The new lesson provisions are extremely limited, yet they come with an astonishing number of conditions and limitations. In fact, Bill C-61 includes a special new infringement provision specifically for lessons. Under the bill:
It is an infringement of copyright for any person to do any of the following acts with respect to anything that the person knows or should have known is a lesson, as defined in subsection 30.01(1), or a fixation of one:
(a) to sell it or to rent it out;
(b) to distribute it to an extent that the owner of the copyright in the work or other subject-matter that is included in the lesson is prejudicially affected;
(c) by way of trade, to distribute it, expose or offer it for sale or rental or exhibit it in public;
(d) to possess it for the purpose of doing anything referred to in any of paragraphs (a) to (c);
(e) to communicate it by telecommunication to any person other than a person referred to in paragraph 30.01(3)(a); or
(f) to circumvent or contravene any measure taken in conformity with paragraph 30.01(5)(b), (c) or (d).
Why the government felt it was necessary to create a new liability provision only for lessons is not clear. Infringement is infringement, yet Bill C-61 establishes an entire new class of infringement specifically for lessons. This provision should be dropped from the bill.
There are two reasons. Making sure that fair dealing can’t be asserted and making sure that there won’t be infringing use of high-value material when infringement will likely kill the market.
open source knowledge
how about we have an election and harper can say
HERE IS WHAT conservative party will do.
While hte rest of canada can go, “OHHH REaaallLLLy. NIce to be un-elected”.
Rumor has it harper is slipping in the polls this is why he wants to call election now and why DION is just idling a bit.
And since when did infringement kill a market. Prove that!!!
In fact infringement may in fact lead to free advertising of the NON infringed.
AKA music sales in canada despite all that so called p2p was up a total of 120% in a 2 years span,
now watch sales drop into nothing as ANYONE associated to the CRIA , and others get pumeled into the ground.
And if the goal of copyright is ONLY to enrich the copyright holder then i say we all give way to opensource models for that part or sector, as it is UNWISE , and UNJUST to hold a monopoly on people and society much as hte RIAA and MPAA have done.
You could say that as opensource specs on hardware for computers become more and mroe previlent the costs go down, thus we people get better and better items.
The reverse is said to be true aka the microsoft vista experience as many have seen is an awful one by and large. This is what happens when you have closed source thats been undocumented and rewritten over and over again and why the EU commisnio had a real hard time getting docs off MS. They just dont have any.
ALSO its hard to tell if you do in fact infringe on closed source code and MS has been found guilty quite often.
In a school i am there to learn, knowledge should be free.
Proprietorizing it is WRONG.
In fact it is why opensource exists , you charge too much ill go code my own program.
SO, if this passes , watch for tuitions to rise as now schools will have to pay for IP use in the classes, and or you might see if one takes the bold move and says OPEN SOURCE.
US-owned educational materials
Most educational text publishers, and indeed publishers of other reading materials are non-Canadian owned, with the majority of them owned by US interests.
This should give you a hint as to why this clause in in C-61. Need I say any more?
redhat – is in USA
i once when i was on college had an idea to help my fellow class mates to learn in a neat way.
I took a MUD from circlemud.org and then changed it into a learning program.
Because it was a game the school said no, oddly it wasn’t a game but derived and the codebase was free.
If we all are so inclined to get the best buck for our tax dollars WHY are we paying MS lisence fees in schools , hospitals and govt offices on the computers that amount to hundreds a millions, with the money saved from that you could probably pay someone to write your text book and OWN the rights and then give those rights out free to schoolers.
I am sure half a billion to a billion a year in savings might get a top notch professor EVEN one form the states to help right some books. ALSO while you may be right in some areas , others the knowledge is free , just that to do home work you need a text book to give you a specific answer, if you had a free based alternative to learn form then you would and could get round a need for c-61 all together and as i said why should knowledge cost me.
TELL me WHY knowledge should cost YOU or ME!!!!!
What does that do to society when we all keep having to pay for knowledge.
Believe me when i say an educated world is a better off one both financially and health wise.
greed vs. good
I agree fully that information should be open. OTOH, people who create information need to get paid. This is especially challenging when we are talking about fast moving fields like in the tech. sector. I sympathize with content creators who do an important job in a competative market, and don’t want their material ripped off. But all too often it’s true that some companies corner a small segment of the market, run up the price, and generally treat business as a license to print money. And the public pays for it.
It’s the old struggle between captialism and communism/socialism. I see it as a ballance, you can’t go all the way to either side without getting serious dysfunction. But these days, we have very little representation of the public good, the social good. What we have mostly is corporate & special interest, sold as and impostering as real open public good. We don’t get a good ballance between socialised vs. privatised solutions. I suspect that our entire social organisational mechanisms have long been inadequate to the task of efficiently, fairly, ethically, and sustainably organising and managing our society. We are coming into an age where our societies have outgrown, and our technologies have outpaced, any of our past wisdom for figuring out how to manage, govern, organise, or generally conduct ourselves. Indeed, the beurocracy is beginning to smother, if not indeed violently choke, much of what we desire and aspire to; it limits our abilities needlessly and prevents us from broader prosperity. And while the beurocracies choke, the monsterized corporations rape mercilessly with impunity. It is not all bad, but we are nearing the end of basic viability within current societal frameworks.
Just look at C-61, pathetic, unjust, impractical: yet it’s a typical example of the violation of public interests and basic liberty we can expect these days. What will it even accomplish? Some few get a bit richer while everything else gets disproportiantely that much crazier? Our representatives pull this kind of shit, and much worse, regularly, with practical impunity. Democracy? Devolved into Facism.
I think the only way we can progress from here is to start using our technology for public input. E-voting on the internet. If we can do VISA & Mastercard, and just ask Amazon and Ebay, we do, then we can do internet based e-voting. Elections don’t amount to usefull public input any more. It’s over. We need a voice. We need the right to reject C-61, and things like it. Looking forwards, e-voting is the way to have US grow the policy, instead of them. As an example, I imagine doing an on-line test on the topic of copyright. If I pass it, then various subjective opinions and choices that are mixed into the questions, become my votes on the development of the new policy. I know there are a million ways to screw this up, but I also know that what we are getting is far worse, and we are being made increasingly powerless. We need a solution to that, we need to use the tools we have to get a voice, get the chance for real participation. Wouldn’t that be desirable in a democracy, in a free society? Or do you want ever deepening facism?
BILL C-61 MUST BE ABANDONED. 61 reforms are not enough.