Copyright reform pledge gaining steam
With so many issues vying for attention as the Canadian election draws
nearer, it's getting harder and harder to get support for one's own
particular favourite. It's notable, then, that University of Ottawa
internet law professor Michael Geist is managing to drum up significant
political backing for balanced copyright reform legislation.
Bill C-61 explained
Jim Prentice refusing to answer questions, just keeps shouting
Canadian Industry Minister lies about his Canadian DMCA on national radio, then hangs up
CBC Radio's Search Engine just posted/aired its interview with Canadian
Industry Minister Jim Prentice about his Canadian version of the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act. They've been trying to get him on the
air for months now and he finally consented to ten minutes, but he
delivered nothing but spin and outright lies about his legislation and
ended up hanging up on Jesse Brown, the interviewer.
You have to listen to this -- in it, the Minister lies, dodges,
weaves and ducks around plain, simple questions like, "If the guy at my
corner shop unlocks my phone, is he breaking the law?" and "If my
grandfather breaks the DRM on his jazz CDs to put them on his iPod,
does that break the law?" and the biggie, "All the 'freedoms' your law
guarantees us can be overriden by DRM, right?" (Prentice's answer to
this last one, "The market will take care of it," is absolutely
priceless.)
Copyright cock-up
On the surface of it, Jim Prentice's Bill C-61 spells out a number of
consumer-friendly provisions like time-shifting, format-shifting and
exceptions for personal use. But each one has an asterisk attached:
users will be forbidden from breaking technological locks – sometimes
called Digital Rights Management, or DRM – to access content.
This has the funny effect of making it kind of irrelevant how strong a
digital lock is. The fact that the lock on an iTunes song is fairly
easy to circumvent wouldn't matter, because now that lock would have
the force of law behind it. Nor would it matter whether your intended
use of the material is fair game, even under Canada's woefully
ill-defined “fair dealing” provisions.
So what's in the new copyright bill?
So what does the proposed copyright legislation, Bill C61, have in
store for you? Aside from not being able to download free music any
more, it puts all sorts of limitations on intellectual property and how
it can be used.
The Canadians' worst fear is that the bill has been unduly
influenced by the powerful U.S. music, movie and TV lobby, which
managed to get the U.S. Congress to pass the Digital Millennium
Copyright Act, which gives corporations such as the music industry
unprecedented powers to investigate and enforce copyright law. Among
other things, the DMCA is unclear about the concept of "fair use,"
which Canada calls "fair dealing," which allows use of content for
purposes such as satire.
Copyright reform: The 1,000-pound gorilla at the Telecom Summit
There is a real fear among Canadians that this predicted spread of
digital content to every device will come to an abrupt halt with the
digital lock provision in the proposed legislation. Indeed, it's an
issue many of Canadians want answers to – the copyright protest group
on Facebook has seen more than 20,000 new members join since the reform
bill was introduced on Thursday, bringing total membership to 61,000.
Yet, no one at the summit is talking about it.
The issue of copyright reform may be raised during Tuesday's
"regulatory blockbuster" panel session. Perhaps then the gorilla will
come out of its cage.
Copywrong Protection
Imagine if the federal government passed a law that would make nearly
half of all Canadians criminals. Imagine if your Internet Service
Provider was obliged to report any customers who up/download more than
20MB per day. Imagine if Canada’s laws were written to protect US
corporations rather than Canadian citizens.
Canada's new copyright bill: More spin than 'win-win'
The worst thing about the bill is that it makes its own balancing
provisions irrelevant. The bill essentially says that technology trumps
whatever rights consumers or competitors might have otherwise had. So
the law no longer matters. People only have whatever rights content
owners choose for them.
For instance, if the CD you're now
allowed to shift to your iPod is technologically locked down, then,
well, sorry -- you're completely out of luck. Try to circumvent the
access and copy controls, and the well-publicized provision to limit
damages to $500 for noncommercial infringements no longer applies.
You're on the hook for up to $20,000 per infringement, which is
actually $60,000 per song by the time you account for the composer,
performer and record label. Multiply that by a dozen or so songs and
you get a sense of the damage awards really possible if this bill
becomes law.