ARCHIVED — A Tim Atherton

COPYRIGHT REFORM PROCESS

REPY COMMENTS

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Documents received have been posted in the official language in which they were submitted. All are posted as received by the departments, however all address information has been removed.

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Reply comment from Tim Atherton received on October 29, 2001 via e-mail

Subject: Copyright Act Revision

PDF Version

I write as a freelance photographer, having consulted with numerous other Canadian freelance photographers in the “Canadian Photographers” forum, regarding the requirement for reform of the current Copyright Act

Your document;A Framework for Copyright Reform, addresses the most important issues we feel we face as photographers dealing with the new digital age. These are fundamental issues of Copyright, which need to be addressed to enable us to function in a digital environment.

The issues listed below need to be addressed to bring the Canadian Copyright Act in line with the Copyright Acts of most other major countries (especially the US). This would provide photographers with the basic protections they need to function in a digital world, and which are currently lacking and somewhat archaic and anachronistic in the current Act. Indeed the above document clearly recognizes these issues:

1. Audio-visual Works and Photographs

(b) Commissioned photographs

The Copyright Act provides that a person commissioning a photograph becomes the first owner of copyright only after "valuable consideration" is actually paid. With respect to other works, the first owner of copyright is normally the creator of the work. The issue is whether the photographer should be the first owner in all commissioned photographs.

(c) Authorship of photographic works

The Copyright Act specifically grants authorship of photographs to those who own the initial negative when that negative was made. The issue is whether the persons primarily responsible for the composition of the photograph should be deemed to be the authors of photographs.

Both of the above should be incorporated as fundamental protections for Photographers under the Copyright Act – in both instances the Photographer/person who is primarily responsible for the composition of the photograph should be the owner and author of the photographs not the person/s commissioning the work.

2. Term of Protection Copyright lasts only for a defined period of time. In Canada the term of copyright, in most cases, is set at the lifetime of the author plus fifty years after the author's death. The issue is whether or not the term of protection ought to be extended to life plus seventy years, as has been done in the United States and the European Union. If an amendment of this type is considered, it would also be appropriate to consider whether it would be granted retrospectively or only to authors who died after the amendment came into force.

This term should be extended to 75 years.

Respectfully Submitted


Timothy E.J. Atherton