The Government is still in the midst of posting copyright consultation submissions. Yesterday it posted a notable response from the CRTC yesterday. While it was somewhat surprising for the Commission to participate in the consultation, it used the opportunity to focus on three issues – tariff setting for radio, streamlining Copyright Board proceedings, and expanding the Copyright Act to legalize copying for private use. The CRTC argues that using fair dealing to legalize issues such as time shifting and format shifting would not provide sufficient certainty. Instead, it favours several new rights for consumers distinct from fair dealing. These include:
- time-shift radio and television programs;
- format-shift copyright material they own from one device to another for private use; and,
- make copies of copyright material they own for private use.
The CRTC did not recommend any compensation systems for these new copying rights.
uhm. well, yeah.
> The CRTC did not recommend any compensation systems for these new copying rights.
And neither should there be any compensation for such activities!!!! MPAA, RIAA: read my lips: I have already paid for this content — where, when and how I choose to enjoy it is none of your #$%@ business!
In fact, if compensation were available for such activities, that would just be a motivation for the pigs to release the content in it’s most inconvenient format just to collect format shifting payments.
Well said Brian. I strongly object to the levy payments we are forced to make now. This is money going to the music industry that they have no right to take.
What I do with something I purchase in the privacy of my own home is nobodies business but mine. The real theives and pirates are in Holywood, and they keep reaching into my pocket.
The CRTC said something….intelligent?
The world is a strange place indeed when I find myself agreeing wholeheartedly with the CRTC’s recommendations on something.
Y’know, I don’t really have a problem with the levy payments that we make to enjoy private copying. While it may have been free at one time, charging for it now is infinitely better than disallowing it, by law… even though I know there is little they could do to actually enforce it in practice unless it is done in a context where there are others that could (and may) truthfully testify to witnessing the activity.
Maybe I’m just odd, but I’d far rather have to pay for something that I like to do, even if I used to be able to do the same thing for free, than for the only way I otherwise get to do the same thing without additional expense is by covertly breaking the law.
Excuse Me?
I’m not quite sure what makes any of this the CRTC’s business. The CRTC’s mandate is to regulate Telecommunications for the good of Canada. Copyright does not and should not come into anything they do.
Quite frankly I’d be more inclined to listen to CRTC opinion if they were doing a creditable job at what is supposed to be their business.
Allowing Bell Canada to “throttle” internet users who are supposedly causing “congestion”, through the use of Deep Packet Inspection and forged “reset” packets to artificially inflate users bandwidth is bad enough, since the process they are using actually increases “congestion”. I would expect our regulatory body to have the competence to understand the technical arguments or to do actual research into an issue like this rather than accepting whatever Bell Canada tells them as gospel.
Further allowing implementation of Usage Based Billing, so Bell Canada will now be able to charge internet users additional sums of money for the bandwidth that Bell Canada has in fact deliberately inflated is incredible.
Before Usage Based Billing is even contemplated, there needs to be an accurate way of determining “usage”. Second it needs to be monitored by an independent source such as Weights & Measures Canada, and third, since the exercise is entirely for Bell Canada’s benefit, the entire cost of implementation needs to be born by Bell Canada alone. Neither the Independent ISP’s or their customers should have to pony up for this travesty.
Of course, the real reason the CRTC is allowing this throttling is of course that the customers who Bell is seeking to throttle are BitTorrent users on p2p sites. Even though BitTorrent is legal, and even though p2p is legal, the CRTC has allowed Bell Canada to discriminate against these users because they MAY be engaging in copyright infringement. No thought seems to be given to the fact that there are non-infringing uses for BitTorrent since it is an incredibly efficient system for transferring large files.
These users are paying for the privilege of internet access. Of course they are only being discriminated against during the hours of 4pm – 2am, so really the only Internet users they are only discriminating against are those Canadians with day jobs.
There are legal bodies empowered to deal with copyright infringement but I for one never heard that Bell Canada was seconded to the RCMP. Perhaps the CRTC might have considered that Bell Canada was attempting to launch their own unthrottled downloading site when they first applied for permission to throttle users.
One part of the CRTC mandate (according to their own website) is supposed to be “Support for Canadian Talent”. So you would think that they would be aware of the Pirate Party of Canada’s Canadian Pirate Tracker which exists to help Canadian recording artists freely disseminate their works to the public using BitTorrents (which can be found at http://www.pirateparty.ca/captain/torrents )
If the CRTC really wanted to support Canadian talent rather than big media concerns they would stop Bell Canada from stifling this new alternative distribution method which allows talented artists to develop their art and build their audience through BitTorrent distribution without first having to mortgage their dreams to a large record label.
So maybe if the CRTC was doing their job and looking out for the interests of Canadian consumers I might consider their input.
But they’re not. This is NOT their business.
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