As promised, I will continue to update the key points found in the hundreds of submissions received by the government as part of the copyright consultation. The July 20 – 24th summary was posted here. This chart bring the data up to July 30th (note that the government has already posted some of the submissions from a few later days). Further, with five weeks left in the consultation, what are you waiting for – speak out on copyright today!
| Position | Number of Supporters |
| Submissions against another Bill C-61 | 222 |
| Submissions in favour of shorter copyright term | 49 |
| Submissions against anti-circumvention or in favour of limiting DRM/Digital locks | 270 |
| Submissions in favour of stronger personal use/copying and backup protections | 243 |
| Submissions in favour of an “open copyright” system | 8 |
| Submissions advocating an end to the Crown Copyright | 4 |
| Submissions opposed to adopting an American-styled DMCA | 21 |
| Submissions in favour of stronger fair use/fair dealing protections | 34 |
| Submissions opposed to implementing WIPO | 4 |
| Submissions in favour of eliminating all copyright | 2 |
| Submissions against a three-strikes rule | 10 |
| Submissions that favour a “notice and notice” approach | 213 |
| Submissions in favour of instituting a levy for file-sharing | 6 |
| Submissions in favour of greater exemptions for education/research | 10 |
| Submissions in favour of establish a good-faith defence that the user believed their use of a work was fair and non-infringing | 213 |
| Submissions in favour of laws that are technologically neutral | 6 |
| Submissions that argue individuals should be able to share media for free as long as they are not profiting off the media | 6 |
| Submissions in favour of stronger penalties for copyright infringement | 2 |
| Submissions in favour of turning copyright into a crime | 1 |
| Submissions against works being available in digital or other forms for free | 20 |
| Submissions arguing for more support for writers | 6 |
| Submissions in favour of implementing WIPO | 1 |
Many Duplicate submissions
I’m not entirely sure which of the submissions are going to be least effective – the tons of submissions alleging they have been paying close attention the copyright issue but have no new ideas at all apart from the boiler-plate they copied, or the pathetic ones from authors who think the only purpose of copyright is to pay them – forever, presumably.
It takes a fair bit of wading through to find real nuggets and good ideas.
The authors particularly need to realize that hardly anyone is talking about not paying them, and some of them actually mentioned ideas I would support – like not allowing publishers to demand all rights for every possible use without paying anything extra.
What I think many of the submissions I have read say they don’t want to let copyright extend indefinitely, and that they’re opposed to being charged more than once for the same material.
Do the templates really matter?
I actually went to the effort and wrote a submission regarding how copyright affacted me, and was a bit shocked at the number of people who simply copied and pasted a form letter for their submission. Given the number of them in the submission pool, I’m a bit concerned that they will be ignored.
“The authors particularly need to realize that hardly anyone is talking about not paying them, and some of them actually mentioned ideas I would support – like not allowing publishers to demand all rights for every possible use without paying anything extra.” ~ Bob Smits
I debated a few authors all week and they just seemed so out of touch. One suggested people should have to pay royalties for every instance of copying her work. When I asked about students writing essays, she said she wouldn’t sue students for “pirating” her works. Another had this idea that filesharing would not allow him to make a living as an author…except how often do you hear teens going around saying “Yeah, I downloaded the new ‘Twilight’ book today…gonna be a good read”.