Copyright Law

Conference Board of Canada Recalls IP Report

By DrewWilson

After publishing a report that suggested that Canada was the piracy capital of the world, Michael Geist noticed that the report was plagiarized. Since then, the board stood by their report in spite of intense questions from the public. Now, the final nail in the coffin of those reports - the Board has announced it has recalled them.

It’s not often we hear of recalls directly related to file-sharing, but this is one of those times.

The Conference Board of Canada published three controversial reports that suggested that Canada was a piracy nation. The reports also suggested that Canada is lagging behind other countries in “updating” our copyright laws and need to undergo copyright reform as soon as possible. Sound familiar? Considering the report, according to many at this point, was plagiarizing an IIPA report, it should. It was becoming ironic that a report that advocating more strict copyright laws to stop piracy would use pirated material to make those claims in the first place.

Shortly after the news broke that the reports were plagiarized, the Board commented that it is standing by their reports and only one citation was missing, nothing more. There was some scepticism over how experts from a broad range of opinions were consulted, but that was confirmed when one of the independent experts commissioned to be part of the copyright report stepped forward, it was clear that not only were independent experts called on to help make the report, but any contradicting information to the Board’s conclusions was ignored.

Now, the Conference Board of Canada announced that it has recalled the reports, saying, “The Conference Board of Canada has recalled three reports: Intellectual Property Rights in the Digital Economy; National Innovation Performance and Intellectual Property Rights: A Comparative Analysis; and Intellectual Property Rights?Creating Value and Stimulating Investment. An internal review has determined that these reports did not follow the high quality research standards of The Conference Board of Canada.”

Ouch, that could not have been easy to admit. Michael Geist noted this as well as an interview by Jesse Brown which revealed that Anne Golden, CEO of Conference Board of Canada, confirmed that the report in question was, in fact, plagiarized.

Still, the Conference Board of Canada isn’t out of the damage control woods yet, but we do know that there has been steps taken to minimize the damage done by those reports.

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Full post as published by ZeroPaid on May 28, 2009 (boomark / email).