The government has launched a consultation on “a Modern Copyright Framework for Online Intermediaries”, seeking comments until May 31. The consultation includes issues of intermediaries’ safe harbour protections against liability for copyright infringement, how intermediaries’ knowledge of infringement and content-related activities affect their liability as well as their attendant obligations, remuneration of rights holders through collective licensing of their copyright-protected content on certain platforms, transparency in rights holders’ remuneration and online uses of their content; and rights holders’ enforcement tools against intermediaries, including by way of a statutory “website-blocking” and “de-indexing” regime.
The consultation (link) identifies its goal to help ensure that Canada’s copyright framework for online intermediaries “reflects the evolving digital world”, and identifies three objections:
- To protect and encourage the use of copyright-protected content online
- To safeguard individual rights and freedoms in an open Internet
- To facilitate a flourishing digital market