TPP consultation — my submission

Earlier this year, Canadians were invited to participate in a public consultation regarding the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP).  The deadline for submission is 23:59 EDT, October 31, 2016.

My submission is slightly over 4000 words in length; too much for a blog post.  Below are the closing paragraphs; the entire document is available here.

Update: A thoughtful reader alerted me to a 404 response when trying to access my submission.  If the direct link does not work, try the attachment page.

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… The principle argument to join the TPP seems to be that Canada cannot afford to be left out. Even if the agreement was only a matter of tariff and subsidy reductions, that argument is weak.[1] Given the nature of the entirety of the TPP, the costs of which will be felt through heightened expenditure for medicines, diminishment of Canadian culture, elimination of future innovation, absence of attention to public well-being for fear of international reprisals, and the loss of sovereignty when such reprisals are unavoidable, one has to ask: whom is this government wishing to please by committing Canada to the TPP?  The answer does not appear to be: Canadians. One must also ask: has our existing business community been sufficiently engaged to warrant our confidence that fulfilling their wishes will lead to better living for all?

That does not appear to be the case. In 2012, Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of Canada, indicated that instead of investing in the economy, Canadian businesses “were holding on to nearly half a trillion dollars in cash, an increase of 43 per cent since the end of the recession in 2009.”^[2] Recently, the esteemed firm Deloitte, an internationally revered organization, released a damning report concerning the willingness of Canadian businesses to take the necessary steps to reinvigorate the economy. In Deloitte’s words, too many “lack an essential game-changing quality: courage.”^[3]

By virtue of the TPP, the individuals that Canada most desperately needs to encourage – the innovative entrepreneur looking to develop new industries to drive the economy when our wood and water have been exhausted – will find that no amount of courage can overcome the hurdles put in place by their own government. As the actual trade measures of the TPP bring very modest gains to Canada, and the remaining components will inflict costs far in excess of those gains, adopting this agreement makes little sense beyond acquiescing to the corporate bullying that is likely happening behind closed doors. If that is the sole reason that Canada must go forward with the TPP, please be honest to Canadians about the government’s reasoning. Please do not pretend that this is solely about Trade.

The TPP is an international omnibus bill, the effects of which will be detrimental to Canadians. The greatest pain will be inflicted upon those youthful voters whom this government so assiduously courted.

Regards,

Meera Nair

 

 

[1] The C.D. Howe analysis estimates the loss to Canada for not joining the TPP; “The real GDP impact would be a negligible -0.006 percent in the first year, rising to about -0.026 percent in 2035.” The losses to existing industries are not taken lightly, but it is essential to wonder what industries could rise in their place, if unrestricted by the constraints embodied within the TPP.

[2] Michael Enright, “Canada’s cowardly CEOs are sitting on billions, rather than investing in the economy,” The Sunday Edition, 16 October 2016 <http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thesundayedition/timid-ceos-endless-war-in-syria-steve-earle-fall-in-vermont-1.3801572/canada-s-cowardly-ceos-are-sitting-on-billions-rather-than-investing-in-the-economy-michael-s-essay-1.3801574&gt;.

[3] Deloitte, The future belongs to the bold, <http://www2.deloitte.com/ca/en/pages/insights-and-issues/articles/the-future-belongs-to-the-bold.html&gt;.  As an aside, poetry lovers will enjoy the inference of Invictus by the report’s authors.

 

the $500 million tip of the TPP iceberg

Last week, international negotiators met in Ottawa to further discuss the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement. With the usual shroud of secrecy, few details regarding agenda and outcomes were released for public consumption. Nevertheless, based on a leaked copy of the chapter relating to intellectual property, there is sufficient reason for concern with respect to copyright. As reported last week (see Electronic Frontier Foundation here, Michael Geist here, Public Knowledge here, and VICE here) Canada’s copyright regime is likely to be challenged on at least two fronts:

• the role of internet service providers (will they remain as neutral providers or become key figures in policing the internet?)
• copyright duration (will Canada’s life-plus-fifty term give way to life-plus-seventy?)

Geist reminds us that the TPP will touch more than copyright; Canada’s privacy and patenting regimes are also implicated. Indeed, the question of Canadian sovereignty with respect to patenting is already at risk, via Eli Lilly’s $500 million challenge to the Canadian government regarding the loss of two secondary-use patents. The means by which Eli Lilly has launched its claim is a consequence of the Investor-State Dispute (ISD) mechanism of NAFTA.

Courtesy of Dennis Lowe and National Geographic

Our made-in-Canada copyright regime has been painstakingly crafted over ten years of deliberative thought; to watch it cast aside will be difficult. But more deleterious will be further entrenchment of the ISD mechanism through the TPP. Yet this issue has received little attention in Canada. Perhaps in part because the topic is not sexy; Investor-State Dispute sounds painfully dull. The phrase cannot be summarily equated to freedom of expression, invasion of privacy, or even the dubious claim that a hit television series could not have been made under the TPP. ISDs are constructed with arcane language that seemingly has little to do with everyday life, but they are potentially lethal as is being demonstrated by Eli Lilly.

Eli Lilly provides the bizarre spectacle of a corporation suing a government because a court decision did not favour the corporation. It has vehemently insisted that the decision of Canadian courts not to uphold two secondary-use patents is a violation of investor safeguards provided through NAFTA; specifically, those relating to minimum standard of treatment, non-discrimination, and expropriation. That the courts rejected the patents because the drugs concerned did not live up to the standard of utility set by Canadian law, was not reasonable according to Eli Lilly. To take action against Canada required contorting the ISD chapter of NAFTA, despite the fact that the chapter in question does not apply to intellectual property. The entire event would read like a lurid novel, if novels were written about intellectual property and national sovereignty.

In a report dated to March 2013, Public Citizen provides a meticulously researched account of Eli Lilly’s actions and the operation of ISDs within trade agreements. At that time, Canada was only facing a $100 million challenge (Eli Lilly has since upped the ante); even so, Public Citizen did not miss the irony at hand:

… while Canada faces an investor-state challenge from Eli Lilly, the country has joined negotiations to establish the TPP, which would expand the investor-state system further. To date, Canada alone has paid more than $155 million to foreign investors after NAFTA investor-state attacks on energy, timber, land use and toxics policies. Underlying Eli Lilly’s claim against Canada is the notion that government patent policies and actions are subject to the investor privileges provisions of the agreement.

Public Citizen observes that Eli Lilly’s actions marks the first occasion of an intellectual property challenge occurring under the auspices of NAFTA’s ISD provisions. Our previous “first”, the first challenge of any kind, does not offer much comfort, resulting as it did in a loss both monetarily and for public health. Briefly, in 1997 a ban on the gasoline additive MMT was repealed by the Canadian government in response to opposition by Ethyl Corporation, the American producer of the additive. At the time, Public Citizen wrote:

The Canadian government settled the NAFTA suit yesterday agreeing to pay Ethyl $13 million in damages and to cover the company’s legal costs. It will also proclaim publicly that MMT is “safe” in direct contradiction of the view of its national environmental protection agency.

With respect to Eli Lilly’s present action, Michael Geist and E. Richard Gold (Professor, Faculty of Law, McGill University) have both indicated that the corporation’s chances of winning are slim. Notably, in a briefing session recently held in Washington DC, Gold indicates that “… no competent tribunal could rule in Eli Lilly’s favor”. We can only hope that both Geist and Gold are correct. But competence might prove a relative term; so far, arbitration tribunals have not distinguished themselves in weighing public interest (as a domestic court of law would) into the decision-making process. (Public Citizen has thoroughly documented past arbitration decisions, with added detail for some of the more egregious outcomes.) Moreover, even if Canada secures a win, that does not necessarily exclude involvement in costs.

The Washington DC briefing session was hosted by the firm of Stern, Kessler, Goldstein and Fox on 5 June 2014, with all the presentations posted online. I am hard pressed to choose a favorite but Simon Lester (Trade Policy Analyst, Cato Institute) raises the issue of Canada’s increasing involvement with ISDs. Despite some indication from the Canadian government that CETA (the impending trade deal with the European Union) will mitigate the ISD risks, Lester notes that Canada is simply trying to “tweak the language” to ensure that court decisions cannot be challenged. “…  what I have seen written is that the only changes are that no claims can be made under expropriation, but there are more avenues [of claim]… the slight tweaks that Canada wants to make are probably not enough.”

If the Canadian government is not decisively protecting sovereignty within a bilateral trade negotiation, it is unlikely that we will do better in the multi-national forum of the TPP.

There is much more that could and should be written about ISDs but, for now, Lester shall have the last word. In his presentation, he asks an important question: “Normally, the Supreme Court gets the final word. But apparently, there’s an international court system above the domestic Supreme Court system.  … Is everybody okay with that?”

 

 

 

 

 

it IS a big deal

On 27 February 2014, The NY Times published “No Big Deal”, by Paul Krugman on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement and the apparent stalling of negotiations. He writes, “I am in general a free-trader, but I’ll be undismayed and even a bit relieved if the T.P.P. just fades away.” On that point, many people would likely share his relief. However, Krugman’s article is dangerous; he cloaks the TPP with an aura of blandness, arguing that the benign nature of the agreement is why it will not be missed. According to Krugman, the agreement does very little to enhance trade, instead:

… these days “trade agreements” are mainly about other things. What they’re really about, in particular, is property rights – things like the ability to enforce patents on drugs and copyrights on movies.  And so it is with T.P.P.

Krugman’s assessment of the TPP is framed by comparison to trade agreements of days gone by, when eliminating tariffs was a principle feature of negotiation. His remarks may be accurate in that regard, but by confining his assessment so narrowly, he avoids in-depth examination of the agreement as a whole. The TPP is not about trade. That word suggests a mutually beneficial exchange between two or more parties. The TPP is about domination and ensuring that countries do not oppose any actions taken by foreign corporations regardless of how those actions might affect health, environment, or even trade, within a host country.

Achieving such dominance includes imposing stringent measures upon intellectual property (more so than what is currently required by international agreement) and requiring that disputes arising are not adjudicated in either a court of law, or a seat of some impartiality like the WTO, but in private tribunals. (I have touched on the perils of investor-state dispute mechanisms, see here; Renée Loth writing for the Boston Globe on 22 December 2013 also covers this issue.)

Mr. Krugman could dismiss such remarks on the grounds that the actual agreement is yet to be seen. But that factor in itself ought to be a major reason for concern. Negotiations have been conducted in secret, with the public having to rely on a leaked document to discover what is being discussed. Granted, it is not possible, nor desirable, for any administration to govern by referendum. However, even U.S. elected representatives have not been privy to details. That combined with the desire of the Obama administration to fast-track the agreement, should have alerted Krugman: the TPP is a big deal.

But perhaps most startling of all is that Krugman’s article of the 27^th is the second such article he has written. The first was published by The NY Times on 12 December 2013, titled “TPP”. Comparing the two articles, the tone is essentially the same; that judging by the former hallmarks of free trade, the TPP would not make much difference:

…  my starting point for things like this is that most conventional barriers to trade — tariffs, import quotas, and so on — are already quite low, so that it’s hard to get big effects out of lowering them still further.

That earlier article provoked some commentary. Dean Baker wrote a courteous dissent for the Center for Economic and Policy Research:

…it is a misunderstanding to see the TPP as being about trade. This is a deal that focuses on changes in regulatory structures to lock in pro-corporate rules. Using a “trade” agreement provides a mechanism to lock in rules that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to get through the normal political process.

Mike Masnick of TechDirt went into greater detail than Baker on the measures included in the TPP. And Masnick puts his fingers immediately on the value of an op/ed such as Krugman’s:

On [Krugman’s] basic reasoning, he’s correct. There’s little trade benefit to be gained here. In fact, some countries have already realized this. But that’s why the TPP is so nefarious. It’s being pitched as a sort of “free trade deal,” and Krugman analyzes it solely on that basis. That’s exactly what the USTR would like people to think, and it’s part of the reason why they’ve refused to be even the slightest bit transparent about what’s actually in the agreement.

Both responses are worth reading in their entirety; they are as germane today as they were three months ago.

Which leads me to question why Krugman continues to limit his exploration of the subject? He acknowledges that the TPP would, “increase the ability of certain corporations to assert control over intellectual property.” But he makes no effort to explore the ramifications of the increase. For such an accomplished economist, who writes under the tagline of “The Conscience of a Liberal,” this neglect is unconscionable.

Further Reading: InfoJustice.org (of the Washington College of Law, American University) has compiled a list of analyses (some for the agreement, others against), see here. Christopher Ingram, writing for The Washington Post (28 February 2014) describes the current composition of trade-advisory committees as selected by the Obama administration: “Of the 566 committee members, 306 come from private industry and an additional 174 hail from trade associations. All told they represent 85% of the voices on the trade committees.”

Update – 18 March 2014 – And more reading: On the Wrong Side of Globalization by Joseph Stiglitz.

TPP and ISDS – more acronyms

“Countries that want to preserve flexibility on copyright term pretty much have no strategy in the TPP. Canada is about to fold.”

This tweet came early Friday morning from James Love, Director of Knowledge Ecology International. Love is in Singapore watching the latest drama of the TransPacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations. However, given that Canada officially has no negotiating power, its efforts to opposing copyright maximalism may not matter anyway. (Thomas Walkom, of The Toronto Star reported in 2012 that Canada’s admittance to the group did not include the right of negotiation.)

As many readers know, the TPP is a trade agreement in the making, negotiated in secrecy (except for privileged members of the business class). In November, Wikileaks published details of the negotiations with respect to intellectual property rights; they did not look promising. At that time, Michael Geist offered a series of posts detailing the shortcomings of the agreement. In his first post, Geist wrote:

The good news is that Canada is pushing back against many U.S. demands by promoting provisions that are consistent with current Canadian law. Canada is often joined by New Zealand, Malaysia, Mexico, Chile, Vietnam, Peru, and Brunei Darussalam. Japan and Singapore are part of this same group on many issues. Interestingly, Canada has also promoted Canadian-specific solutions on many issues. The bad news is that the U.S. – often joined by Australia – is demanding that Canada rollback its recent copyright reform legislation with a long list of draconian proposals. …

And in his regular column with The Toronto Star, Geist added:

The U.S. finds itself relatively isolated on many issues, with only Australia offering consistent support for its positions. For example, Canada and most other TPP countries support a general objectives provision that references the need for balance, promotion of the public domain, protection of public health, and measures to ensure that intellectual property rights themselves do not become barriers to trade. The U.S. and Japan oppose these objectives.

If the U.S. is successful in pressuring other countries to meet its demands, Canada would be required to radically overhaul its current law, reversing course on many of the rules the government recently enacted as part of its long-awaited copyright reform package or negotiated in the trade agreement with the European Union.

Returning to Love’s assessment of the current talks, the prospects of Canada (or any country) maintaining a sovereign system of copyright looks bleak. Copyright term extension is high on the list of demands; earlier today Love tweeted: “One USTR official I talked to said, yes, 70+ life copyright terms [are] wrong. But Europe made us do it, and now, we need everyone to follow.” Even more disturbing was the news that Mexico is arguing for “at least” life plus 100.

Yet copyright may be the least of our problems.

By far the most insidious part of the TPP is the determination by the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) to further entrench the Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) process. This mode of dispute resolution allows corporations to sue governments, not through courts of law, but in private tribunals. Earlier this year, law professor Brook Baker published a comprehensive examination of the risks ISDS poses to access to medicines:

Suddenly intellectual property rights, already hugely protected, are given another mantle of protection, namely protections as investments.  In addition, investors are given rights to bring claims for private arbitration directly against governments whenever their expectations of IP-based profits are frustrated by government decisions and policies.   Decisions of these private arbitral tribunals consisting of three international trade lawyers are not subject to judicial review, but are reducible into court judgments that can be levied against government property.

The principle behind compensation for thwarted expectation may have seemed rational at its outset (investor-state dispute mechanisms were first introduced in NAFTA in 1994) — to ensure corporations have recourse against unstable governments whose court systems may lack objectivity and rigour. But the mechanism has allowed egregious actions by corporations directly against governments, sidestepping robust courts of law. That health, environmental, or financial regulations seem to hinder corporate profit, is considered sufficient cause to bring action. That these regulations serve the citizens of that elected government is irrelevant.

In a TPP information session in Singapore, Melinda St. Louis of Public Citizen gave a presentation describing actions brought under ISDS; video available here.  Some of the highlights:

• Even municipal actions can provoke claims of frustrated expectation.
• The private attorneys who participate in the proceedings rotate between serving as arbitrators and serving as judges.
• Tribunal rulings are not bound by precedent.
• There is no means for appeal.
• Governments cannot counter-sue investors.
• The proceedings are very expensive for governments; it is in the interests of the tribunal arbitrators to drag out proceedings as even if the government wins, “almost always they are ordered to pay half the tribunal costs.”
• Tribunals have the discretion to award unlimited damages.
• Each year, the number of disputes increases.
• An example from St. Louis’ list (there were many): Occidental Petroleum (OP) breached their contract with the Ecuadorian government; the tribunal recognized the breach of contract but still awarded OP $2.4 billion to be paid by the government.
• Canada features in the list a few times; including the matter of Eli Lilly.  As I have written before, the U.S.-based pharmaceutical company has taken issue with Canadian courts’ invalidation of patents for two drugs and is seeking $500 million. St. Louis emphasizes how significant this case is: “[Eli Lilly is] actually challenging Canada’s entire patenting system.”

As a result of numerous actions against governments, many countries are starting to question whether ISDS should be part of trade agreements. Intriguingly, all 50 state legislatures in the United States passed a resolution opposing ISDS in trade agreements. Which makes it all the more perplexing that Canada appears to have already agreed to such terms in the purported Canada-EU free trade agreement. Announced in October by the Harper government as an agreement in principle, the text has not yet been publicly disclosed.  But in the summary document provided by our government, discussion of ISDS is artfully worded:

The process that investors follow to seek compensation is called “investor-to-state dispute settlement” (ISDS) and involves an independent arbitral panel hearing facts and making a decision on the merits of an investor’s claim. ISDS rules have been a standard feature of Canada’s comprehensive free trade agreements since the North American Free Trade Agreement and give assurance to investors that their investments will be protected from discriminatory or arbitrary government actions (p.21).  …

When individuals have disagreements, they have various ways to resolve them. They can try to negotiate  among themselves or, if that doesn’t work, they can seek the help of an impartial third party such as a mediator, an arbitrator or a court. Trade disputes between countries work much the same way. Trade agreements include various dispute resolution mechanisms so that governments can resolve their disagreements. For instance, when consultations fail to resolve a problem, trade agreements provide governments with the option of using impartial third parties to help resolve the dispute. In some cases, these third parties act like courts in the sense that they hear evidence from both sides and ultimately render binding decisions (p.38).

While our government assures us that the agreement, “includes provisions to guard against frivolous claims in order to ensure that the process will not be abused,” the disparate bargaining positions vis-à-vis the Europeans do not bode well for Canadians; see this assessment of the imbalanced negotiation by Gus Van Harten (an Associate Professor at Osgoode Law and well-versed in international trade).

Our best hope seems to be that saner Canadian heads will prevail before the final language is set. And that other countries can remove the deleterious conditions of ISDS from the TPP.

when Happy Birthday collides with the TPP

On Friday, two stories caught my eye. Benjamin Weiser, writing for the New York Times, describes a lawsuit underway which seeks to have the song Happy Birthday declared as belonging to the public domain. At the centre of his story is Jennifer Nelson, a filmmaker currently working on a documentary about the song, who discovered that her intended use of Happy Birthday must be preceded with a $1500 licensing fee. As the film-maker was filing her suit on Thursday in New York, Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiators discreetly came to Vancouver for an inter-sessional round of talks scheduled for June 14-16. Writing for iPolitics, BJ Siekierski notes: “Despite it being the first time negotiators have gathered in Canada, however, the mini-round wasn’t publicized by the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade — only making it likelier to fuel ongoing criticism of the secrecy surrounding the TPP.”

These seemingly unrelated stories collide on the matter of copyright term. Canadian filmmakers may well be enjoying a measure of professional glee that they are spared the trials of Nelson and other American filmmakers. Thanks to our shorter copyright term of life-plus-fifty years Happy Birthday is already public domain material in Canada. But that glee may not last, as the leaked details about the oh-so-secret TPP agreement indicate that Canada would have to make questionable amendments to our copyright law, including extending the term of copyright. There has been very little official detail provided about the agreement, even when the Government asked Canadians for input in early 2012 (my concerns about term extension were duly submitted).

On 3 June 2013 Michael Geist appeared before the Standing Committee on International Trade and left no doubt as to how bad this agreement will be for Canadians. He began with the utter lack of transparency concerning the process:

No public report summarizing the [responses to the public consultation] was ever published, yet according to documents I obtained under the Access to Information Act, the government was overwhelmed with negative comments urging officials to resist entry into the TPP and the expected pressures for significant intellectual property reforms as part of the deal.  In addition to tens of thousands of form letters and e-mails criticizing the TPP, the government received hundreds of individual handcrafted responses that unanimously criticized the proposed agreement. In fact, a review of more than 400 individual submissions did not identify a single instance of support for the agreement; rather, those submissions focused specifically on copyright-related concerns.

Geist offered detailed illustration of the regressive changes that would be required, changes that will undo the  decade of effort that underwrote some progressive amendments achieved by this very government. On the specific matter of term extension he said:

The term of protection for Canadian copyright is presently the life of the author plus an additional 50 years after his or her death. This term meets the international requirement as established in the Berne Convention. The TPP would require Canada to add an additional 20 years to the copyright term. The extension in the term of copyright would mean that no new works would enter the public domain in Canada at least until 2034, assuming that the agreement takes effect in 2014. Many important authors would immediately be affected, since their works are scheduled to enter into the public domain in the period, let’s say, between 2014 and 2034. These include Canadians such as Marshall McLuhan, Gabrielle Roy, Donald Creighton, and Glenn Gould, as well as non-Canadians such Robert Frost, C.S. Lewis, T.S. Eliot, John Steinbeck, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Ayn Rand. Given the potential to make those works more readily accessible to new generations once they enter the public domain, extending the term of copyright as potentially required by the TPP would have a dramatic negative effect on access to literature and history, particularly Canadian literature and history.

Finally, Geist reminded Committee members that:

The TPP negotiations have been ongoing for years, yet there has still been no official release of the draft text. To conduct a hearing on the benefits of the TPP without public access to the draft text forces participants to rely on leaked information that has not been officially confirmed. Canada should be demanding that a draft text be made available for all to see. Instead, it is deeply troubling that DFAIT has established a secret insider group, with some companies and industries associations being granted access to consultations as well as opportunities to learn more about the agreement and Canada’s negotiating position.

At the outset Canada had very little in the way of a negotiating position. Thomas Walkom observed that Canada was allowed to join by grace of the other TPP members, “on the understanding that [Canada] would have to abide by whatever the original nine had already decided (all of which is secret).”

If Canadians lose the competitive advantage that comes from having a better public domain, the issues surrounding Happy Birthday become even more pertinent. It is not the access to any particular work per se that warrants attention, but the power of anecdotal claims of control over historic works. In this instance, the power of the anecdote yields annual licensing revenues of $2 million for the currently presumed owner, Warner/Chappell (the publishing division within Warner Music).

The history of this song was the subject of meticulous research by Robert Brauneis, a law professor at George Washington University. Copyright and the World’s Most Popular Song (2010) is available through SSRN. At sixty-eight pages in length it is daunting to read, but well worth the investment in time. Professor Brauneis gives readers the life story of Happy Birthday, through its progenitors Mildred and Patty Hill. Mildred was an accomplished musician and composer; Patty was a prominent scholar and teacher in the field of early childhood education.

The genesis of Happy Birthday was their song Good Morning to All (published in 1893). Later, the lyrics of Happy Birthday were overlaid to the melody of the earlier piece. Through review of previously-ignored primary documents, Brauneis explains the difficulty in assuming that the Hill sisters wrote the new lyrics–the copyright notices that exist for the song do not support such an assumption. Moreover, regardless of confirmation of authorship, a proper renewal notice was not filed according to the American law of the day.

Weiser writes that Brauneis is not a consultant to this case; nevertheless, his informed opinion is clear: “I believe this song is in the public domain and therefore it is not owned by anyone. … [a successful legal challenge] might be a model for challenges to other songs.” However, Brauneis is equally clear in his paper as to the obstacle for future successful legal challenges:

[As] copyright term lengthens, it will become more and more difficult to gather evidence relevant to determining the validity of contested copyrights. It is now possible for a work to still be under copyright long after not only the death of its author, but after the death of anyone who knew the author, which makes it very difficult to present testimony about the circumstances of the work’s creation. There may be little that can be done about the problem of live testimony, but more could be done to preserve documentary evidence (emphasis mine).

One can only hope that national governments heed his advice.

Some Other References

“You Say It’s Your Birthday?” by Paul Collins, Slate, 21 July 2011.

Copyright Term and the United States, posted by Cornell University, current as of 1 January 2013.  For explanation concerning the use of the chart, see “When is 1923 going to arrive?” by Peter Hirtle (Senior Policy Advisor, Cornell University Library) in Searcher Vol. 20 No. 6 (September 2012).

And, for fun, Kermit the Frog on copyright posted to YouTube on 1 April 2013.

A short lived celebration

With the celebration of the New Year, came new vigour into the Canadian public domain. But by Friday Michael Geist was alerting us that our public domain may stagnate soon. Under the auspices of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (a proposed international trading agreement) the term of copyright in Canada would increase from life plus fifty years, to life plus seventy years.

As Geist reminds us, our international obligation stops at life plus fifty years. Other countries have increased their copyright term, without any illustration of public benefit.  Whereas, evidence to the contrary is not hard to find. 1998 was not only the year of the United States’ Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) with its protection of digital locks, but also the year of their Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) which set American copyright term to life plus seventy years.

Before, during, and after the extension of American copyright term, dialogue was vigorous. A memorable comment came from Peter Jaszi; in his testimony to a Senate Judiciary Committee in 1995, he expressed concern that copyright in the United States would become perpetual via “the installment plan.” This lay in contravention to their Constitutional quid-pro-quo bargain: the monopoly of copyright is permitted only for a limited time in order to assure the public of unfettered access to creative works. These concerns were further argued through a constitutional challenge to CTEA, Eldred v. Ashcroft (2003). (Regrettably, the case did not succeed; see my entry here.)

Canadians may wish to read the detailed analysis of seventeen note-worthy economists, prepared for the Eldred case. From their summary:

The longer term for new works provides some increase in anticipated compensation for an author. Because the additional compensation occurs many decades in the future, its present value is small, very likely an improvement of less than 1% compared to the pre-CTEA term.

With respect to the economists’ analysis, dissenting Justice Breyer of the United States Supreme Court offered these choice words:

What potential Shakespeare, Wharton, or Hemingway would be moved by such [a gain]? What monetarily motivated Melville would not realize that he could do better for his grandchildren by putting a few dollars into an interest-bearing bank account?

The economists also observed that the extension of term for existing works does not provoke a further incentive to create — the investment required had already been made. Against these negligible, or non-existent, benefits of term extension, the economists examined the costs of the extension by way of access to existing works and creation of derivative works:

A lengthened copyright term under the CTEA keeps additional materials out of new creators’ hands. Would-be new creators face increased transaction costs: the necessity to engage in costly locating (especially for very old works, the very ones that would be in the public domain but for the CTEA) and bargaining with multiple parties. These higher costs give new creators less incentive to produce. As a result, the CTEA imposes two kinds of burden on society, fewer new works produced and higher  transaction costs in the creation of some works.

Canadians might also be interested in the 2009 copyright consultation submission of Project Gutenberg Canada, written by its founder Mark Akrigg. He explains how our cultural heritage is affected by copyright’s lengthy term:

The commercial value of copyrights is exhausted far more quickly than most people realize. The vast majority of books go out of print shortly after their original appearance, and are never reprinted. Very long copyright periods are dangerous to Canada’s cultural heritage, because many original works are in essence gone forever by the time they enter the Public Domain. They are forgotten, because they have been unavailable so long.

Akrigg asked our Government to refrain from copyright term extension and protect the public domain. In his final recommendation, he made three suggestions:

(a) The Copyright Act be renamed the Copyright and Public Domain Act. The purpose of this to emphasize that private copyright and public copyright (the right to use the Public Domain freely) are both vitally important.

(b) Explicit recognition of the Public Domain. The preamble to the copyright update bill should include specific recognition of the role of the legislation in ensuring “the orderly passage of works to the Public Domain to form part of Canada’s cultural heritage”, and a statement that “full, unimpeded access to the Canadian Public Domain is a critically important cultural right which is vital to preserving Canada’s cultural heritage.”

(c) The creation of a Public Domain Commissioner. The Public Domain is not protected by organizations of any kind, and its critical importance is often overlooked in policy discussions and decisions. For the public good, a high-profile advocate is needed to ensure that the Public Domain is protected and promoted. The history of copyright in Canada must not be a depressing tale of increasingly oppressive legislation removing accepted rights from the Canadian people. It would be extremely helpful to have a Public Domain Commissioner with a specific mandate to act as the advocate of the Public Domain, to facilitate the access of Canadians to their cultural heritage, and to report to Parliament on the status and health of Canada’s Public Domain.

Our Supreme Court has not been shy to emphasize the preeminence of the public domain. In 2002, Justice Binne, writing for the majority in Théberge v. Galerie d’Art du Petit Champlain inc., stated: “Excessive control by holders of copyrights and other forms of intellectual property may unduly limit the ability of the public domain to incorporate and embellish creative innovation in the long-term interests of society as a whole (para.32).” Two years later, in CCH Canadian Ltd. v. Law Society of Upper Canada, Chief Justice McLachlin spoke of the importance that there be “room for the public domain to flourish as others are able to produce new works by building on the ideas and information contained in the works of others (para. 23).”

Our life plus fifty copyright term gives Canadian creators an advantageous position with disfavour to none. In fact, far from extending copyright’s term, a worthy ambition would be the international reduction of the term of copyright. With instant obsolescence an increasing characteristic of the present day world, lengthy protection holds even less meaning.

On 31 December 2011, in Canada Gazette, the Government of Canada filed notice of a public consultation regarding the TPP agreement: “It is essential that the Government of Canada be fully aware of the interests and potential sensitivities of Canadians with respect to this initiative.” Canadians may submit comments before February 14, 2012; see Canada Gazette for details.