Digital Copyright Canada

This year finally the kids are getting ebook readers for Christmas. So far I have been holding off from purchasing such devices because of the Digital Restrictions Management which is associated with them.

My opposition to them changed somewhat when I found that one of my favorite book publishers (O'Reilly) does not use any DRM and they actually trust their customers enough to take their word for it when they state that they already own the paper copy of a book so that they can then qualify for a $5 upgrade to the digital version. And these are not cheap books often between $50 and $100 per copy. This has bought a lot of good will from me, and when I am looking for technical books in the future (which I do frequently) I will certainly try to give preference to O'Reilly.

In response to the recent report by the chief Electoral Officer regarding electronic voting, I sent the following brief email to elections canada

Yes, lift the ban. It is silly and unenforceable.

DO NOT IMPLEMENT ELECTRONIC VOTING. It cannot be done anonymously and verifiably. Two key requirements for democratic elections.

Do more advance polls if you like, have pollsters go to peoples houses if you like, but do not get rid of the paper ballot. It is the irreplaceable cornerstone of democracy.

Impressively, today I received the following reply from Elections Canada, which is actually more than a mere form letter.

The National Post had an interesting article today on the election and Elections Canada's increasingly futile attempt to try to keep a lid on election results across time zones.

It quotes Dan Zen, professor of interactive multimedia at Sheridan Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning who said "There must be lots of options but I know one option that isn’t going to work is trying to enforce secrecy over Twitter and Facebook. That’s just not going to work, so expectation needs to change."

This morning I presented an ethical copyright question to a long time outspoken commentator and strong copyright proponent, John Degen. To say we do not see eye to eye on copyright matters would be to severely understate the point. None the less I was sincerely interested in his perspective of this copyright scenario so I posted it to his blog.

James Gannon had a post last week which was rather honest about the purpose of DRM protection in copyright law. It is all about supporting the business model that the incumbent industries want to adopt.

Unlike some Ministers of her Majesty's government, I am genuinely interested in understanding the perspective of those in this debate whom I disagree with.

Michael Geist has a timely article in the Star today discussing cell phone locking to cellular networks. The current copyright bill (C-32) makes a specific exception within its DRM provisions for allowing subscribers to unlock their cell phones for the purpose of switching network provider.

I had a conversation last night with a friend who is on our towns library board. The board had their final meeting before the summer break, and the issue of copyright never came up. [sigh] Aside from this all being part of the government's plan to keep this legislation as low key as possible, this library board is woefully ignorant of copyright issues. To help rectify that I am doing a little bit of research into copyright from the libraries perspective which we can hopefully provide to the board in time for them to make their own statement.

I read this article in Wired today. What blew me away most about it had nothing to do with yet-another-round-of-legal-shenanigans that the article was about. Rather, it was the quoted 30 million unique users per month that ISOHunt.com enjoys.

Well, in light of yesterday's new copyright Bill, it looks like it is time to start becoming active again. Below is the letter I drafted this morning to my MP.

If we are to have any chance of effecting real change to this bill, or killing it if change is not possible, then we must be vocal with our MPs and let them know how unhappy we are with it.

With Bill C-61 there was enough vocal opposition to it that it was delayed many months in the house until the government was finally prorogued. We must be able to do this again.

From today's Globe and Mail.

“Significant international discussions on Arctic issues should include those who have legitimate interests in the region,” the U.S. Secretary of State said.

Ms. Clinton apparently believed strongly enough, that all parties with vested interests should be included in the discussion, that she did not come to the conference.