[General] Copyright in Canada

Here's an article on a group of rulings by the Supreme Court of Canada regarding copyright.  They concern instances of legal music distribution, like by video game producers, telecoms (Rogers music services), or stores like iTunes, and not piracy.  Rights-holders want money

• each time a piece of music is streamed: upheld.
• Presumably the streaming is "live", like a live broadcast would be.
• each time a piece of music is downloaded: rejected.
• Presumably the rights to provide the download were always paid for, so the act of downloading should not be subject to an additional fee. 
• each time a video game containing their music is downloaded: rejected.
• Presumably, the video game publishers have already paid for the rights to include the music in the media, so having it downloaded to the consumer shouldn't be considered 'reproducing' the music.
• each time a song is previewed in an online music store: rejected.
• The court felt this constituted research on the part of the consumer and served the purpose of encouraging sales rather than discouraging them.
• for soundtracks including their work: rejected
• The court felt that soundtracks were "categorically different from traditional sound records"
• for photocopies of their work, like textbook pages in public schools: rejected.

I at first found the first two, with the distinction between online streaming and downloads, strange from a technical sense, but then when I understood the context of the streaming (e.g. Rogers music portal) versus the downloads (iTunes purchases) it made sense.

These I believe were all previously approved by a lower court and the Copyright Board and I find it preposterous that rights-holders got any traction on the idea that "oh, there was a copy of the work on this server, and now someone has done something to make it exist on this other computer, so we deserve money for that!" even when the rights to sell the works had already been bought.  It's blatant double-dipping and a bizarre perspective on data.  I'm sure they'd want royalties if I extracted music off a CD to my hard drive, or copied it from my PC to my phone.

i suppose I had thought that rights-holders would already have negotiated some deal to be providing previews of songs, but if I suppose if they had, music stores would have instances of tracks without previews, as some rights-holders would be ridiculous.  Perhaps the rights-holders feel that someone should straight-out purchase the song if they to hear it, rather than having a free preview letting them know they actually don't care to hear it further.

I find the soundtrack issue bizarre.  I wonder whether the point was that the other-media had already purchased rights to the music so they were free to market the soundtrack without paying further royalties, but I don't really see it that way myself.

I'm glad to see that the photocopying issue was decided that way.  I think that some teachers and professors are excessive in their photocopying, but textbook publishers are excessive in their pricing.  This already affected the University of Guelph, so hopefully this ruling will deaffect Guelph. :D

I'm generally a pessimist and assume that people like copyright-holders will generally get their way and continually increase their legal rights to money, either via extending the length of copyright terms, the context in which they deserve compensation, or the size of their compensation, so it's strange to see it not.  I expect they'll be persistent though, like those who've advocated PIPA, SOPA, ACTA, CETA, ETCETERA.