Media Beat: April 17, 2017
News about media and the regulatory environment both inside and beyond Canada's borders.
ABS-CBN files $5-M lawsuit in Canada for copyright infringement
The Filipino media and entertainment group filed a $5 million lawsuit on Thursday in the Canadian Federal Court against a couple for copyright and trademark infringement of the company’s copyrighted works.
The lawsuit alleges that Ed Casinillo and Roxy Gonzales sold set-top boxes that were manually programmed by Casinillo to enable buyers to access ABS-CBN copyrighted movies and TV shows.
$22K copyright settlement by Canadian Facebook blogger
Blacklock’s Reporter in 2015 sued the blog operators for $20,000 as well as punitive damages and costs for republishing dozens of password-protected articles. In an unusual settlement, the aggregator One Big Campaign paid $21,750, volunteered a public apology and waived all confidentiality of settlement terms.
Nintendo wins $12.7M for digital lock breaking in Canada
GCS devices allowed unauthorized games to be played on the Nintendo DS and 3DS and Wii gaming consoles. Nintendo is now successful in its claim against GCS for digital lock circumvention and secondary infringement over its promoting game copiers.
Stingray Digital Group has extended its exclusive distribution agreement with Australian pay TV provider Foxtel for an additional five years and enhanced the deal with mobile and background music services. Stingray is a leading B2B music platform reaching an estimated 400M pay-TV households in 156 countries.
US Pay TV subscriptions almost doubled their decline in 2016, OTT service providers gained subscribers and broadband-only households are expected to double over the next five years.
Chinese Consortium Completes AC Milan Soccer Buy From Silvio Berlusconi
The consortium, Rossoneri Sport Investment Lux, is paying US$818 million for the majority stake…
Author launches defamation suit against University of Regina professor
Author Candice McLean is suing Michelle Stewart, an associate professor in the U of R’s Department of Justice Studies. The suit alleges Stewart launched a Facebook campaign seeking support to have McLean’s book signings cancelled and contends Stewart’s post called the book “racist garbage” and incited other Facebook users to “direct abusive comments” at the author.
Bell Media rehires The Beat's PD
Since 92.5 FM in Montreal became The Beat in 2011, the station has made much of its staff lineup by poaching personalities from direct competitor Virgin Radio. Cat Spencer, Vinny Barrucco and Nat Lauzon were hired directly from Virgin, and Nikki Balch and Rob Kemp also previously worked at 1717 René-Lévesque Blvd. (for Virgin and CHOM, respectively).
With The Beat’s ratings being solidly ahead of Virgin for what seems to be a sustainable period, it seemed it was only a matter of time before Bell Media hit back. Now it turns out that it has poached from the top, hiring Martin Tremblay to lead the Énergie, Rouge FM and Virgin Radio Montreal stations.
Mohawk College making media more accessible
The 32-week mostly online program will teach journalists, executives and other content creators how to shape their information in a way to make it accessible to people with vision or hearing challenges who may use screen-reading software, including closed captioning, described captioning and accessible word documents to assist them.
Canadian Copyright Shakedown
Canadian nerd humourist Buckley takes on companies operating out of the US for illegal shakedowns of Canadian residents for alleged copyright violations.
Worth Reading
Just how risky is the tech revolution? Workers in the tech-enabled gig economy have secured some job benefits and protections ordinarily available to employees, but may still end up jobless -- Financial Times
The crisis of attention theft: The invasion happens anywhere you find your time and attention taken without consent and get nothing in return -- Tim Wu, Wired
10 Canadians to watch -- Variety
The Copyright Pentalogy: In the summer of 2012, the Supreme Court of Canada issued rulings on five copyright cases in a single day. The cases represent a seismic shift in Canadian copyright law, with the Court providing an unequivocal affirmation that copyright exceptions such as fair dealing should be treated as users’ rights, while emphasizing the need for a technology neutral approach to copyright law.
The Court’s decisions, which were quickly dubbed the “copyright pentalogy,” included no fees for song previews on services such as iTunes, no additional payment for music included in downloaded video games, and that copying materials for instructional purposes may qualify as fair dealing. The Canadian copyright community soon looked beyond the cases and their litigants and began to debate the larger implications of the decisions. Several issues quickly emerged. This book represents an effort by some of Canada’s leading copyright scholars to begin the process of examining the long-term implications of the copyright pentalogy.
Patents, Copyright and Competition: Assessing the impact of trade deals on Canada -- CD Howe report
Where is the best-sounding radio in the world?: In a bar in Canada, two men jabbed their fingers at me - in a friendly way - and asked me a simple question. Where is the best-sounding radio in the world? What a great question – Radio info, James Cridland
