Featured Articles

Life Story Rights - Some Considerations

September 09, 2010 12:14

Diane Krausz has posted a valuable item: Whose Life is it Anyway? Clearance of Life Story Rights in Film.  The article is particularly interesting for her concise provision of this heuristic, which I think nicely articulates what many entertainment lawyers reflexively do when analyzing...

e-books - Impact and Costs

September 23, 2010 13:36

Peter Nowak at the CBC recently had an interesting discussion with Kobo chief executive Michael Serbinis (Kobo is "a global eBook retailer" backed by, among others, Canada's own Indigo Books & Music) about e-books and their impact on the book publishing industry (E-books: A...

ASCAP, SOCAN, Public Performances and Telecommunications

September 30, 2010 22:00

The US Federal Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit decision in US v ASCAP (sometimes referred to as ASCAP v RealNetworks) (text of decision is available here) has generated a surprising amount of commentary - particularly from practitioners and academics outside of the...

Recent Articles

Rush and Rush: Using Music in Political Activities (Redux)

Bob Tarantino
March 15, 2012 19:16

News reports that Rush (the band) have demanded that Rush (the Limbaugh) desist from using the band's music in his radio broadcasts have re-raised an issue we have considered here at the Signal on few different occasions.  The story appears to have been broken by US blogger Bob Cesca...

Canadian Government Announces New Telecom Ownership Rules and Spectrum Policy

March 15, 2012 14:49

How do you put concepts such as telecommunications policy, spectrum caps and foreign investment restrictions in the same sentence with “supporting Canadian families”? The federal Government has cracked that nut with the March 14, 2012 announcement by the Minister of Industry to shake up...

Co-Production Updates

March 05, 2012 23:47

Two items of note relating to the issue of international treaty co-productions which I believe indicate their re-emergence as a way of producing (especially in the current financial climate). First, Telefilm Canada recently announced some changes to its Canada Feature Film Fund ("CFFF")...

Morals Clause? Unlikely for Bad Boy Charlie Sheen

March 05, 2012 21:15

 While advertiser’s traditionally spend a significant amount of money, effort and time to protect their brands from the potential negative implications of aligning with scandalous celebs, Charlie Sheen’s bad boy image and controversial behaviour seems to have been exactly what...

Supreme Court of Canada rules that ISPs are not "broadcasting undertakings" by Stephen Zolf

February 29, 2012 22:04

NOTE: What follows is an informative and well-written article by Stephen Zolf recently published by Heenan Blaikie's Nota Bene and discussing a very recent Supreme Court decision ruling that ISPs are not considered "broadcasters": On February 9, 2012, the Supreme Court of Canada ...

DOC Proposes Documentary Filmmaker Exception to Bill C-11

Bob Tarantino
February 29, 2012 14:34

Kudos to The Documentary Organization of Canada (DOC), which has released a proposed Exemption for Documentary Filmmakers to Circumvent Technical Protection Mechanisms in Bill C-11. I commend their efforts to do something which is not as common as it could be in Canadian copyright debates:...

This Sponsortunity brought to you by Wheat Thins.

February 28, 2012 18:41

On Feb. 23rd, Stephen Colbert included an integrated sponsorship on The Colbert Report. Colbert refers to these product integrations as brand-funded requests from the network and this most recent “Sponsortunity” was brought to you by Nabisco’s “Wheat Thins” crackers....