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Copyright Lobbying Behind Closed Doors

By Michael Geist

As thousands of individual Canadians speak out against C-61 this summer, certain groups have obtained special access to Industry Minister Jim Prentice and his political team to make their case.  The new lobbying rules require lobbyists to report their communications with politicians, political staff, and senior policy officials.  With the first round of reports now online (dating back to July 2nd), the following organizations have recently met with Prentice's political staff on intellectual property matters:

• Canadian Recording Industry Association (lobbyist David Dyer meeting on August 11th with Prentice Chief of Staff Steven Kelly and political policy staff Zoe Addington and Bill Rogers)
• Microsoft (lobbyist Geoff Norquay meeting on July 7th with Kelly)
• CTVglobemedia (meeting on July 31st with Kelly)
• Google (meeting on July 31st with Addington)

Meetings with policy officials (rather than political staff) includes ADISQ and Astral Media (with Canadian Heritage ADM Jean-Pierre Blais) and Telus, Shaw, and Rogers (with Industry Canada ADM Ron Parker).  There are no meetings on intellectual property reported with Prentice himself, who, with few exceptions (notably a Canwest meeting on broadcasting), limited most of his meetings to oil and energy companies (Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, Petro-Canada, Encana, Nexen, Enmax, TransCanada, Imperial Oil).

Full post as published by Michael Geist on August 19, 2008 (boomark / email).