RE: [d@DCC] Future CBC "the docket" on digital copyright.

From: Russell McOrmond <russell _-at-_ flora.ca>
To: General Discussion <discuss (at) digital-copyright.ca>
Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 19:19:33 -0500 (EST)

On Tue, 18 Feb 2003, Chris Brand wrote:

> Good luck - I expect it will be quite a challenge.

  It was a challenge.  David Basskin seems to be a very polished and
articulate lobbiest for the copyright extremists.  A conversation with a
government bureaucrat later in the afternoon confirmed this.  He entirely
dominated the conversation, not allowing Allison (the other guest - she
and the host were in Halifax) or myself to get much of a word into the
debate.

  I believe I fumbled the ball on the questions as I didn't realize who 
David really was until well into the very short debate.

  The question of "if someone downloads a piece of music from the
Internet, is that wrong" is not a trivial yes/no answer.  This is
especially in light of the fact that the 'downloading' part seems to be
covered by the Private Copying regime (IE:  it is legal if the music is
put onto a blank CD), and the 'uploading' part -- while illegal -- is
still a non-commercial de minimis crime.

  The extremist privacy invasions into peoples homes and private lives
required to enforce this de minimis crime greatly outweigh the severity of
the crimes themself.  I really believe that if folks like David were
involved with transportation policy, he would be lobbying to break peoples
legs to prevent them from jaywalking (and not waiting until they have ever
jaywalked before doing so).

  David tried the rhetoric of suggesting that "Not authorized by copyright
holder" == Infringement, which is simply false.  He knows this is false,
given he is also a spokesperson for the CPCC.

  I wish it wasn't such a short amount of time.  I tried to get into the
business models question (Not everyone wants royalty-only, all collected
centrally through collective societies and other industry
associations/intermediaries), but David yet again cut me off before I had
a chance to explain that situation.

> See if you can point out that Copyright law only expanded to include
> reproduction because reproduction was expensive enough that it was only
> reasonable to reproduce a work in order to publish it (which was covered
> by Copyright). A very different world to the one we now find ourselves
> in.

  I had a two-page cheat sheet I made based on the little documentary
piece they will air before the debate and from things I researched typing
the other guests names into Google.  Before we went on the air I was told
to put them away as it was too obvious I was looking at them ;-)  I made
barely 2 points of what I had written down, didn't get to mention any of
the names I wanted to, etc.  It was so short, and David completely took 
over the conversation.

> Incidentally, in my conversations with co-workers and the like,
> I find that very few people have any idea how long Copyright lasts.
> Most expect it to be 10 or 20 years and are *very* surprised to
> find that it lasts beyond the creators death.

  And David suggests that Canada is falling far behind the rest of the
world (really, only the USA -- who is pushing their narrow vision through
WIPO) based on his extremist interpretation of copyright.


  The only thing we all agreed on is that there needs to be more education
on copyright.  My goals are to get Canadians to get involved to change
copyright to meet the needs of citizens, and David and Lesley want people
to change to meet the desires of copyright extremists and special interest
groups.


BTW:  Get ready to send in letters to the team at The Docket.  I am hoping 
that they will do more on this topic, and include more guests from our 
community.

http://cbc.ca/thedocket/

> Chris 
---
 Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/>
 Any 'hardware assist' for communications, whether it be eye-glasses, 
 VCR's, or personal computers, must be under the control of the citizen 
 and not a third party.   -- http://www.flora.ca/russell/

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