[d@DCC] Unreasonable copyright extension - BIll C-36 s21

From: "tOM Trottier" <Tom _-at-_ Abacurial.com>
To: "Member of Parliament"<Memb (at) r>
Date: Fri, 06 Jun 2003 15:53:47 -0400

Dear Member,

The new copyright reform bill, C-36 section 21, will extend copyright for 
unpublished works to more than 100 years past the death of the author.

This is idiotic! These works should pass into the public domain 50 years after 
the author's death. The author doesn't need the money. Surely his or her 
progeny have grown up by then and can make their own way in the world on past 
profits, if not their own labour.

This deprives the public, scholars, genealogists, broadcasters, publishers, 
dramatists and others of access to creations of a century earlier, and would 
forbid them to create derivative works. 99.9% of these works - diaries, 
letters, recordings, and so on - will not have any identifiable current 
copyright owner, leading to fruitless and expensive searches of multiple 
successions of wills, possibly litigation, and excess work by the copyright 
board to grant licenses, just to publish some genealogy or academic research, 
in print, or even on an internet web page.

Extending the copyright will not provide any extra incentive to creators. Most 
works were not for publication in any event. It will encumber works that should 
be in the public domain, expressions of our history, personal recollections 
unpublished creations. It will obstruct dramatisations and broadcasts. It will 
obstruct publishing research, even over the internet. It will obstruct 
publishing and finding information about our common ancestors.

Please also see 
    "Longer copyright called threat to researchers", 
    Ian Jack, Financial Post, June 4 2003, p. FP4; 
    "Ottawa champions copyright, or some of it", 
    Ian Jack, Financial Post, May 12 2003, p. FP1. 
    The Financial Post is the business section of the National Post.  

Bill C-36 is a valuable bill to reorganise the National Library and National 
Archives. 

But section 21 is a pall on society, on history, on creation.

Please sever section 21 from Bill C36 for separate consideration later.

Then, later, please obliterate section 21 completely.

Sincerely,
Tom A. Trottier
--------- (nota bene: case of "tOM" is correct)
tOM A. Trottier,        +1 613 860-6633
758 Albert St, Ottawa ON Canada K1R 7V8
---------
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little 
temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
		-- Benjamin Franklin

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