Historical perspective on Canadian copyright

29 years ago today, the University of Waterloo Gazette published a
feature article on copyright law: what it is, why it needs fixing, and
what recommendations have been made.  With the Canadian government
expected to bring forward a new copyright bill in the next few weeks
[1], I thought it would be fitting to post this so people can see
where we were and compare that to where we are now and how that should
affect our decisions.  Here is my blog post, which links to the
article:

http://ossguy.com/?p=32

I think anyone interested in copyright law would enjoy reading the
article, not just those from Canada.  It may be of particular interest
to those from the US as the US had not implemented the Berne
Convention at the time this article was published.

I found it especially neat that the Gazette includes this note:
"Editorial material may be reprinted freely; credit would be
appreciated."  This seems similar in intent to the Creative Commons
Attribution license (possibly with a No Derivative Works clause).
From what I've seen of recent newspapers, a license that allows free
redistribution is seldom used anymore.  I wonder why that is.

I OCRed the article to make it more searchable and legible.  If there
are any errors with the OCR process, please let me know.

Feel free to add your comments to my blog.  Discussion is always welcome.

Denver

1. http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2877/125/