Fee-for-carriage hits Supreme Court: BDU lawyers say CRTC overstepped authority

OTTAWA - Lawyers for the broadcast distribution undertakings (BDUs) told the Supreme Court of Canada on Tuesday that the CRTC’s regulations can’t trump retransmission provisions within the Copyright Act. Jay Kerr-Wilson, a partner at Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP who was representing Rogers Communications, said the CRTC stepped into copyright law when it established its value-for-signal (VFS) regime (also known as fee-for-carriage) and argued that the CRTC doesn’t have the authority to set new copyright, since only Parliament has that right. “The CRTC cannot have the jurisdiction to do what it proposed since its proposed scheme creates a new copyright in...