Digital Copyright Canada

Sorry. It would have probably made more sense to send the letter in the 
body of the email. Here it is:

I am a musician, a programmer and an amateur photographer. Typically, 
much of my art work and software contributions are made available 
through my website, or through the websites of the parties to which I 
have contributed. With copyright issues making headlines in the news 
these days, I thought it important to educate myself on how these laws 
affect me, and my work.

In my research I have found that there has been much movement on the 
part of the federal government to update laws to reflect the current 
“digital age”. This can be seen through the Standing Committee on 
Canadian Heritage's Government Status Report on Copyright Reform. The 
recommendations of this report have raised some serious concerns in my 
mind about the direction of Canada's copyright laws.

In the committee's report, there are recommendations to hold Internet 
Service Providers (ISPs) liable for copyright infringement if 
infringement has occurred through the use of their service. Though the 
recommendation (Recommendation 3) does exempt liability if the ISP acts 
as an intermediary “without actual or constructive knowledge of the 
transmitted content”, it is unclear what “constructive knowledge” 
implies. As a consumer of such services, I am fearful that if such a 
recommendation where to be accepted, ISPs would be forced to monitor my 
activities which would raise privacy concerns, and would most likely 
cost more as the additional cost of monitoring would likely be passed on 
to the consumer. For a country that prides itself on being on the 
forefront of the technological wave, this recommendation would have 
serious adverse affects.

Another recommendation put forth by the committee was that material on 
the Internet is only considered public if it is “ accompanied by notice 
from the copyright owner explicitly consenting that the material can be 
used without prior payment or permission”. This means any material that 
is not accompanied by a notice relinquishing any rights is subject under 
normal copyright law. One of the many problems with this is that 
citizens from other countries will not be aware of Canadian copyright 
law and will not make the appropriate steps to ensure that material 
intended to be shared can be shared. In addition, most Canadians will 
most likely not be aware of the new laws regarding this issue, and may 
unknowingly break them.

This brings up perhaps the biggest issue I see in this whole debate. The 
complexities of the recommended changes to the copyright law make it 
difficult for the average Canadian to understand the issues. As a 
result, it appears much of the opinions and input to the committee is 
from large special interest groups who wish to see more restrictions and 
changes to the benefit of the creators, and very little opinions or 
input from the perspective of the Canadian public.

As it stands today, I believe Canadian copyright law successfully 
strikes a balance between the rights of creators and the rights of 
consumers. While I appreciate the government's willingness to stay 
current with the impacts of technology on the law, the direction of the 
committee's recommendations only go towards weakening the 
creator-consumer balance and put into deport the sharing, co-operation, 
and knowledge building that defines the Internet community and indeed 
Canada.

-- 
Trevor Curtis
http://www.somaradio.ca/~tcurtis
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Digital Copyright Canada

Re: [d@DCC] A stab at writing to an MP

All Canadian Citizens are "Rights Holders"!