Re: [Cdn-DMCA] What happened in Halifax?

From: "Chris Palmer" <cpalmer _-at-_ accesscable.net>
To: "No DMCA in Canada" <canada-dmca-opponents (at) flora.org>
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2002 11:28:05 -0400
References: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0203112052330.5781-100000@diamond.ansuz.sooke.bc.ca>

From: <mskala@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca>



> On Sun, 10 Mar 2002, Chris Palmer wrote:
> > video,book) one author; there are multiple rights in most files. I.E.
Corel
> > has copyright in format of Wordperfect files, HC copyright in contents.
Gave
> > example of  genealogy files, these often have a format copyright,
>
> Careful there - it's not clear to me that a "format copyright" exists
> under current law, and I wouldn't want to encourage people to try claiming
> one.  I don't think Corel has any privileges over documents in WordPerfect
> format merely because they are in WordPerfect format.

Think of when someone reprints say "Alice in Wonderland", there is a
copyright in the typography, layout, illustrations (that particular printing
plate of the original illustration), any extra comments by the editor, and
so on.  The wording of the text is public domain; the display of that text
is copyrighted.

Whether that allows  Adobe to lock up the Alice  in an "ebook" and refuse
people the right to "read aloud" is another thing...


Reverse engineering of computer files, even for compatibility, has been
litigated. I seem to recall that the leading case in the US was for a
company that created a program to convert between CAD files, say from
Minicad to Autocad; this was ruled legal in the US. I believe there is only
one similar case in Canada, and there the reverse engineer _lost_. (But the
case was from the 80's and may perhaps be too old.)

>
> > Is it legal for me to write this program? By putting the buttons on so
the
> > user makes the decision is the illegal act committed by the user who
presses
> > the button, not the programmer?
> >
> > No clear answer, but they did mark that one down. From comments,I
suspect
> > the program was legal.
>
> Under what law?  We don't have any DRM protection in Canada at the moment,
> so your anti-DRM program is trivially legal; are you saying it would still
> be legal under some specific proposed law?

There are two points here:

1. I was trying to determine whether the act of writing or distributing  the
program was illegal, or if the illegal activity was by the person clicking
the yes button.

2. D'oh, forgot to ask about future plans.

However, In the "Perspectives of the Department" section, they say:

"Prohibiting circumvention for infringing purposes could be addressed as a
matter of copyright policy - prohibiting unauthorized access and
circumvention devices may be better addressed in other laws"

In other words DMCA may be part of another round of legislation. They were
clear that they do not consider access control to be part of this session.
They do not seem to be advocating hard ball tactics like the US. (Yeah, I
know most people on this list think thats a crafty ploy...)

I think a big question they are dealing with is "When is a copy an
infringing copy?" Are temporary buffers infringing, archive backups, how big
a buffer before it becomes a copy??? Is zipp'ing a file an infringement?

Chris


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