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Copyright Act of 1921
The Copyright Act was passed by the Canadian parliament in 1921, and came into effect in 1924. It applied to artistic, musical, and literary work, on condition that the work be an original, that its creator be a Canadian citizen or a citizen of a country that was part of a copyright treaty with Canada, and that it be in “fixed or written form capable of identification.” (Crane 2013). -
Amendments to the Copyright Act
A significant cause of these amendments was the general advancement of technology since the time of the original act and hence the new forms that intellectual property could take such as computer programs. (This act also extended copyright protection to translations of literary works, as they were not deemed “original” by the initial Copyright Act). -
Amends to the Copyright Act - Continued
One of the most significant instances of controversy over copyright was a Canadian court ruling in the 1950s which ruled that the Cable Television’s distribution of film telecasts to subscribers did not constitute a violation of the Copyright Act. This amendment required television companies to pay to obtain rights to retransmit content that had been aired on their channel. -
Bill C-59
In this year the issue of unauthorized videotaping of films in theaters rose to prominence. As a result, parliament passed an act that made videotaping a film in a theater without the owner's permission a criminal offense that could be punished by a fine or jail time.