[d@DCC] Government response to Heritage Committee Interim report: next week.

From: Russell McOrmond <russell _-at-_ flora.ca>
To: General Copyright Discussions <discuss (at) list.digital-copyright.ca>
Date: Sat, 19 Mar 2005 14:31:05 -0500 (EST)

   Latest from the bureaucrats is that some time next week we will see the 
official government response (this is from the Government, meaning the 
bureaucracy) to the Interim report from Heritage Committee (the 
parliamentarians).


   While I'm told that we might be happier about this response than 
expected (IE: This is not going to be as bad as the DMCA, and not as 
draconian as asked for by the committee), I still believe we need to be 
very strong in our efforts to talk to parliamentarians.  The legacy 
content sector will be going all-out to try to protect their dinosaur 
ways, and those of us trying to protect future creativity/innovation and 
the economy as a whole from them must be very visible.


   This government response will then be discussed in the Heritage 
committee, with this being a VERY different committee than the folks who 
authored the outdated Interim report.  The fact I have had a face-to-face 
with the Heritage critics for both the NDP and the Conservatives is a 
huge change from the past.


   What we may be able to guess:


   a) Recommendations 4+5 may be off the table entirely in the short term. 
Hopefully this will not mean the educational sector will go back to sleep 
and not participate in the upcoming hearings/etc, something that I believe 
is a realistic worry.

See: Canadian MP Says Extended Licensing Proposal Delayed
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/home.php#376

   We also need to somehow turn the educational sector into allies rather 
than opponents -- their institutional exceptions are going to cause far 
more problems for us than it will grant them.  Recommendations 4+5 were a 
direct (and logical) response to the extremely inappropriate institutional 
exceptions the educational sector were asking for -- this educational 
sector problem was echoed at the same event that Mr. Geist referenced 
above.


   b) That anti-circumvention (WIPO treaty) may be tied to actual 
infringement.  I don't believe this is enough to render anti-circumvention 
laws harmless for the technology sector given there will still be an 
innovation chill, but it may be a good starting point.

   I believe Canada must go much further which is to provide explicit 
protection for reverse-engineering for interoperability -- modeling after 
the 1991 EU directive.  (91/250/EEC)

   The updated EU directive now includes anti-circumvention, which is a 
conflict but will provide far more protection than ratifying WIPO without 
explicit protection for software developers.
   http://europa.eu.int/ISPO/legal/en/ipr/software/software.html
   http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/lex/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:31991L0250:EN:HTML


   The roots of the problem of the 1996 treaties aimed at protecting legacy 
businesses from disruptive innovation/creativity is still not addressed. 
This may be something we will need to turn our sights on the department of 
International Trade given those bureaucrats at the treaty-stage have far 
too much unaccountable influence.

   c) ISP liability -- I get the impression that the supreme court ruling 
on royalties will come into play here suggesting that a notice-and-notice 
may be more workable than a claim-and-censor or claim-and-terminate. 
Rights holders already have the ability to go to courts, offer proof of 
authorship/etc and get an injunction, so anything stronger is simply not 
warranted.  I can only hope that Mr. Geists' comparison with the judicial 
oversight required for take-down orders for child pornography were heard as 
well (IE: does parliament want to send a message to Canadians that 
copyright infringement is considered an orders-of-magnitude worse crime 
than child pornography?)

   d) Making available (WIPO treaty)?  Likely yet another neighboring 
right being added to create further conflict.  The more rights exist on 
the same creativity, the larger the structural limitations to creativity 
that will exist (IE: the more likely only large corporations will have the 
legal resources to clear all the necessary rights).

   This is not one of the issues we have been strong in talking about, so 
with little opposition it is likely to just be rammed through.  It was 
discussed in the court rulings as something "missing" in Canada, and has 
been one of the major distractions in the CRIA cases (they claim it is a 
lack of "making available" right that cause their loss, rather than the 
reality of it being lack of evidence).

   d) Professional photographers wanting to mess up amateur photography 
(the majority of photography) and expectations for commissioned photographs 
in order to dip their hands further into the lucrative stock-photo 
marketplace will likely go through.  The number of times I heard policy 
makers and politicians parrot the "give photographers same rights as other 
creators" rhetoric from the special interest groups suggested to me that 
very few understood this issue.  I know that it took me a while to "get 
it" and I was spending a lot of time thinking about the various proposals 
-- far more time than the parliamentarians had to spend.



   Other predictions?

   Other ideas on how to quickly respond with a press release?  This 
response from the government may be the right time to get that press 
release out indicating we have more than a thousand signatures and growing 
strong.

-- 
  Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/>
  http://www.digital-copyright.ca/blog/2 (My BLOG)
  Sign the Petition Users' Rights! http://digital-copyright.ca/petition/
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