Digital Copyright Canada

I have updated the MP database to reflect current MPs. All 307 sitting MPs should now be correct. If there are issues, let me know. I will work on creating a new letter for people to send Re: C-32.

The missing MP is in the riding of Winnipeg North which has been vacant since April 27, 2010, when Judy Wasylycia-Leis announced her retirement from federal politics. She is running for mayor of Winnipeg.

Drew Wilson of ZeroPaid has posted a 3 part interview (Part 1,Part 2,Part 3)with me discussing Copyright and Bill C-32.

On August 14'th I gave a presentation on legal protection for technological measures, and why this policy doesn't fit well within Copyright law (Slides, link to audio recording)

Summary: The types of activities which copyright regulates all assume that you already have access to content. Copyright never concerned itself with concept of access, which was left to other laws.

Technical measures can restrict access, but can't in the real world directly restrict the types of activities that copyright regulates.

Copyright and technical measures are disjoint, but technical measures and other areas of law such as contract and e-commerce overlap.

Is technology useful for stopping an authorized person from doing things which Copyright regulates? Should we radically change "Copyright" to address this problem, or is this a non-Copyright issue?

read more

On August 5'th I received an email that was "From: min.moore@pch.gc.ca". It had no content, but two file attachments - one HTML and one GIF. Thunderbird warned that it was most likely a scam, given this is a common technique used by spammers to avoid SPAM detection software.

I extracted the file attachments, and I wasn't all that surprised to learn that it was a form letter originating from the Heritage Minister's office. This isn't the most technologically literate Minister or department in Canada, and it was unlikely that ensuring emails wouldn't be confused as SPAM or scams would be something they would know much about.

The GIF image was a scan of a form letter, which reads as follows. Having read it, I think Thunderbird was right to have automatically detected it as a scam.

read more

While it would be better if patent offices did proper examinations and rejected all but the inventions most deserving of this intrusive government granted monopoly, it is great that public interest groups like the Public Patent Foundation ("PUBPAT") exist.

New York, NY -- August 26, 2010 -- The Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT) announced today that it has formally asked the United States Patent and Trademark Office to reexamine eight patents held by Abbott Laboratories (NYSE: ABT) relating to the critical HIV/AIDS drug ritonavir, which is marketed by the Chicago, Illinois pharmaceutical giant under the name brand Norvir.

(Read full press release)

read more

For those who did not know, Access Copyright, which represents a limited subset set of Canadian creators and publishers, has proposed (and will likely be granted) a yearly per-student fee for the use of photocopiers by schools. This increase will set the rate to $45 for Universities, and $35 for other educational institution, multiplied by the full time equivalents (FTE). (For details, read this PDF)

I have some sympathy for the economic situation these organizations find themselves in.
...

While I have this sympathy, I don't see what this has to do with Copyright.

Read Full article on IT World Canada's blog...

read more

OTTAWA – In the wake of a controversial proposal on net neutrality advanced by Google and Verizon in the United States, New Democrats are calling on the CRTC to lay down clear rules to ensure equality of access to all information on the Internet for all Canadians.

Read full NDP press release.

I was thinking about the recent DMCA rulemaking in the US, which led me to this "simple guide to copyright".

You can legally do pretty much anything you like with your own property,

unless it's a "fixation" of a copyrighted work and what you want do is a right granted to the rightsholder,

unless it's covered by one of the "fair dealing" exceptions.

That's not too bad. Of course, in the US, or in Canada if C-32 passes as-is, you need to add a couple more lines:

read more

2010-06-11: I sent a letter this afternoon to my Member of Provincial parliament for Ottawa South, who happens to be Premier Dalton McGuinty. I copied it to my federal MP, as well as to Andrea Horwath, Leader of Ontario’s New Democrats, and Tim Hudak, Leader of the Ontario PC Party.

Update 2010-07-29: I have sent an additional letter to Mr. McGuinty.

Thank you for your letter of July 27, 2010, in response to the letter I sent on June 11, 20101. I hope that you will reconsider the response, which was to say that it would be inappropriate for you to comment on a federal piece of legislation.

I forgot to include a link to the FAQ on why I disagree with what CMEC has been asking for.

read more

I met with Justin Trudeau at his office at 625 Faillon Street in Montréal, Québec, from approximately 15:00 to 16:00 on Monday July 19'th. My wife attended as she was interested to meet Mr. Trudeau. The conversation was primarily about Copyright, and when it was nearing 16:00 it was Rina and not one of Mr. Trudeau's staffers that had to remind us that the office was closing when it seemed we might head off into other topics (Census, patenting of life, ....).

read more

A release from the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property (PIJIP) indicates that on Tuesday July 20, a group of public interest organizations, represented by Sean Flynn, Associate Director of PIJIP, will file a complaint alleging that U.S. trade policy in the Obama Administration violates international human rights obligations.

In this case the issue is the promotion of policies restricting access to affordable medications around the world. The report is also abused to promote other highly controversial policies which go beyond or contradict internationally negotiated treaties in areas of patent, copyright, trademark and related rights.

read more

Interesting statistics from Copyright and Technology Blog :

[...] academic research into DRM and other rights technologies in the United States has diminished to virtually nil.

(For example, a search of IEEE shows that of all digital rights-related research papers published from 2008 to the present, 40% were from China, 27% were from the rest of Asia, 20% were from Europe, and less than 4% were from the United States. Spain by itself had more activity than the US.)

Some great news from New Zealand via Paul Matthews of the NZ Computer Society.

Michael Geist has published his submission online which touches many different areas. I'm in full agreement with this submission.

I was thinking about this last night after reading another "but we have to have the C-32 approach to TPMs for the creators to get paid" article, and think I found a way to explain my thinking.

Let's divide Canadians into 4 groups based on their ability to bypass TPMs and their respect for copyright law :

read more

A CBC News article documents yet another failed attempt to misapply technology to solve unrelated legal issue. I only wish this government would do evidence based policy, and look at when specific technologies have failed to solve legal problems elsewhere (IE: access controls in copyright in the USA has been a failure, and yet a far worse version is in Bill C-32). In the case of DMCA TPMs it wasn't a small sample, but a failed experiment committed against the entire country.

In an earlier article describing my limited participation in the Digital Economy consultation I indicated that I wouldn't have the time to make a formal submission. This fact was hilighted in a flattering article by Laurel L. Russwurm, who did make a formal submission, so I thought I would write about why I didn't allocate the time.

read more

The deadline for ideas and submissions on Canada’s digital economy strategy has been extended until midnight, Tuesday, July 13

I don't think I will have the time to make a formal submission. I have instead started to post to the ideas forum. If you agree with these ideas, please vote them up. Please also add comments.

• Protect end-to-end design principle in new communications technology.
  
• Regulate usage of technology in the correct laws
  
• Protect Information Technology property rights
  
• Adopt policy similar to 1991 EU directive on computer programs
  
• Improve competition policy, promotion and enforcement
  

read more

Musician Loreena McKennitt penned an opinion piece where she spoke about declining revenues for a whole series of largely unrelated industries, and then made two wild unfounded claims: first, that "today's online environment, where piracy is virtually unchecked" was the problem, and second that Bill C-32 was a solution.

read more

Author, broadcaster, editor, journalist, musician, negotiator, singer, and MP Charlie Angus has released a letter to Heritage Minister James Moore discussing how the Minister has his facts wrong on Copyright.

It is great that we have an actual creator in parliament, able to speak on behalf of fellow creators, rather than too many parliamentarians that get confused by intermediaries falsely claiming to represent creators!