Case 1: The Ontario Human Rights Commission has declined to rule on a complaint brought by Arab and Muslim groups against Maclean’s and writer Mark Steyn. The OHRC said its mandate doesn’t cover such things but added, like a consolation prize: “Freedom of expression should be exercised through responsible reporting.” This is clearly wrong. Freedom of expression is exercised through irresponsible reporting — or what some people see that way. That’s when the need to protect it arises.

The interesting part of the case is that the complainers asked not for an apology or correction — but for the right to reply, unedited, in Maclean’s. Maclean’s refused. I think this clarifies the stakes on both sides. For Maclean’s owner Ted Rogers, what counts is not his right to free expression but his right to distribute massively what he chooses (through those he hires) to express. It’s the reverse of the freedom to sleep under a bridge, which is available to rich and poor alike. The other guys are free to publish magazines, too. But the complainers demanded the right to express themselves with the same reach that Ted Rogers provides to Mark Steyn. Call it the right to equal amplification of free expression. That doesn’t sound unreasonable, but it turns a legal issue into an economic one. How you respond to that in a society where money controls media, I have no idea.

Case 2: CanWest, the Asper family firm that owns papers across Canada, plus Global TV and other bagatelles, is suing various parties in B.C. for printing a parody of CanWest’s Vancouver Sun. This shows CanWest can’t take a joke, and more. The suit is for trademark infringement, although no one could take the parody for the Sun. It has only one joke: CanWest’s support for virtually anything Israel’s government does. It isn’t very funny — it has bylines like “Hy Pocrazy.” But CanWest’s Mideast coverage is pretty parodic on its own. Founder Izzy Asper said, “In all our newspapers … we have a very pro-Israel position. … We are the strongest supporter of Israel in Canada.”

The suit includes bystander Mordecai Briemberg, who picked up copies of the parody and handed it out at a bus stop. It describes him solely in terms of his pro-Palestinian views, implying that’s why he’s named. It’s hard to believe there would have been a suit at all if it weren’t for the focus on Israel and the Asper obsession but, as the founding father said, “When you own a newspaper, the inmates … don’t run the asylum.” The owners do.

Case 3: The heirs of Superman’s creators, Jerome Siegel and Torontonian Joe Shuster, are about to get some justice. The two sold DC Comics all rights to their hero for $130 each in 1938. By law, rights revert to the families 25 years after the creators’ deaths. A judge has ruled this only applies to traits in the character present at the time of sale, so it covers Lois Lane but not Jimmy Olson, the cape but not the S. He leaps tall buildings but he doesn’t fly. But hold on. Once you start separating elements like this, who really created Superman? How about Hesiod and Homer? Or Nietzsche? Every major creation has a bundle of origins.

I thought about this during a deeply satisfying, seven-hour production in Toronto of Nicholas Nickleby, from the U.K.’s Chichester Festival Theatre. Hey, this looks like the same kind of play we did in the 1970s, I thought. Talking to the audience, fast cuts between scenes, multiple roles. Till I realized it’s already all there in Shakespeare, every bit. His characters address the audience, they set the scene, there’s no curtain, it shifts abruptly, you jump from boudoir to battlefield. What are creative rights anyway? Everything enduring is multi-sourced, and usually multi-pilfered. Who created the notion of the individual creative genius? It’s a myth, too! Who owns the rights to that?

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Rick Salutin

Rick Salutin is a Canadian novelist, playwright and critic. He is a strong advocate of left wing causes and writes a regular column in the Toronto Star.