February 9, 2008: Intellectual Property
We are in the process of finalizing an IP policy for Emily Carr University. We have had ongoing and extensive discussions with faculty and students over the past few years around some of the complexities involved around intellectual property.
In Canada there has been a great deal of debate recently around copyright. Mostly around music- because of Apple’s iPod and our ability to copy our CDs as MP3s and play them on our nanos. But recent technologies have upped the anti as it is now possible to play video as MP4s and now television. Copyright is protected by nation states and differs by the laws in each country, in Canada we have a copyright act written in 1997. It is under review and is currently in the process of being rewritten given the huge changes in digital technologies which weren’t anticipated back int he mid 90’s. For example, since 2003, the Canadian Private Copying Collective, had been trying to convince the Copyright Board of Canada to extend the levy we pay on blank CDs to the memory inside MP3 players.