Canada’s year-long copyright review has thus far featured dozens of witnesses from creators such as singer Bryan Adams to telecom giants Bell and Telus. While the review is designed to help Canadian policy-makers craft a roadmap for future reforms, the release of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), the proposed successor to NAFTA, represents a significant detour as it contains a detailed intellectual-property (IP) rights chapter that effectively cedes many key issues to U.S. trade negotiators.
Leading the way is a requirement to extend the term of copyright protection from the current term of the life of the creator plus 50 years to the life of the creator plus 70 years. The additional years of protection will effectively lock down the public domain in Canada for two decades, with no new copyright expiry on works until 2040 (assuming the agreement takes effect in 2020).
The Liberal government emphasized its commitment to excluding Canadian cultural policy from the ambit of the agreement (which it did subject to an exception for simultaneous substitution of U.S. broadcasting), but extending the term of copyright will have a far greater impact by reducing public access to Canadian cultural heritage. Moreover, with studies indicating that the term extension could add hundreds of millions to education costs, 20 extra years of copyright protection will not come cheaply.
The government has touted a U.S. concession that will allow Canada to retain its notice-and-notice system for allegations of copyright infringement, but that was the only bright spot in a chapter that otherwise restricts future policy flexibility. The limits are particularly noticeable with respect to Canada’s anti-circumvention rules, which provide legal protections for digital locks found on electronic books or DVDs. They will be subject to trade rules that severely limit the ability for policy-makers to craft exceptions that ensure reasonable consumer access to the content for which they have paid. Canada previously insisted on the suspension of similar provisions in the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement.
The IP chapter will also require Canada to rewrite legislation that was passed only a few years ago...
This was excerpted from 2 October 2018 edition of The Globe and Mail.