Breakdown of Copyright (or not)

Legal bloggers Chantal Bertosa, Victoria E. Carrington, and Ashley Doumouchel writing for the law firm Aventum IP Law LLP share their definitive breakdown of "Copyright in Canada."

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=60d21876-89af-49f9-9bcd-945cf82f5ff9

This is a comprehensive work, and everyone who sells their own books in Canada ought to bookmark it.

Possibly the most disturbing segment, apart from the explanation of the costs of enforcing copyright, are the list of defences (Canadian/British spelling) available to infringers.

IMHO, authors and publishers ought to do more to assert the meaning of "in the public domain".

Stanford University publishes a lengthy explanation of the public domain.
https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/public-domain/welcome/

Just because a novel by a living author is displayed in full or available for download on a pirate site or on a so-called internet "library" does not mean that the novel is "in the public domain".

For a breakdown of Copyright in the United States, bookmark the article written for the law firm Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP by their legal bloggers Jeff C. Dodd, Jonathan D. Reichman, and Susanna P. Lichter.

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=45b57c94-9e9c-4593-82bf-c51afe3b7ce2

There are two depressing take-aways (maybe a lot more) from the excellent article: it can cost $500,000 to enforce a copyright through discovery and trial, and content owners must constantly monitor the use of their work online.

For the latter, I subscribe to Blasty's full service, but to date there are over 1957 instances where Google's lawyers have determined (erroneously IMHO) that the "libraries" offering ebook versions of my works are entitled to do so.

All the best,
Rowena Cherry