Copyright term extension has emerged as a major policy issue in Canada in recent months. Canada’s general copyright term is life of the author plus 50 years and successive governments have rejected lobbying pressure to extend by an additional 20 years. That changed with the new NAFTA, which includes a life plus 70 years requirement. Canada negotiated a 30 month transition period with no need to extend the copyright term during that time. The Canadian copyright review recommended that any extension include a registration requirement for the extra 20 years. Professor Paul Heald has conducted extensive empirical analysis on the effects of copyright term extension and the value of the public domain. In this podcast, he discusses his findings and new work he has been doing on the data in Canada.

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