Digital Copyright Canada

On Monday, August 20, 2001 at 23:33, Tom A. Trottier <Tom@Abacurial.com>
wrote on "Re: [Cdn-DMCA] FYI: FTAA," saying..

Any representations re FTAA copyright rules should be sent BY AUGUST 
22 to:

"Gloria Blue - US Trade Representative"<contactustr@ustr.gov>

"Catherine DICKSON - FTAA Intellectual Property Officer" 
<FTAA.ZLEA@dfait-maeci.gc.ca>

------------------------------------------------------------- from  
http://www.eff.org/alerts/20010816_eff_ftaa_alert.en.html ------------

 Electronic Frontier Foundation ACTION ALERT
ALERT: Hollywood Exports Technology Ban Overseas Despite US Abuse
EFF Calls on Public to Intervene in Treaty Process
(Issued: August 16, 2001 / Deadline: August 22, 2001) 
Introduction:
[Para una versión en español de esta alarma, que puede ser distribuida libremente, vaya a este URL (For a Spanish version of this alert, which may be freely distributed, go to this URL):
  http://www.eff.org/alerts/20010816_eff_ftaa_alert.es.html ] 

While Russian graduate student Dmitry Sklyarov potentially faces five years in prison under the first criminal prosecution of a controversial new US law, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) passed at the request of Hollywood in 1998, its backers are now busily exporting overseas its 
dangerous legal theories of excessive copyright protection at the price of civil liberties. Worldwide public intervention is immediately necessary to restore freedom of speech as a value promoted by free societies. 

The Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) treaty process, which is under executive power, works to establish trade agreements between 34 countries in the Western hemisphere including the US. FTAA nation-signatories pass legislation in each of their national forums that conforms with the treaty's 
principles. Currently the group is negotiating language to include in an international treaty between the 34 countries that deals with enacting new copyright rules, among other issues. The FTAA organization is considering treaty language that mandates nations pass anti-circumvention provisions 
similar to the DMCA, except the FTAA treaty grants even greater control to publishers than the DMCA. 

The public must intervene to express disapproval of the FTAA's proposed anti-circumvention measures in order to correct this trend in copyright law. FTAA is currently accepting public feedback on the proposed treaty language until August 22. Contact the U.S. Trade Representative (or your 
country's representative) and urge the removal of the anti-circumvention measures from incorporation into the final FTAA treaty. Already existing theories of liability under US copyright law adequately protect the legitimate interests of copyright holders without the need to impose anti-
technology restrictions on the entire public. Rather than adopt even more draconian measures that ban socially beneficial technologies in a fantasy of protecting copyrights, such as the proposed anti-circumvention measures to FTAA attempts, foreign countries should learn from the disastrous US 
experience with the DMCA. They should wisely steer away from such over-reaching measures. 

What YOU Can Do:
EFF calls upon the citizens of the 34 countries affected by this treaty, including the US, to submit comments by August 20 (22 at the latest) urging the group to remove the provisions from the treaty that outlaw the act of circumvention and forbid providing tools for circumvention of 
technological protection measures restricting use of copyrighted works. These measures violate the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of freedom of speech under the First Amendment, similar guarantees in other national constitutions and laws and in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, since 
such tools are necessary to exercise lawful uses, including fair use. While protecting copyright is important, passing measures that also censor much lawful speech goes too far, without ever achieving its objective. The next meeting of the FTAA Negotiating Group on Intellectual Property Rights is 
Aug. 22 in Panama, and public comments will be most effective if received before this date. This means it should be mailed by Aug. 18 at the latest, in the US, and even sooner from other countries. (Unfortunately, the FTAA site does not provide mechanisms for Web-submitted comments.) 

Comments, to be received by the FTAA organization by August 20, should be submitted to: 

Gloria Blue, Executive Secretary, Trade Policy Staff Committee
Attn: FTAA Draft Text Release
Office of the U.S. Trade Representative
1724 F. St., NW, Fifth Floor
Washington DC 20508 USA

Non-US writers should also send a copy to their own country's intellectual property government officials; list available at:
  http://www.sice.oas.org/int_prop/ip_dir.asp 

Sample Letter:
This is just an example. It will be most effective if you send something similar but in your own words.

Dear Ms. Blue, Trade Policy Staff Committee, and Negotiating Group on Intellectual Property Rights: 

I write to express my grave concern regarding the draft FTAA treaty's extreme intellectual property provisions. 

These measures, based on the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) give far too much power to publishers, at the expense of indivduals' rights. The DMCA itself is already under legal challenge in the US, has gravely chilled scientists' and computer security researchers' freedom of expression 
around the world for fear of being prosecuted in the US, and resulted in the arrest of a Russian programmer. The FTAA provisions, which serve no one but American corporate copyright interests, are even more over-reaching than those of the DMCA. 

These provisions would require signatory nations to pass new DMCA-style laws that ban, with few or no exceptions, software and other tools that allow copy prevention technologies to be bypassed. This would violate the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of freedom of speech under the First Amendment, 
and similar guarantees in other national constitutions and laws and in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, since such tools are necessary to exercise lawful uses, including fair use, reverse engineering, computer security research and many others. 

I urge you to remove these controversial and anti-freedom provisions from the FTAA treaty language. The DMCA is already an international debacle. Its flaws - and worse - should not be exported and forced on other countries. 

Sincerely,
[Your full name]
[Your address]

Non-US writers should mention their own country's constitution and/or laws protecting freedom of expression, of coruse. 

Copies may also be sent by e-mail to some key people in the FTAA process:
 kalvarez@ustr.gov (Kira Alvarez - Intellectual Property)
 walter_bastian@ita.doc.gov (Walter Bastian - E-Commerce)
Non-US contacts available at:
 http://www.ftaa-alca.org/contacts/contpts.asp 

Background:
Much like the DMCA, the current draft of the FTAA agreement forbids the act of circumventing a "technological protection measure" that controls the use of a copyrighted work. It also bans making or providing tools that could help another to use a copyrighted work. Unlike the DMCA, however, the 
language currently proposed for the FTAA treaty doesn't include even a single exemption that would permit activities like lawful reverse engineering, protecting privacy, fair use rights, encryption research, and countless other reasons a person might need to override the publisher's controls. 
(And the DMCA only includes a few very narrow exemptions to the general ban on circumvention, but they have so far proven completely useless to everyone who has attempted to rely on them.) 

Even though copyright law gives individuals rights such as fair use, the DMCA and FTAA's proposed anti-circumvention provisions outlaw all tools that are necessary to exercise those rights, effectively killing fair use in the digital age. These measures ensure works are prevented from taking 
their place in the public domain, denying the public what rightfully belongs to it under the law. The guarantees of free expression under the First Amendment, other constitutions & laws in other countries, and the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, rightly prevent publishers 
from having complete control over the way in which copyrighted works can be used. But the DMCA and its counterpart in the FTAA treaty ignore this principle and would grant publishing companies the power to turn individual rights into "product features" that can be disabled at the whim of the 
publisher. 

Since its passage, the DMCA has thus far been used to: censor a journalist reporting on a controversial software program; attempt to squelch the research of a Princeton professor who discovered the vulnerabilities of the music industry's favored technology; and arrest a foreign computer 
programmer for developing software that allows lawful purchasers of electronic books to view them in ways not supported by a competitor's viewing software. Because it wishes to consistently abuse these powers throughout the world, rather than merely in the United States, Hollywood and the rest of 
the copyright industry are now attempting to export this legal regime throughout the world. 

It is truly ironic that the United States, once the beacon for promoting the principles of freedom of expression, is now systematically infecting other countries with this dangerous public policy choice that will restrict more speech than any law before it. FTAA's anti-circumvention provisions 
represent US imperialism at its worst. They seek to impose restrictive laws on both the US and other countries, in order to prevent established US businesses from facing both domestic and foreign competition. These competitors would offer the public much better deals than these businesses wish to 
offer, which is why the small number of companies that control music, movie and book distribution seek to have these competitors outlawed. The anti-circumvention provisions' terrible effects on freedom of speech, scientific advancement, and actual computer security, as well as on public libraries 
and access to knowledge, are merely "incidental" damage, suffered by society for the benefit of these businesses. 

To view the proposed FTAA treaty language, see:
  http://www.ftaa-alca.org/ftaadraft/eng/draft_e.doc [MS-Word] 

Para mayor informaci—n sobre el proceso del Acuerdo ALCA, vea:
  http://www.ftaa-alca.org/alca_e.asp 

About EFF:
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the leading civil liberties organization working to protect rights in the digital world. Founded in 1990, EFF actively encourages and challenges industry and government to support free expression, privacy, and openness in the information society. EFF is a 
member-supported organization and maintains one of the most linked-to Web sites in the world:
  http://www.eff.org 

Contact:
Will Doherty, EFF Online Activist / Media Relations
wild@eff.org
+1 415 436 9333 x111 
Robin Gross, EFF Intellectual Property Attorney
robin@eff.org
+1 415 436 9333 x112 
- end -

----------- Questions answered, answers questioned.
Tom Trottier, President         <Tom@AbacuriaL.com> 
http://AbacuriaL.com                   ICQ:57647974
400 Slater St. Suite 415, Ottawa ON Canada  K1R 7S7
+1 613 291-1168  fax:+1 613 594-5412  (877)247-8796
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Digital Copyright Canada

Re: [Cdn-DMCA] FYI: FTAA

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