I am curious about the politicised deployment of the Bank of Canada’s copyright interests. In response to a satirical image circulated by cartoonist Dan Murphy on or around May 29, 2013, the Bank of Canada issued a cease-and-desist order to Artizans, the distribution agency for the cartoon. Since Mr. Murphy intended the cartoon as political satire and is self-employed as a political satirist, it stands to reason that the Bank of Canada is grounding its complaints in the commercial activities of the ostensibly offending cartoonist. Surely such is within the legal jurisdiction of present copyright law in Canada. However, the question then becomes why the image of Canadian money is itself copyrightable material.
Copyright law is intended to protect the rights of content producers to the profitable sale of the material their create. Obviously, in the age of mechanical reproduction the ability to economically produce facsimiles of literature, fine and commercial art, music, “IP”, and product design necessitates that the rights of creators be protected to ensure the continuing economic viability of such innovations.
To this end, I cannot help but wonder about the desire of the Bank of Canada to restrict the use of images referencing Canadian money. Certainly, measures to control the production and circulation of counterfit bills are necessary to protect the integrity of the monetary system. However, the deployment of copyright law against a political cartoon (or any other creative recontextualisation of such images as dollar bills) does not serve to protect either the integrity of the country’s monetary system, nor the commercial interests of the Bank of Canada, the producer of the images in question as protected under copyright. The Bank of Canada will not have its creation undervalued and will not face competition in the marketplace as a result of the breach of copyright law as reflected by Dan Murphy’s editorial cartoon. In fact, I would argue that the operations of the Bank of Canada, commercial or otherwise, are entirely unaffected by the creative recontextualisation of images of Canadian money. Moreover, the creative recontextualisation of the images of Canadian money is entirely within the public’s interest and right to live as informed and active citizens as protected by the freedom of expression clause of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, namely Section 2b of the Constitution Act.
Furthermore, in this particular instance the nature of the creative asset being protected needs to be examined. Unlike commercial products which require copyright provisions to maintain their economic and social value, money as instantiated in dollar bills and their likeness as representations (please note that the ontology of representation is beyond the scope of this letter; refer to your local university media studies/literature/philosophy department for details) is not the end product of commerce but rather the infrastructure by (and in) which commerce is enacted. This fact is the first indicator that the Bank of Canada is improperly applying copyright law to protect the creative recontextualisation of the images of Canadian money. Unlike the reproduction of an artist’s graphic design work, a musician’s song, or a company’s retail packaging, the reproduction of Canadian money does not devalue money in terms of either its economic or symbolic operations. Unlike a creative person or business which loses a sale to counterfeit goods, or has the price of sale affected by the availability of counterfeit reproductions, the marketplace in which the Bank of Canada operates is not affected by the reproduction of images of dollar bills. In no way is the Bank of Canada compromised in its function or intention. In its institutional capacity, the Bank of Canada is not a producer of goods, but rather a regulator of the infrastructure of commerce. As such, the end results of its operations, namely the dollar bills themselves, can be afforded no protections under current Canadian copyright law except to the extent that the counterfeit production of money is restricted. The Bank of Canada should indeed deploy copyright law to ensure that the majority of (if not all) bills in circulation have been manufactured by and remain under the supervision of the mint. Any other use of copyright law by the Bank of Canada oversteps the intentions of copyright provisions as well as the mandate foundational to the Bank.
Satire has a long history of constitutional protection as free speech. For satire to function, it must redeploy and recontextualise the contemporary images of politics, culture, art, science, technology, and economic practice. To focus on the present situation, political cartoons have a long history of using nationally-accurate depictions of dollar bills as important symbols and referents for the syntax and meaning in which the cartoon can be understood to operate. They also serve as visual shorthand frequently deployed in political cartoons for a variety of concepts such as greed and corruption. To be specific in this instance, Dan Murphy’s cartoon, which recontextualises a Canadian $50 polymer bill to make statements (again, which themselves have a long history of being protected by freedom of expression laws) about contemporary politics, namely the activities of one particular public figure and the (rather scandalous and illegal) activities responsible for the instance of their public notoriety presently. Despite the commercial nature of Mr. Murphy’s enterprise, his actions were protected under Section 29.1 of the Copyright Act as the syntax and content of the message relayed by the cartoon is one of political commentary and not one whereby the function or intentions of the Bank of Canada as manifest in the image of a dollar bill is in any way undermined or absconded by the cartoonist. Again, in no way does the cartoon challenge the “market” wherein the processes and institutions of money as regulated by the Bank of Canada operate. As copyright provisions are grounded in the idea that unauthorised reproduction devalues the market for the good or service in question, in no way can it be applied to the Bank of Canada’s “ownership” of dollar bills as images, as such cannot be understood to be a goods or services produced and sold in a competitive marketplace.
Here, I turn to what I interpret as the politicised deployed of copyright law by the Bank of Canada. The image of Canadian money has been reproduced on flyers disseminated for advertising purposes by supermarkets and dollar stores, and is routinely used on flyers produced and distributed by local businesses. Usually, the reproduced image signals to the reader of a sale or reduction in price, or of how the use of this product or service will save the reader money. Perhaps such is done outside of media reportage, but I have not heard of other instances where the Bank of Canada produces and delivers a cease-and-desist order to the ostensible copyright violator. In the case of Dan Murphy’s political cartoon, it appears to outside observers that the Bank of Canada is taking an interest in this particular “violation” of their copyright to silence a criticism against a scandal which extends throughout the ranks of the current government. As the Bank of Canada is a government institution, it is not much of a stretch for these same outside observers to question the political (and politicised) intentions of this particular intervention by the Bank of Canada.
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