Digital Copyright Canada

We have other petitions we are sending to the Canadian parliament. Please print and sign all of them.

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"It's very important to remember that it's your intellectual property -- it's not your computer. And in the pursuit of protection of intellectual property, it's important not to defeat or undermine the security measures that people need to adopt in these days."

- Stewart Baker, then US Department of Homeland Security's assistant secretary for policy, speaking to a group of copyright holders in 2005.

Rather than using the term "digital locks", it may be helpful to understand these as "digital handcuffs". When "technological measures" are applied to our devices by other than their owners, they are like handcuffs being put on without us having committed or even being accused of any offense. We merely want to own and control our own computers, and use them for any law abiding purpose.

Please print and sign the following!

The text of the petition is available in English (PDF)/ English (OpenDocument) or French (PDF) / French (OpenDocument).

Some copyright and patent holders like to make analogies between copyright and tangible property. I would like to make a much more valid analogy that actually involves tangible property.

Here is the scenario. A home builder builds homes and puts their own locks on the door. They retain the keys, and do not give the keys to the new owners when the homes are sold. The builder, not the owner, then decides who can have keys and who can not -- and the owner is not given a key.

An article by Rafael Ruffolo in ComputerWorld Canada discusses the recent government reply to our Petition for IT property rights. This article quotes me from an interview this morning.

Please note: We always appreciate more signatures to the petition so that we can continue to have batches tabled in parliament, giving the government the opportunity to actually provide a useful response.

Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2007, sent in e-Mail. This version cleaned up to read better in HTML. Also published on: p2pnet

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Dear Honourable Jim Prentice, Minister of Industry,
Honourable Josée Verner, Minister of Canadian Heritage,

Congratulations on your new cabinet positions. As you likely know, one of the joint responsibilities you will have is Copyright, an area of policy that is of great interest and concern to me as a software author, as well as an internet/security consultant.