In Defence of Copyright

“This book is filled with important information and excellent insights. … You should buy it … please don’t illegally download it.” ― John Degen, The British Columbia Review

Copyright is one of the cornerstones of western civilization; it is as relevant today, if not more so, than it was when the first formal copyright laws were enacted in the eighteenth century.

With the rise of the Digital Age, new challenges have been brought to the frontlines of the copyright battle. Online piracy, extensive unauthorized use of copyrighted works by educational institutions, and artificial intelligence are testing the ability of copyright laws to protect creators and their intellectual property.

Canada’s copyright laws are out of step with other western democracies and are overdue for updating. They need to be resilient and adaptive to the digital age to promote the production of new work and ideas.

Best known for his blog Insights on International Copyright Issues (awarded one of the top copyright blogs in the world and consistently ranked by Feedspot as a Top 50 copyright blog) Hugh Stephens has written articles for the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, The Globe and Mail, the National Post, The Conversation, The Diplomat, and more. He served for several years as Vice Chair of the Quality Brands Protection Committee, a coalition of more than 180 multinational companies engaged in strengthening IPR protection in China. He is also a Distinguished Fellow at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, Executive Fellow at the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary, and an associate faculty member in the School of Business at Royal Roads University, Victoria, BC.

Before returning to Canada in December 2009, he was Senior Vice President (Public Policy) for Asia-Pacific for Time Warner and prior to joining Time Warner in 2000, Stephens spent 30 years in the Canadian Foreign Service with the Department of External Affairs, later the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT). His last Ottawa assignment was as Assistant Deputy Minister for Policy and Communications in DFAIT. He also served abroad as Canadian Representative in Taiwan (Executive Director-Canadian Trade Office in Taipei), Counsellor and Chargé d’affaires at the Canadian Embassies in Seoul, Korea and Islamabad, Pakistan, among a number of other overseas and headquarters assignments.

Stephens was educated at the University of British Columbia (UBC), University of Toronto and Duke University, and has a Certificate in Mandarin from the Chinese University of Hong Kong.