As negotiations over the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) progress and more and more information becomes available on the potential wording of the agreement, the usual suspects from all camps are happy to share their views on how ACTA might influence our lives. The only reason one and the same document can attract such radically differing opinions from indisputably educated and intelligent people, is that ACTA is based on the philosophy of a compromise, a balance of interests between creators and the public.

The only way to deal with mass violation of intellectual property rights on the Internet without creating a coercive mechanism of oppression, is to state clearly at the outset that intellectual property is being protected because no one has a right to use the results of another’s creative labour, other than on terms put forward by the creator or the subsequent copyright owner who voluntarily purchases said rights from the creator. It has nothing to do with whether the society benefits from such protection. Appeasement and compromise may temporarily create a “balance”, but what this balance effectively does is that it subjects individual rights of one group of people to some undefinable “common good”. It is only a matter of time until an elected or self-proclaimed representative of the interests of the whole society will make a case that, instead of vesting in authors exclusive rights to their works, the common good will be best served by nationalizing all works of art and imprisoning those who disagree.

Through a weird and symbolic coincidence, on the same day when the Canadian Government tabled the Copyright Modernization Act that includes the controversial “parody and satire” exception, LatmaTV posted on YouTube a parody ridiculing the support that the world is offering to the so-called “peaceful” Free Gaza flotilla.

In this article, I discuss whether, in my opinion, the righteous cause of the parody would justify unauthorized use of a preexisting work, should the copyright owner therein have wished to bring a copyright infringement claim.

The Government has finally tabled a bill to amend the Copyright Act. In this article, I explain why modernization of the copyright law based on compromise and concessions, without a good understanding of the underlying principles of copyright protection, is doomed to fail.

Copyright laws exist either for the protection of the creator, or for the benefit of the public. There is no middle ground. As long as we keep entrusting the government (any government) to find the right “balance” between the two, we are destined to keep on making up exclusions from limitations on exceptions from the rights – without even stopping for a second to question why we are doing this.

Critics of today’s copyright laws often contend that instead of trying to control the use of their works through copyright, “old industries” must adopt “new business models” that would address the public’s desire to have unlimited access to content and impracticality of copyright enforcement in the context of the Internet. Usually adoption of such new business models is offered as a remedy for the growing number of copyright infringements.

In this article, I explain why adoption of new business models has nothing to do with abandonment of the underlying principle that the owner of copyright should be allowed to decide how its content is used. If a business decides to use their property in an inefficient manner, it is perfectly OK to let such a business fail. We should not “save” this business by stealing from it the property that we think it uses inefficiently.

It is easy to see why the collapse of intellectual property laws would be welcomed by those who engage in unauthorized use of others’ works. It is harder to see why the idea of significant curtailment of authors’ rights in favour of “the public” also finds its proponents among many prominent scholars, who do not necessarily fit into the category of people downloading movies off torrent websites.

This article will explain how the attack on copyright is simply a piece of the big picture, how it neatly fits into the agenda of proponents of “social justice” and “collective rights”.

I am glad to report that in the Salinger v. Colting dispute the court has granted the plaintiff’s motion for a preliminary injunction enjoining Colting and his publishers from manufacturing, publishing, distributing, shipping, advertising, promoting, selling, or otherwise disseminating any copy of 60 Years or any portion thereof, in or to the United States.

Recently I wrote a 100-page comparative research paper on the treatment of parody in the copyright laws of common law countries and selected European countries.  Thus, I could not help but voice my thoughts regarding the ongoing dispute between J.D. Salinger and the author and publishers of a purported sequel to The Catcher in the Rye.