Digital Commons Network^™

The Role Of Levies In Canada's Digital Music Market , Jeremy F. De Beer

Jeremy de Beer

Parties not directly involved in the use of copyright-protected music have increasingly become the targets of established or proposed schemes to provide revenues for the music industry. It has been suggested that rather than obtaining payments directly from consumers or distributors of digital music in exchange for licenses to use or transmit that music, levies should be imposed on the goods and services of third parties, such as recording media, digital devices and/or Internet access. This paper considers whether levies are an appropriate way to deal with the challenges and opportunities that are arising in Canada's digital music market.

Traditional …

Constitutional Jurisdiction Over Paracopyright Laws , Jeremy F. De Beer

Jeremy de Beer

This paper considers whether the Government of Canada's proposed legislation addressing technological protection measures and rights management information would be constitutionally valid federal law and examines the provinces' role in the debate over these copyright reforms. The Constitution allocates exclusive legislative responsibility for various matters to either the federal or provincial governments. The constitutionality of the proposed provisions turns on their pith and substance, which seems to involve technological and contractual controls over terms of distribution of digital materials. For a list of reasons, qualifications on the legal effects, intended to tether the legislation to existing copyright doctrine, may not …

Reconciling Property Rights In Plants , Jeremy F. De Beer

Jeremy de Beer

This essay shows how to reconcile competing intellectual, common and "classic" property rights, using plants and agricultural biotechnology as an exemplar. As intellectual property (IP) has become philosophically fashionable, other important property rights have been neglected. This is evidenced in copyright law by debates over private copying and decryption technologies. It is apparent in the realm of biotechnology and human body samples. And it is epitomized in the Supreme Court of Canada's decision in Monsanto Canada Inc v Schmeiser concerning patented plant genes and farmers' seed saving rights.

Instrumental rather than natural rights arguments are usually invoked as support for …