John Degen has posted the BCCLA’s response to his open letter. Though they adopted a Fair Copyright Canada position paper as their position, they blandly tell John their position is entirely independent of FCC.

A site called Plagiarism Today (!) notes a US court ruling affirming that violating the terms of an open-source, “copyleft” agreement constitutes copyright infringement, not just a contractual violation.

In effect, the court says that copyleft — a creator using copyright to set the terms by which he/she will give away his/her work — depends on the integrity of the copyright system. And copyleft gurus are cheering. Good to see this affirmation of the fundamental importance of copyright.

John Degen recently noticed that the defeat-Bill C61 forces somehow got the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association to supporting them. He’s written an open letter, suggesting that the BCCLA needs to reconsider this extremist position and advocate for civil liberties that include the rights of creators. His open letter is here.

IP law prof Guiseppina D’Agostino has done an analysis of the meaning of fair dealing in Canada after the Supreme Court of Canada’s CCH decision of 2004, (which, she notes, puts the SCC in the position of “championing user rights above all other rights.”) The study, “Healing Fair Dealing,” is done for Canadian Heritage and available on their website here.

While we are doing our biblio work, let’s note law prof Daniel Gervais’s thoughts on “The Purpose of Copyright Law in Canada.” Eye-catching quote in the first few lines: “the almost non-existent role of Parliament in setting [copyright] policy at the macro level.”