Canada’s Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law is calling on the Ontario government to defend expenditures on a controversial report about file-sharing and intellectual property rights regulations in Canada.
Intellectual Property Rights: Innovation and Commercialization in Turbulent Times was released by the Conference Board of Canada in advance of a May 29 conference in Toronto.
Stronger intellectual property rights and enforcement are needed to protect new knowledge and shore up Canada’s poor innovation record, the report says.
But Dr. Michael Geist, law professor at the University of Ottawa where he holds the Research Chair title, says there are “factual errors contained in the report” and he has called for John Wilkerson, the Minister of research and Innovation, to explain his views on whether his government regards the public monies used to fund the report are appropriate.
“Admitting an error is never easy, but I would submit that the Conference Board of Canada has compounded its mistake by standing by its report. In doing so, it has done little more than further undermine its credibility,” Geist writes.
The Conference Board, meanwhile, has itself responded to Geist, saying he “charged the Conference Board with publishing a deceptive, plagiarized report. “
The Conference Board goes on to say it “stands behind the findings of its report,” adding:
”While Mr. Geist charges the Board with lack of attribution in several instances, in fact, only one citation is missing. We have corrected the missing citation in the report and we apologize for the oversight. All other instances, referred to in the blog, include sources. We also acknowledge that some of the cited paragraphs closely approximate the wording of a source document.
In the course of the research, the authors reviewed the full spectrum of arguments surrounding the issue of intellectual property rights in Canada. The final report includes those arguments considered most relevant to the policy under review.
In the conclusion of the report, the Conference Board states, “Nations need a balanced approach that controls copyrights based on the rights of the creator and the user of digital intellectual property. Virtually every national intellectual property policy balances the right of creators to be compensated for their creation with the right of consumers to have fair access to legitimately acquired creations to further stimulate knowledge, creativity, and innovation. Indeed, throughout this report, balance has been a recurring theme. Overall, the aim must be to balance control of copyright with the freedom to enjoy creative works lawfully, a compromise that establishes a win-win outcome.”
This report was produced as contract research. The Conference Board does not disclose the terms of its contracts without permission of the client. “
Geist continues to cite factual errors contained within the report on his blog, noting “[f]or example, the Conference Board claimed that the OECD concluded that Canada is the world's file sharing capital on a per capita basis. This is simply false as anyone who reads the OECD report will find that it did not reach that conclusion.”
For more information, see
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/blogsection/0/126/
http://www.conferenceboard.ca/press/speech_oped/ipr.aspx