The House of Commons committee’s new report, “Shifting Paradigms,” calls for sweeping changes to copyright law that would require universities, streaming services and television and radio stations to pay significantly more to use Canadian content. The changes include an extension of musicians’ rights to their work from 50 to 70 years after their death, and a limit on educational institutions’ ability to copy the work of authors and artists for free. (The Logic)

Talking point: Music, film and authority industry associations have all been asking the federal government to make these changes for years. However, convincing a committee is a far cry from changing the law, and a number of these proposed legal changes have been rejected by the government quite recently. For example, the report calls for greater government efforts to combat the pirating of copyright content online, but the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission rejected a similar proposal back in October 2018. Other changes appear more in line with the government’s inclinations, such as one calling for laws ensuring online platforms are accountable for what is distributed on their sites. That’s the kind of change Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Digital Charter could address.