A bill before Canada's Parliament could make it illegal for search engines to cache Web pages, critics say, opening the door to unwarranted lawsuits and potentially hindering public access to information. The legislation in question, Bill C-60, is designed to amend Canada's Copyright Act by implementing parts of the 1996 World Intellectual Property Organization treaty, the treaty that led to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the U.S....But according to Howard Knopf, a copyright attorney at the Ottawa firm of Macera & Jarzyna, a brief passage in the bill could mean trouble for search engines and other companies that archive or cache Web content....Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa, where he holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-Commerce Law, agreed.
Could it be possible that Canada will make Google or any other Internet search and archiving engines illegal? Bill C-60, which amends the Copyright Act and received its first reading in the House of Commons on June 20, suggests it could be illegal for anyone to provide copyrighted information through "information-location tools," which includes search engines.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 7/19/2005 12:01:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
