Canadian copyright cops apparently less bothered about other people's copyright

Canipre, the dreadfully-named, self-appointed copyright industry authority in Canada, appears to be lifting content for its website without attribution, observes Michael Geist:

Yet what Canipre does not say is that a blog associated with the company may have been engaged in copyright infringement for many months. The blog – copyrightenforcement.ca – is run by Barry Logan, the company’s Managing Director, Operations (I received an email from Mr. Logan last year that listed the site as his blog address). In addition to posting releases from Canipre and information about the TekSavvy case, the site has posted dozens of full-text articles from media organizations around the world.

For example, last week it posted the full text of a 1200 word article on TV piracy from the Wire Report, an Ottawa-based telecom publication. The article resides behind a paywall limited to subscribers and is listed as “exclusive content.” In fact, reposting full-text articles from other sources is a regular occurrence on the site. Posts in December feature articles from the Huffington Post Canada, Business Insider, and CNET. Earlier posts include full-text articles from the Hollywood Reporter, StreamDaily, Reuters, the Canadian Press, Global News, Vancouver Sun, and the National Post. Some of the posts include articles that strip out reference to the author (Chronicle Herald, CBC) and others include no attribution whatsoever. The site also uses photos from the articles, often without attribution.

Of course, it might be that copyrightenforcement.ca have got all their paperwork in place and just don't bother to mention it on their website. It's possible. But Canipre do have form for taking material and reusing it without permission. When caught using material without the proper licence last time, Logan suggested it was a good thing because it showed, somehow, that the "system worked". Perhaps he's just trying to prove that again?