Canada is set to extend the term of copyright protection by 20 years to life of the author plus 70 years, whereas previously it was life of the author plus 50 years. This is disappointing news, in popular culture its common to joke about Canada being overlooked and insignificant compared to its neighbour the United States, but as a large economy with an extensive international network and an English and French speaking population they are a country of influence and importance.
The reason for this change was the adoption of an trade agreement in 2020 the Canada-United States-Mexico agreement (CUSMA). In a nutshell the agreement pressured Canada into adopting a copyright system equivalent to the United States. So, the people of Canada are denied important art, culture and educational material to support international business. I would also like to mention that Mexico is a party to CUSMA too, and currently Mexico has possible the most restrictive intellectual property system in the globe, life plus 100 years. So, since Canada had to extend its copyright terms to match the United States at least that means we can look forward to a lowering of the term from Mexico to balance it out right?
Well CUSMA has spurred some reform legislation in Mexico, however as far as I can tell they have nothing to do with lowering the term of protection, and are instead focused on extending the power of copyright infringement take down notices and extending the use of digital locks. Once again we have a double standard in intellectual property rights, arguments from fairness to creator rights and even standardisation are just used as smokescreens to increase control over society by government's and global monopolies.
Its not just Canada that's lost out it's the world. Come next year Canada will go through the same twenty year freeze that the USA did in the 1990s, which led to the loss of thousands of works and locked up gigabytes of information in university archives because they were orphan works.
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