Barrie McKenna reports in the Globe and Mail on the copyright event at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholarship that I posted about last week. His story reflects closely the slant of the presenters.
I was wondering why his story was so one-sided: it wasn't clear from his column that he was covering an event at which only two people spoke. It sounded like he was giving his own opinion.
As it is, he managed to confuse matters by conflating licensing and unauthorized copying. It's my understanding that pandora's not available in Canada (or other countries) for licensing reasons, not because of lax laws covering torrent sites.
And his conclusion about how if the government doesn't do something (he's not very clear re. what), the industry might "shun" Canada doesn't make any sense. Are the entertainment companies really going to abandon one of the richest markets in the world? How does one explain the success of iTunes even in the absence of a reformed Canadian copyright law? Wouldn't "shunning" lead to even more unauthorized downloading?
I was wondering why his story was so one-sided: it wasn't clear from his column that he was covering an event at which only two people spoke. It sounded like he was giving his own opinion.
ReplyDeleteAs it is, he managed to confuse matters by conflating licensing and unauthorized copying. It's my understanding that pandora's not available in Canada (or other countries) for licensing reasons, not because of lax laws covering torrent sites.
And his conclusion about how if the government doesn't do something (he's not very clear re. what), the industry might "shun" Canada doesn't make any sense. Are the entertainment companies really going to abandon one of the richest markets in the world? How does one explain the success of iTunes even in the absence of a reformed Canadian copyright law? Wouldn't "shunning" lead to even more unauthorized downloading?
That's a bluff, not a business plan.