OTTAWA — Rights holders of programming shown over distant TV signals are seeking to at least double the amount of money they receive from TV service providers, on a per subscriber basis, for providing that content to their customers. A hearing before the Copyright Board of Canada — scheduled to run two weeks with final arguments in January on top of that — got underway on Tuesday. David Kent, a lawyer for the Canadian Broadcasters Rights Agency (CBRA), told the hearing that the various collectives with an interest in this case are looking for the royalties paid by...
OTTAWA — Lawyers representing two streaming music services told the Copyright Board of Canada in hearings this week that a request from the not-for-profit group that represents Canadian songwriters and music publishers to increase usage fees is too much to ask. The dispute that pits streaming music providers Pandora Media Inc. and Apple Inc. against the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN) boils down to how the online music services should be defined and thus how their monthly royalty fee will be determined. SOCAN told the hearing on Monday that services...