Digital Copyright Canada

The tenth meeting of the C-11 special legislative committee was held on March 12, 2012. I posted some quick videos which may offer a good summary.

This was the first day of clause-by-clause, and even with a break for MPs to go to the house and vote, the committee made it approximately half-way through the bill if number of pages mean anything. The meeting will continue tomorrow with clause 35, and the 10'th amendment from the Liberal party that seeks to amend that clause. There is no spoiler here, but the amendment will fail simply because it was a Liberal amendment. While it is possible that opposition amendments could pass, it is highly unlikely if the pattern set thus far continues. Any amendment tabled by the government quickly passes, and any amendment tabled by either opposition party fails.

A small group of lawyers have publicly disagreed with the submission to the Bill C-32 committee (the predecessor to the current C-11 committee) from the Canadian Bar Association (CBA), an association of approximately 37,000 members that 26 of them are members of. Given the publicity this group has been able to receive, I think it is interesting to look at group submissions in general.

It is not unusual for a subset of the membership of a group who has submitted to these committees to disagree. In fact, that is the norm. This frustrates many people when these associations go into committee and list their membership numbers as if all the members were in agreement with -- or were even made aware of the policy positions of -- the person sitting as witness in committee.

The following was sent out to guests of an informal dialog held on March 6, 2012.

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Dear Guests and Supporters,

I would like to thank all of you for the lively discussion on Bill C-11, the Copyright Modernization Act. Special thanks go to Hon. MP Geoff Regan, Hon. Senator Wilfred Moore, Tamir Israel and David Fewer (unable to attend) from Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC), and Russell McOrmond from http://c11.ca for accepting our invitation to attend this discussion.

After reading two articles in the Wire Report, I sent a letter to the editor which was published in this week's Hill Times.

My letter started with:

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I noted with interest the Wire Report article indicating that, "Netflix Inc. says it does not have plans to develop apps that support Research In Motion Ltd.'s (RIM) Blackberry devices or Playbook tablet".

While Netflix may not have the resources to write the software themselves, it is the Conservative Government's Bill C-11 which will disallow any third party from developing their own compatible application.

(Subscribers can read full letter now. I will post full text here later.)

On the evening of March 6, 2012 I attended an informal dialogue about bill C-11 at Oliver’s Pub, Carleton University. It was organized by School of Information Technology Associate Professor Ali Arya, who invited MPs from the C-11 legislative committee, Tamir Israel from the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC), and myself as guests to talk to students and faculty at Carleton. Hon. Geoff Regan, the Liberal MP on the committee, and Liberal Senator Wilfred Moore attended.

The following is the letter I sent today to my MP in Ottawa South. Please send letters to ensure your MPs are aware of your views, given committee moved to clause-by-clause on Monday. This is when we will learn what amendments will be tabled by each party, and the debate on whether bill C-11 will become better or worse will start.

Meera Nair posted a great article about misinformation on fair dealings.

"It is disappointing to read of the continued distortion of fair dealing through the call to action of The Writers’ Union of Canada and Access Copyright. But I am not surprised; it is much easier to provoke fear than to embark upon the longer journey of educating people."

By now many will have heard about the campaign by a group of lawyers to smear the Canadian Bar Association (CBA), making allegations about the process that was used to create a submission to government on Bill C-32 (now C-11).

Since he was directly mentioned as part of the smear campaign, Law professor Michael Geist has responded (National Post, his website). How you interpret these events partly come down to a matter of trust, and I believe we should afford far more trust to Mr. Geist clarity than the misdirection from these specific lawyers. (Update: Andrew Bernstein — Chair, CBA Intellectual Property Section responded)

The participants in this smear campaign are lawyers whose customers are increasingly building business models upon infringing other peoples rights (See my brief to C-11 committee). These lawyers, sometimes registered as lobbiests and sometimes claiming to represent themselves, have been working to legalize and legally protect these infringements.

We should offer these lawyers the same level of respect and trust that they might lawyers or executives at organizations like ISOHunt or the Pirate Bay.

Notes: Howard Knopf has provided links to relevant articles and submissions.

On the Matt Holmes Show at around 20:00 EST an interview I did with Mr. Holmes will air. We were speaking about the Bill C-11 committee, and some of the fun I've been watching for the past few weeks (and will be in the next few weeks).

I of course spoke about the most controversial thing in the bill (TPMs) and the most controversial thing that some of the more extreme witnesses want added to the bill (ISP liability + secondary liability/"enabler").

We spoke more generally than using the Copyright geek language. We chatted about who gets to decide who drives your car, and about violence in music, movies and video games. Listen to the show to see what that has to do with TPMs and SOPA.

Audio archives of the show are available (Look for March 8 Hour 2). I'm looking for feedback on one of the analogies used.

The ninth meeting of the C-11 special legislative committee was held on March 7, 2012.

They say laws are like sausages, and you should never watch either one being made. This last day of witnesses before committee moves to clause-by-clause consideration on Monday was likely the oddest day so far, but still very interesting to watch.