In Digital Copyright Law, Professor Hutchison identifies and analyzes the many novel legal issues that often arise in this area of growing importance. This book assesses the developing law against an interpretive methodology that seeks to rationalize rights, and brings coherence to the Copyright Act, in the face of challenging digital facts. Included in this methodology is a detailed analysis of the meaning and applicability of the principle of technological neutrality.

This comprehensive treatment of Canadian digital copyright law examines the recent digital amendments to the Act in depth — including separate chapters on technological protection measures (digital locks) and the treatment of Internet intermediaries. Detailed consideration is given to developing caselaw on key issues such as the right to copy, the right to communicate a work to the public by telecommunication, the application of fair dealing rules in the digital sphere, and the use of Norwich orders to identify Internet infringers. Other issues not yet addressed in the law, such as the applicability of exhaustion rules to digital goods, and private international law rules for ubiquitous infringement, are also discussed.

Dr Cameron Hutchison is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Alberta. His publications and research interests centre around international and Canadian intellectual property law, statutory interpretation, Internet law, and interdisciplinary perspectives on the law of copyright. Professor Hutchison currently teaches the following courses: intellectual property, musicians and the law, statutory interpretation, and conflict of laws.

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“Discussion of technological facts that give rise to these legal issues is easy to understand without being so oversimplified that readers with technological backgrounds would be skeptical of the analysis. Hutchison also avoids presupposition of knowledge in the area of copyright law, consistently making clear how digital copyright issues fit in the broader copyright law context. In short, the work is broadly accessible despite its engagement with legally and technologically complex concepts. [ . . . ] Readers are invited to conceive of copyright as a policy tool for balancing competing interests, namely authorial incentive, users' rights, and dissemination of copyrighted works to the widest possible audience. The legal issues discussed in each chapter are put in context relative to those interests, creating a coherent whole out of a diverse collection of concepts. [ . . . ] Digital Copyright Law accomplishes what it sets out to do: to provide analysis and commentary on current issues in digital copyright in an accessible way. Hutchison offers enough to satisfy readers with passing interest in the subject, to serve as quick reference for practitioners, and to provide a roadmap for serious researchers.”

Jeremy Barber, (2017) 80 Saskatchewan Law Review 489

Digital Copyright Law has strengths as both a reference book and as an introduction to the relationship between Canadian Copyright law and digital technology. Each chapter is meticulously organized, and Hutchison’s ability to distill meaning from the complex mix of facts that come out of the statutory analysis and case law, and the complex sets of facts and circumstances that result from digital technology, makes this book essential for both legal practitioners and for others who work or have an interest in Canadian Copyright law.

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