broadcasting act myself, and I will quote the specific regulations on this thread in the near future.

Food for thought. How can you make government accountable when you have free press acting in the best interests of their shareholders, and not the public? The only issue media has presented on this, is that they are upset in not getting paid too air them, or for the content used. I agree attack ads suck, but there are other ways of dealing with this through fair use in media. Lets say criticism of the ads themselves. Nope they just want to get paid for the use of thier content, which actually puts the Libs and NDP at a disadvantage in the first place.

Very true, but those numbers can be influenced by misleading the public. That's why the independence of our free press is super important, and the free press have not been playing an active roll of independence on this situation when it comes to fair use, and accurately communicating the law so the public can make an informed choice. That quite clearly didn't happen when this story broke on a number of fronts.

We should care very much about the independence of our broadcast news, and the ability for each of us to speak and quote on forums like this without a copyright take down request. If us mortals fall into too much discourse, than the pillars of our democracy will start failing. I don't know about other mortals, but this one cares deeply about democratic values, and civil liberties we enjoy as a result.

I think what the Conservatives were trying to do was clarify the law ahead of an election under threat from the media companies. They could have done this a number of ways, but the kids in short pants over there at the PMO have a record of acting like spoiled children, rather than thinking things through. Even though the intentions to clarify the law are legitimate under these circumstances, the government response is not, but fits their M/O, which the media companies are using to their advantage to push through thier own agenda which is equally wrong, if not worse imo.

The free press is a pillar of democracy, so is fair use. Without fair use, free speech, criticism, even free press is in jeopardy. I'm not at all arguing for the pig headed moves of the Conservatives on this issue at all, in fact I was quite critical in my blog about the way they've handled it. The media companies are taking advantage of that move to push their own political agenda in copyright law, which is wrong especially in laws that govern the independence of free press and balanced reporting in broadcast news. Conservatives and media are both at fault on how they have handled it, and you can also add comments from both Liberals and NDP on this current issue to that as well.To put this another way, these media companies knew about the fact that they have a substantially weak legal case on fair use (documented and linked to that in my last post on this thread). If they knew that their content was authorized for free use under the law, than why are they stating the Conservatives are stealing it without authorization, when they know the law doesn't require authorization in the first place? And in fact news organizations use content in the exact same way under the law hundreds of times a day without compensation either when reporting on the news. So why is media and journalists misleading the public on the law when reporting on this issue? Simple answer is they want to get paid for any use of their content. They don't like giving stuff away free under fair use. That's quite obvious from the way this story was framed from day one, and a lot of commentary not by legal experts, but by journalists who are content producers and rights holders pushing that issue forward. It's a political position against fair use laws many of us in the policy trenches studying the copyright issue saw in the copyright consultations in 2009. The job of broadcast media when reporting on the news is not to take a position on anything. Report on both sides of the story, and let the public decide. That didn't happen when this story broke from any of the news organizations involved. No independent copyright experts were consulted until the day after the story broke, and in the case of CTV's nightly national news cast, those experts were omitted from the story completely in favour of journalists who think fair dealing is stealing.

Page 112 paragraph 2 of CBC's internal documents indicate they knew the fair dealing route would not be successful https://www.scribd.com/doc/242562324/CBC-Political-Ads-ATIP Yet all stations choose to break the story on misleading the public on fair dealing.

Right now under law, everyone will have the same rights, from news agencies, to political parties to you and me. The Conservatives are just pissed off because media wants to get paid for the fair use of their works. That's been the case since the last copyright consultation. Rights holders hate, I mean, really despise fair use. Offside of attack ads, fair use is an important part of the copyright act that's used to criticize public policy. There are tons of examples of Youtube pulling video's on a copyright complaint, because other parties may not agree with the message. An excellent example of that is with a video made on Youtube last year that was pulled by Youtube on a copyright complaint by Alberta Tourism on the oil sands: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/08/27/oilsands-video-youtube-alberta_n_3823356.html Big media is using discourse around attack ads to publically lobby for changes in the fair use laws. No doubt in 2017 when our copyright laws come up for review again, there will be a huge lobby effort by media to kill these laws. In the short term, there's enough case law on fair dealing, there doesn't need to be any changes to current law to satisfy any clarity of that law by the Government. What's needed right now is a follow up and investigation into Canada’s Broadcast Media Consortium's actions on this. They quite clearly hold a political view on fair dealing, and seem to be spinning that view using discourse around attack ads in their reporting, which is completely wrong, and unacceptable under law as it related to broadcast news reporting. This is not just a Conservative vs Media issue. What happens if the Liberals or NDP form the next government and big media doesn't like their policies either. What happens then? That’s a much bigger issue than attack ads.

I've been following this situation and investigating as an independent blogger. I don't think the situation here has anything to do with not liking the Conservatives. The motive seems to be purely political on this issue of copyright and fair dealing provisions within law, which are essential for free speech. Documentation has surfaced today that coincides with that view, and paints a rather ominous picture of a planned political attack against the Conservatives over the Broadcast Media Consortium's political views on copyright policy, in which Mr. Peter Mansbridge was privy too. Email's accessed through an access to information request are posted in my latest blog, along with interviews and blog posts from copyright lawyers on this subject. The issue of media independence is an important bi-partisan issue. From the looks of things, the Broadcast Media Consortium is using political discourse around the issue of attack ads to lobby the public for change to the fair dealings provision in the copyright act. For further info, and links, please see my blog post: http://jkoblovsky.wordpress.com/2014/10/10/is-canadas-broadcast-media-consortium-using-attack-ad-scandal-to-push-copyright-political-agenda/