Morning Brief Big Box

Campaign Countdown Big Box

Evening Brief Big Box

OB Pod Big Box

For David Lametti, it might not be a completely comfortable position.
<div id="attachment_659130" style="width: 360px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-659130" decoding="async" src="http://ipolitics.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/David-Lametti.jpg" alt="David Lametti Photo: Facebook" width="350" class="size-full wp-image-659130" srcset="https://old.ipolitics.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/David-Lametti.jpg 501w, https://old.ipolitics.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/David-Lametti-271x390.jpg 271w, https://old.ipolitics.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/David-Lametti-348x500.jpg 348w" sizes="(max-width: 501px) 100vw, 501px" />David Lametti Photo: Facebook</div>
Should the Liberals decide to ratify the text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership as currently drafted, the former McGill law professor, appointed parliamentary secretary to the minister of international trade last week, could see himself forced to support something he&#8217;s opposed in his academic life: extending copyright terms of protection. 
Though overshadowed by the debates about what TPP will or won&#8217;t do to the Canadian automotive industry and supply-managed farmers, the former Conservative government&#8217;s decision to increase the copyright term of protection by 20 years — <a href="http://www.international.gc.ca/trade-agreements-accords-commerciaux/agr-acc/tpp-ptp/text-texte/18.aspx?lang=eng" target="_blank">from 50 years to 70 years beyond the author&#8217;s life</a> — will have, according to some, profound effects on what people pay for things like books, movies, and music, while also limiting their access to them. 
New Zealand, with its 4.5 million people, estimated their 20-year extension through TPP will cost them in the neighbourhood <a href="http://beehive.govt.nz/sites/all/files/TPP-Q&#038;A-Oct-2015.pdf" target="_blank">$55 million</a> a year in the long term. 
As an academic, Lametti argued copyright provisions were already too generous.
&#8220;In my view, we need to not only shorten the term of copyright generally, but also to vary the terms of copyright as between different kinds of works according to the context of the right and the resource protected by copyright,&#8221; Lametti, who helped found <a href="http://www.cipp.mcgill.ca/en/about/history/" target="_blank">The Centre for Intellectual Property Policy</a> at McGill University&#8217;s law school, wrote in a 2005 essay. 
&#8220;Finally, we might consider strengthening these proposals with a registration requirement, especially for longer terms, putting some of the onus on creators themselves of identifying and protecting works of ongoing value.&#8221; 
The argument appeared in <a href="https://www.irwinlaw.com/content_commons/in_the_public_interest" target="_blank">In the Public Interest: The Future of Canadian Copyright Law</a>, a volume of essays edited by University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist, the Canada Research Chair in internet and e-commerce law. 
Tuesday night, Geist pointed to Lametti&#8217;s work as evidence of the creative ways Canada could go about reforming copyright law. 
&#8220;There are, in some of these areas — opportunity for change. David Lametti, for example, who&#8217;s a member of Parliament and parliamentary secretary (to the minister of international trade)&#8230; has proposed changes in terms of how we deal with copyright term, talking about the prospects of a renewal that would allow those small number of works that have great value to be renewed and remain part of those authors&#8217; property for a period of time. But at the same time, make many of the other works more openly available,&#8221; Geist said during a TPP forum put on by The Hill Times.
&#8220;When you lock in, as this treaty does&#8230; You lock out your ability to make some of those changes.&#8221; 
To a certain extent, the Harper government already did lock things in <a href="http://ipolitics.ca/2015/04/21/protecting-canadian-artists-in-the-budget-and-throwing-the-u-s-a-bone-on-tpp-siekierski/" target="_blank">via the 2015 budget</a> by extending the copyright term to 70 years for sound recordings. But Geist&#8217;s fellow panelists Tuesday, Robert Hutton — the executive director of the Canadian Music Publishers Association — and Barry Sookman, a copyright law expert at McCarthy Tétrault who teaches it Osgoode Hall Law School, disagreed with him that that was a bad thing. 
&#8220;You don’t need to look at New Zealand. Look at a Canadian study, which said the financial implications were insignificant,” Sookman said, highlighting a 2005 study done by University of Montreal economist Abraham Hollander on the impact of extending the copyright term for sound recordings. 
For Hutton, extending copyright was essential to protect not only creators, but those who invest in them in an era when revenue streams are becoming exhausted by developments like music streaming and illegal movie downloads. 
“So what does term extension do for those providers of intellectual property? It provides an extended revenue stream. It recognizes that those works now have economic value perpetually. It increases the ability of those investors to invest in new cultural works and other intellectual property which may not have much strong commercial potential,&#8221; he said. 
He gave the example of a new Beatles compilation being a top seller in 2015. 
&#8220;They’re over 50 years old. They’re one of the top sellers in 2015. Up until recently — until the spring budget — sound recordings prior to 1965 were about to go into the public domain. My question is: how much of the volume of those sales goes to support artists who never have much commercial potential — if any at all? How many of them are Canadians? How many jobs does that represent to Canadians? How many acts or producers… will never get a chance because there are no sustainable revenue sources?&#8221; he asked. 
Geist was unconvinced that any companies are making decisions now based on revenue streams in the next century. Nor did he think creativity would somehow be inhibited by keeping the copyright term length where it is. 
&#8220;There are very few if any would-be authors, song writers or others, who woke up this morning thinking they would write the next great Canadian novel or song, and then decided to go back and watch The View instead, because — well, their heirs were only getting 50 years of protection, rather than 70 years of protection. And so no — this doesn’t incentivize new amounts of creativity,” he said. 
&#8220;The notion that the public domain was ever some sort of gift is simply wrong. What copyright has long been about, as the Supreme Court of Canada has long emphasized, is about striking a balance between, on the one hand — compensation and incentives to create — and on the other, access,&#8221; he said. 
Lametti wasn&#8217;t there for the panel Tuesday. It would have conflicted with question period. 
He did, however, make some brief closing remarks at the forum. His message, like Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland&#8217;s last week, was that they&#8217;re still <a href="https://ipolitics.ca/2015/12/02/not-my-job-to-persuade-anybody-tpp-is-good-chrystia-freeland/" target="_blank">consulting with stakeholders</a>.

As an academic, Liberal MP critiqued TPP copyright rule he may have to support