Digital Copyright Canada

My comments:

    Summary of my position for the Committee on Canadian Heritage

    Any discussion of copyright must begin and end with freedom of 
    expression. Technological Protection Measures (TPMs) should not and 
    cannot be protected by Canadian law: they should not be protected because 
    such protection would harm Canadian policy goals, and they cannot be 
    protected because such protection would be contrary to the Constitution.  

List the violations here, e.g. freedom of speech, accessibility of 
information, academic freedom, inaccessibility in the future, ....

    Recent efforts towards TPM protection in other jurisdictions (most 
    notably the USA) have had disastrous results in driving away research and 
    development, and we in Canada would do well to avoid making the same 
    mistakes.  The underlying balances of copyright law require that 
    sometimes copying of work must be permitted even explicitly against the 
    wishes of the copyright privilege holders, for instance for purposes of 
    critical review.  Since TPMs are designed to enforce the privilege 
    holder's wishes rather than the law, legal protection of TPMs amounts to 
    allowing privilege holders to re-write the law to suit themselves.  

<Devil's advocate> So why is that wrong? Don't they own it? Shouldn't 
they be able to protect their property? </Devil's advocate> 

    There has been some debate as to the appropriate response when material 
    is claimed to be posted on the Internet in violation of copyright.  
    Privilege holders' groups have consistently demanded a regime they call 
    "notice and takedown", in which someone claiming to hold copyright 
    privileges can demand that material be removed from public distribution 
    without needing a court order.  I call that the Alice in Wonderland 
    regulatory regime: sentence first, verdict afterwards!  The poster of the 
    allegedly infringing material is punished in advance even if they are 
    later found to be innocent of any wrongdoing.  This kind of regime exists 
    in the U.S.A. and has already been abused to suppress legitimate non-
    copyright-infringing comments on issues of political interest.  I further 
    note that in Canada, even alleged child pornography cannot be legally 
    "taken down" without a court order.  We are insane to consider treating 
    copyright infringement as worse than child pornography.

Nor should individuals or companies take on the role of the courts!

    Finally, I am concerned about liability for publishing links.  Standard 
    practice is for Web sites to publish the addresses of other Web sites, in 
    a convenient machine-readable form.  My own personal Web site contains 
    several hundred links to other sites, including many to the Government of 
    Canada.  

    If one of those sites were to post illegal material, I would not 
    necessarily know about it and would certainly have no responsibility for 
    it; it is important that my publishing a link to a site must not make me 
    liable for that site's possible illegal activities, in the same way that 
    a newspaper which publishes the address of a house is not liable for 
    criminal activities committed by the residents of that house.  Publishing 
    links is an act of protected expression; and any discussion of copyright 
    must begin and end with freedom of expression.  

Also, even though you checked each link when you posted it, the contents 
could change the next minute, and again the minute after.

----------

Since your summary may be the only thing seen by policy makers, I suggest 
that you include more details. Keep the reasoning in the supporting 
documents. Assume the reader has NOT read and will never read the details 
of your argument. 

tOM

On Sunday, August 17, 2003 at 15:32
Matthew Skala <discuss@digital-copyright.ca> wrote:

> A draft of my "summary" for the Heritage Committee is at
>    http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/temporary/summary
> 
> I have to send this very soon because I'm about to go off on vacation, but
> any quick review or comments from y'all, would be appreciated.
> -- 
> Matthew Skala - CS/Math grad student and general troublemaker.
> Be warned that I am in vacation mode at the moment; replies may not be
> prompt or verbose, and I can't decode encrypted mail, until early September.
> http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/   http://www.edifyingfellowship.org/
> 
> --
> For (un)subscription information, posting guidelines and
> links to other related sites please see http://www.digital-copyright.ca
> 

---- Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur ----
   ,__@	tOM Trottier +1 613 860-6633 fax:+1-775-307-4133
 _-\_<,	758 Albert St.,Ottawa ON Canada K1R 7V8
(*)/'(*)		ICQ:57647974 N45.412 W75.714
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a 
little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor 
safety." -- Benjamin Franklin
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too 
much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.
-Thomas Jefferson 1743-1826)

--
For (un)subscription information, posting guidelines and
links to other related sites please see http://www.digital-copyright.ca

Digital Copyright Canada

Re: [d@DCC] Summary for Heritage Committee

All Canadian Citizens are "Rights Holders"!