Digital Copyright Canada

The site is coordinated by Russell McOrmond. Please see full contact information.

The Digital Copyright Canada forum was started in Aug 2001 to allow for a public response to that phase of the Canadian copyright revision process. While the forum focuses on digital copyright, related issues of patents, copyright, trademarks (PCT) and other sui generis protections are discussed.

Many of the participants are proponents of more recent "commons-based peer production" methodologies which include Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) and the Creative Commons. Our members come from all parts of society including creative Canadians and audiences, and recognize the importance of both creators' rights and users' rights. Most of our creator members feel the greatest threat to their rights is not copyright infringement, but excessive control by past creators who stifle creativity that builds upon the past.

This site can be seen as divided into different areas:

• Special pages and projects

  
  
  • Canada Votes 2006
    The most recent Canadian federal election was on January 23, 2006.
    
  • Bill C-60 - proposed Liberal copyright legislation - died when election was called.
    
  • Bill C-61 - proposed Conservative copyright legislation.
    
  • Petition for Users' Rights
    
  • Petition to protect Information Technology property rights

    All Canadians should sign these petitions. Use this as a tool to educate your friends and family on what is happening, and please consider engaging in dialog with your member of parliament.
    

  • Links to other Sites
    
  • Copyright Jargon file
    
  • Chronology of Canadian Copyright Law

• Mailing lists

  We use Mailman to manage our lists.

  
  
  • Announcement list
    This is a low-volume moderated list.
    
  • Volunteers
    List for volunteers helping to manage this site.
    
  • General Discussion list
    This is a higher volume publicly archived open forum between Canadians. This is where most of the activity on this site is. Please see the public archives for past discussions.

  • There is a growing number of city or region based lists (Ottawa, Montreal, etc). Please see the full list.

  If you wish to post to one of the lists, please read the posting guidelines.

• Drupal Website

  The main site uses a content management system called Drupal which has a number of features. If you sign up to the site you can then reply to these articles. Once you become known to the administrators your access level will be increased so that you can create your own content.

  Each of the pages part of this system can be in a number of different categories which can be browsed. These categories include policy areas, organizations, and political parties. A major features is the list of Canadian Electoral Districts so you can learn about your member of parliament and organize with people in your own area.

  Features include:
  

  
  
  • Highlights of entries from the web forums, weblogs, and stories. Note: Often this is the page that is bookmarked for frequent visitors to our site
    
  • Personal Weblogs
    
    Every user who is signed up to the website can post messages to their own personal Weblog to let others know what they are thinking about.
    
  • News Agregator
    
    We pull in news feeds from other related sites to provide you a quick interface to related articles.

  You can always track the most recent contributions to the site.

We hope to make Digital Copyright and related technology and cultural policy an area that more Canadian citizens and all federal politicians are familiar with. We can only do this if all concerned citizens talk to each other and to their elected representatives.