Pictured above are Canada’s Minister Of Industry, Tony Clement, and Minister Of Heritage, James Moore. They’re at the podium to announce a copyright consultation website.
http://www.copyrightconsultation.ca/
Despite having written to Moore about my concerns with Bill-C61 I did not get invited to the invitation only consultation in B.C.. Had I been invited I would have made three points.
Any new copyright legislation should exclude the following:
1. A “three strikes” style law. – Accusations of web copyright claims should be a judicial process and not be dictated by a media company’s complaint to an ISP. The CONAN ATTACKS FANS case shows that false claims in nations with such laws (New Zealand) are very effective at stifling the legitimate use of the PUBLIC DOMAIN by artists.
2. The enshrinement of DRM. – DRM should not be protected by law. Neither the jailbreaking of a device nor the platform shifting of a file should not be criminalized with a statutory fine. A legally acquired disc, file or device stripped of its disabling crippleware or buggy region coding, when necessary, helps me and does not harm society. Any digital file or item that I legally own, as acquired from a personal purchase, as a gift, through an inheritance, etc., is and should forever be, acknowledged as mine to dispose of as I please. I wrote to Moore personally about this very issue as a problem in Bill C-61. It is important to me that I not be branded a criminal for making my store purchased DVD discs usable.
3. The criminalization of P2P. – There should be no section in the copyright legislation equating the non-commercial sharing or copying of digital files or information with stealing. Stealing deprives an owner of his property. Non-commercial copying and sharing does not equal stealing. Neither WALL-E, nor I should be made a copyright criminal for doing what makes culture.
If you’re a Canadian affected by a change in Canada’s copyright laws you can email your own thoughts to:
And CCing to your MP would be a good idea too.
Here’s the press conference:
Here’s an anonymous skeptic’s response to the “invitation only” consultations:
And here’s a partisan response from LiberalMinute.ca…
[via the Digital Copyright Canada blog]
Posted by Jesse Willis