Digital Copyright Canada

The Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS), a scientific institute of the European Commission, released a report with a familiar message: illegal music downloads aren't a substitute for legal music downloads. While I believe this type of research is critical to debunk the outrageous claims about the economic harm abused to justify backward policy choices, I don't think economic impact alone is the entire story.

If someone broke into our home and did not take anything, only rummaged through our belongings (possibly taking pictures, etc), we would still feel violated. Integral to home ownership is the right to decide who can enter our homes, and our privacy and property rights are violated even if nothing was taken or damaged, and there was no economic impact.

I was pointed to an article on G+ asking for language when someone takes control of their own computer in a way that is designed to be done by the manufacturer, rather than using an exploit that circumvents the intention of the manufacturer. The term "jailbreaking" and "rooting" are often used, sometimes not differentiating between these very different scenarios.

I prefer to use language that expresses the issue from the point of the owner, rather than third parties including device manufacturers or copyright holders.

A device that is comes unlocked, is designed to be unlockable, or where it is designed for the owner to be able to change the locks, could simply be called non-infringing hardware.

Each year WIPO declares April 26'th as their "World Intellectual Property Day", and I consider this to be an ideal time to hilight the harm that WIPO's narrow-minded policies cause to creativity and other human rights documented within the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

As I read The Wire Report and Michael Geist's blog reporting on the CRTC's mandatory distribution hearings, I am of two minds.

On one hand I've intervened in front of the CRTC in the past to state that I believe that broadcasters have to choose between mandatory carriage and fee for carriage, with the CRTC never granting both. The only channels that should be mandatory on BDU's (cable, satellite) are those which have no carriage fees. The CRTC may mandate that the channels be offered in an a-la-carte fashion, but never part of the basic package.

On the other hand, I think increasing the price to the point that more people disconnect from BDU's can only be a good thing in the long run.

Universities have been slow in modernizing how they fund educational material, but have finally been moving away from post-payment (primarily monopoly rent seeking) to pre-payment where the authoring, editing and other works is paid up-front with the results shareable royalty-free.  Doing things as post-payments has allowed third parties to extract huge amounts from educational budgets, and it is far past time that universities took responsibility for these costs downloaded on students and the taxpayer.

This isn't a new issue, even if there is a new Conservative Government bill C-56 tabled before parliament. The long and short titles tell a shortform of the dishonesty:

An Act to amend the Copyright Act and the Trade-marks Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts

Short Title: Combating Counterfeit Products Act

I sent the following to my MP and to the Minister of Industry:

Mr McGuinty, my MP for Ottawa South,
Cc: The Honourable Christian Paradis, Minister of Industry,

As you know I have spent more than a decade working on protecting technology owners from various forms of infringement of their tangible property rights. Much of the threats to property rights comes from people and organizations falsely claiming such infringements are necessary to protect their rights.

To borrow from a related phrase: One owners right to protect their property ends at my right to protect my property.

Dan Gillmor offers great words for those of us mourning Aaron Swartz.

January 1'st each year we morbidly celebrate the death of authors and other creative persons. Flaws in the law mean the expiry of the copyright monopoly, and works finally entering the public domain to the enrichment of all humanity, is most often calculated from the year of a creative person's death.

Wallace J.McLean, Meera Nair and Michael Geist all blogged about the celebration.

There has been considerable discussion (debate, flamewars) about gun control in the wake of the tragic shooting in Newton, Conn. -- so much that the NRA hid its Facebook page to avoid hosting flame wars.

It is hard for me not to be reminded of the debates about computer control while listening to all the debates on gun control.  (See: Protecting the property, privacy and other rights of owners: Bill C-19 and Bill C-11 , The long computer registry and IT control).