Hill Times Letter: Canadian Copyright law not out of step with international norms

Letter to the Hill Times Editor published February 11, 2008

Re: "Copyright reform desperately needed in Canada to protect and encourage creativity," (The Hill Times, Feb. 4, p. 15) by Michael Eisen, chief legal officer at Microsoft Canada.

The article had many glaring errors in it that anyone who had glimpsed at Canada´s current copyright act would have noticed.

Current Canadian law is not out of step with international norms (we were under Berne a century before the U.S. finally ratified in 1989, including Canada´s first copyright act in the 1920s that was separate from U.K. law), it fully protects creativity published on the internet, and in a number of ways protects creators better than that of some of our trading partners—including the United States. Our act most recently received a major overhaul in 1997, one year earlier than the U.S.´s overhaul in 1998. It is hard to take seriously any claim that one year is all that is needed to differentiate between something being modern and something being outdated.

The examples Mr. Eisen gave are fictitious, and the aspiring author he imagined would be fully protected by current Canadian law. I am all for modernizing our law, but let´s do it based on something resembling the facts. It is hard to estimate how changes will affect the law when people don't adequately understand current law.

Russell McOrmond
Ottawa, Ont.