Digital Copyright Canada

Below is my proposed copyright resolution for the upcoming federal NDP 
convention and afterwords is my reasoning behind it.

It has been also posted at http://doconnoronca.livejournal.com/

Resolution

Whereas copyright must balance between ensuring creators have the 
incentive they need to create and allowing people to take advantage of 
the ability of public domain material to be freely shared and be used to 
inspire new material;

Whereas the length of copyright has gone far beyond what is necessary to 
provide an incentive for creators to create;

Whereas copyright law is often impractical to enforce so compliance must 
be based on respect between consumers and copyright holders;

Whereas the media distribution industry have been pushing for legal 
protection for digital rights management (DRM) under the guise that it's 
needed to protect copyright, its true purpose is to control how 
legitimate customers use what they have purchased;

Therefore be it resolved that copyright holders should have no right to 
dictate how their material is used, consumers may copy, modify and 
reverse engineer material for use within their household as long as they 
own or rent it and there be no legal protection for DRM; and

Be it further resolved that the levies under the Private Copying regime 
be removed and the illegality of making unauthorized copies of 
copyrighted music from others be reaffirmed; and

Be it further resolved that the copyright period for new material be 
reduced to 15 years, with the option to register for two extensions of 
15 years (for a total of 45 years) and past material be reduced to the 
copyright period that existed at the time of creation.

The power of copying

Intellectual property, including both copyright and patents, have two 
unique features that make it different from normal property. The first 
is that you can sell or give away intellectual property without losing 
it yourself.

To see how important this feature is, imagine a machine that could make 
unlimited copies of an apple, and other foods, at virtually no cost, and 
those copies could be used to feed everyone in the world. It would be a 
tremendously powerful tool. What would you think if I proposed a law 
that would make it illegal to use that machine without the permission of 
the farmer who grew the apple and the payments he wanted meant that it 
could no longer be used to feed the world because it would cost too 
much? I don't think most people would support such a law.

However, that is the current state of copyrighted material, which, in 
some ways, is even more powerful and important then food.

The power of creativity

The second unique feature is people have an innate desire to create. 
Humans are creative beings. From childhood to old age there are few 
things we enjoy more then telling a good story, coming up with a funny 
joke or creating a work of art.

If everyone had unlimited resources there would be no need for 
copyright, because our innate desire to create is more then enough 
incentive to create all the material that could be desired.

In fact, the beginning of this effect can be seen in some industries. 
Most open source software is created by people without the expectation 
of financial rewards. They can do it because it requires few resources. 
Just their inexpensive home computer, the Internet for distribution and 
their education and work experience. That is not the only example. Now 
that the Internet allows people to distribute material to anyone at 
virtually no cost there are thousands of people freely publishing their 
fiction, music and opinions on line in blogs and other forums.

While not all of these efforts are at the level of commercially produced 
material, an increasing number of them are.

Copyright also prevents people from publishing material that is based on 
other people's characters and story lines without permission, which 
actually prevents a lot of works inspired by other material from being 
created or distributed.

The power of respect

All laws are obeyed primarily because the majority of people respect the 
law and follow it willingly. No government or police force could enforce 
a law if everyone started violating it. They would be vastly out numbered.

There are already laws that are widely ignored . For example, the 
prohibition against marijuana. The ban no longer seems reasonable many 
and in many circles its use is accepted. Police usually do not prosecute 
people found in possession of small amounts any more.

If copyright is used to stop people from doing what seems reasonable to 
them, they will not respect it. Up until recently music tracks from CDs 
could be easily converted to MP3 files, an open format that could be 
played back by a number of different devices, including directly on a 
home computer, on a portable MP3 player or stored on a CDR for play back 
in a car stereo. People did this because they believed they should be 
allowed to enjoy the music they have bought using the method that they 
choose.

Now many CDs come with features to prevent consumers from converting 
their music to MP3. While most of these DRM systems usually do allow 
consumers to create compressed music files, they are in closed formats, 
which means only certain devices support it and they are subject to the 
limitations placed on it by the copyright owner.

In another case, it is not unusual for someone to be unable to play a 
computer game they have legitimately purchased because the copy 
protection has a bug or an incompatibility with their system.

To get around both these problems people download a illegitimate copies 
from the Internet. This leaves a frustrated consumer who has been forced 
into illegal coping by the very thing designed to prevent it.

Media companies have been very slow to move to the on line market. The 
introduction of the iTunes music store was a good first step, however 
there had been a demand for such a service for 10 years. The Internet 
had been through several generations of music trading before they 
finally created a legitimate way of buying music on line. From the early 
days of MIDI and MOD files, through the rise and fall of Napster to the 
new generation of peer to peer file trading applications they refused to 
sell on line for fear of piracy, as if it could have been much worse 
then it already was. Having lost respect for the music industry the 
first generation of Internet users turned to piracy. It remains to be 
seen if they will return to the legitimate market, however no change in 
law will likely have any effect on them. These consumers must be treated 
with respect if they are to be won back.

The weakness of DRM

The media companies have claimed that Digital Rights Management (DRM) is 
needed to prevent illegal copying, however the concept is flawed. The 
fundamental weakness is that to protect their material they lock the 
content by encrypting it, but they must also give the consumer the keys 
to decrypt it so they can view it. As a result there are so many ways to 
get around DRM, it really does nothing to stop illegal copying.

The most effective way of getting around DRM is to crack the encryption 
and get the keys. This can be done by extracting the key from the 
decrypting software, discovering the key by testing every possible 
combination until the right one is found, or finding a flaw in the 
encryption process that allows you to decrypt it without the key.

Another method of getting around DRM is to intercept the content after 
it has been decrypted to get an unprotected copy. With the cooperation 
of hardware and operating system manufactures the industry has been 
developing "trusted computing" to prevent intercepting by detecting if 
the software has been tampered with. While this could work in theory, if 
there are bugs they could be exploited to work around all this security. 
It also required consumers to buy new hardware and software that 
supports trusted computing before they would be able to use the media.

Even with trusted computing it is still possible to capture the media by 
recording it directly off the video display or speakers. While some 
quality is lost, reasonable results can be achieved.

A final method is to simply copy the media in its entirety, including 
the encryption. While you cannot modify the media to convert it into a 
more convent format when you do this, it can be used to make copies of 
entire DVDs or CDs.

While most people would find it difficult to use some of these methods, 
it only requires one technically adept user to extract a copy and begin 
distributing it then everyone will have access to it.

As DRM is not an effective way of preventing illegal copying, why would 
the industry be pushing it so hard? While some people think the 
executives don't have the technical knowledge to understand these 
problems and have been bamboozled by the people selling these solutions, 
that doesn't seem likely.

The real purpose is to control how legitimate consumers use their 
material. This can be seen in how they are pushing the Canadian 
government to make unauthorized removal of the DRM protection illegal. 
If they where only worried about unauthorized copying the new law 
wouldn't be needed because it is already illegal. They want to make 
removing DRM illegal to keep legitimate users from removing it and using 
the material they bought in the way want. With DRM in place they can 
control which devices the material they sell can be used on, how it's 
used and force consumers to buy the material separately for each device.

The Private Copying Regime

The private copying regime was enacted in Canada in 1998. It allows 
Canadians to make copies of music, and only music, for personnel use. In 
exchange the copyright commission levies fees on each cassette tape and 
CDRs sold. The fees collected are distributed among musicians based on 
their sales records.

The system is flawed on several levels. First many of the CDRs sold are 
not used to copy music. Almost none of the cassette tapes sold are used 
to copy music anymore either, but the fees are still applied. Worse some 
CDRs are used by amateur and part-time musicians to record CDs of their 
own music to sell themselves. They still have to pay the fee which goes 
to mainstream musicians that are their competition.

While it may not have been the original intension, the law has been 
interpreted to allow downloading of music files from the Internet for 
personal use.

I believe consumers should be allowed to make copies of material they 
legitimately own for personal use without extra fees. It should be no 
business of the copyright holder what format a consumers coverts their 
material to or how many different devices it is viewed on, any more then 
the manufacturer of a hammer can tell the consumer what kinds of houses 
they can build with it, whether they can replace the handle or if they 
can incorporate the hammer into a piece of modern art.

The length of copyright

These days copyright is so long that by the time material enters the 
public domain it has lost relevance. In fact, in a great many cases it 
has been permanently lost. Had it left copyright sooner, it could have 
been distributed again, ensuring that copies would have remained.

Over the years the length of copyright has been extended due to lobbying 
from the distribution companies that control much of the copyrighted 
material to maximize their profit at the expense of the public domain 
and to prevent material they are no longer interested from being 
distributed by competitors. Perversely, these copyright extensions have 
been retroactive, as if an incentive is needed to create something that 
has already been created.

I've suggested the length of copyright be reduced to a maximum of 45 
years requiring renewal every 15 years. Requiring renewal is important 
because a large amount of the material that is produced is only 
published for a few years before it becomes absolute or unpopular and is 
no longer commercial viable. Under our current system it would remain 
locked under copyright for decades before it could be used again. By 
that time it has often been lost forever. During this time the material 
could have been enjoyed by some or be used in the creation of new 
material. Some might argue that permission could be sought from the 
copyright holder, but in many cases the copyright holder cannot be found 
because they've moved or the company with ownership went out of 
business. In other cases, the copyright holder could be a large company 
that are not interested because such a small deal is not worth their 
time or they don't want their old material competing against their new 
material.

Requiring renewal will allow material that is still benefiting the 
copyright holder to stay under copyright, while material that the owner 
is no longer interested in or has forgotten about will enter the public 
domain allowing society to benefit from it once again.

Registration a renewal could be made as simple as submitting the title, 
a brief description, the creation date, author, and the current 
copyright holder to the government for publication, perhaps using a on 
line form. Registration could be sent in as early as 5 years before the 
renewal deadline. The renewal would automatically include minor 
variations of the material.

Another idea would be to require inclusion of a high quality copy of the 
material when renewing. For software the source code would also be 
required. This would be stored until the copyright expires then released 
to the public so that a copy is preserved. For software, having the 
source code would mean that it could be modified and incorporated into 
new projects, which isn't practical with just the compiled version.

Reducing copyright on material already created would not be fair, as 
there maybe a few cases where they are depending on a return over the 
very long term, however material that was created under shorter 
copyright periods has no need for the extensions they have been given. 
It might be reasonable to require registration every 15 years for 
existing material to allow some of it into the public domain earlier.

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Digital Copyright Canada

[d@DCC] NDP Copyright resolution

All Canadian Citizens are "Rights Holders"!