Digital Copyright Canada

Denver Gingerich asked Tony Clement some questions, and received a reply from Erik Waddell, Director of Communications, Office of the Honourable Tony Clement. I believe the reply to be incorrect. In it Erik references the WIPO treaty definition of TPMs, something which was included in C-60 but not in C-61 or C-32. Bill C-32 contains the USA DMCA's definition of technical measures.

For those who will be in Ottawa on Saturday, August 14, 2010, I will be presenting a talk titled Why legal protection for technical measures is controversial at Open Source Technology showcase - SC2010.

Not surprisingly, we will be discussing the USA's National Information Infrastructure (NII) Copyright Protection Act of 1995, the 1996 WIPO Internet treaties, the USA's DMCA in 1998, as well as Canadian bills C-60 (2005), C-61 (2008) and C-32 (2010). If it isn't dead yet, we'll discuss the Orwellian double-speak named Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).

There are now only 5 days left to make your voice heard on this critically important issue. In recent years two different governments tabled copyright bills: the Liberal Bill C-60 on June 20, 2005 and the Conservative Bill C-61 on June 12, 2008. (Note: Similar numbers only coincidence). When looking at these bills, both of which died on the order paper, you will notice that the majority of the bills dealt with ratifying two treaties Canada signed in 1996. We must look at these treaties to understanding what will likely form the bulk of the next copyright bill.

>>> Read full article on IT World Canada's blog.

Bruno Godin (constituent in Vancouver Center) posted to the Vancouver Fair Copyright discussion list the text of an election mail out from incumbent Hedy Fry.

C-61: Copyright

Bill C-61, the Conservative government's Copyright Bill was recently tabled in Parliament.  In principle, this bill is necessary: Canada is signatory to World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) treaties, but lags behind other industrialised nations in domestic copyright protection laws.  However, as it stands, C-61 is seriously flawed.  Copyright legislation should balance creators' rights to fair reimbursement for intellectual property and consumer's need to have timely access to creative works.  In the digital age, this brings a new and complex challenge.

Drew Wilson's article on ZeroPaid make the following important point:

Still, is it the end of the Canadian DMCA? Maybe as we know it today, but the copyright debates are far from over.

Bill C-61 will die on the order paper with the election call just as Bill C-60 did when the last election was called. After the election it will be much faster to see a Copyright bill tabled given the two parties who could reasonably form government already have a bill to table.

An article by Drew Wilson for ZeroPaid offers a bit of history on the death of Liberal Bill C-60 and the possible death of Conservative Bill C-61.

We all need to remember that an election being called is not the death of this policy direction, but an opportunity to educate and influence politicians who will be listening far more closely to constituents during an election.

Those who have been pushing this summer to meet with their MP should expand to meeting nominated candidates for a potential upcoming election. We have started to do that for some Ottawa area ridings (I'm focused on Ottawa South).

Gordon Duggan at Appropriation Art has published a comic (PDF) about Canadian Copyright revision. It is a classic battle of good vs. evil of comic proportions where the "Evil Emissaries of American Interests try to suppress the Fantastic Freedom of Expression Fighters".

The cast of characters is somehow familiar.

Evil Emissaries (Or just misinformed?): Harper, Bush, Prentice, Henderson, McTeague, Wilkins, Feinstein / Cronyn, Schwarzenegger, Glickman, Frith, Oda

Fantastic Freedom Fighters: Angus, Doctorow, Geist, Knopf, Murray, Page, McOrmond

Note: This article includes my summary of the 1996 WIPO Internet treaties.

It has been interesting to watch the membership of the Fair Copyright for Canada facebook group grow, as well as the questions to the Minister of Industry posted to the website for CBC's Search Engine. There is an obvious question that people ask, which is why we are opposed to a Copyright bill that hasn't even been tabled yet, and that anyone who has seen it is unable to talk about until it is tabled.

You know that a bill is coming when the topic of Copyright is mentioned many times in the Hansard for a single day. This is in addition to the discussion of "Counterfeiting and Piracy" in Question Period.

Hon. Jim Prentice (Minister of Industry, CPC) - in the context of his Debate on Address in Reply of the Speech from the Throne):

Lance of im addicted has posted a BLOG article based on a reply to some questions he had about my impression of C-60.

Summary: Notice-and-notice is good, but the only positive thing you can say for the rest of C-60 is that it could have been worse. There was nothing positive for creator copyright holders (vs non-creator copyright holding industry association members) or the user community, and no protection for the rights of owners of IT or software authors. I'm not as optimistic as some of the lawyers in our community that C-60 wouldn't have harmed software authors in the same way that the DMCA has in the USA, and I believe this is due to conflicts in language usage between the technical and legal/legislative communities.