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Government May Be Altering Copyright Submissions Without Consent |
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Thursday August 27, 2009
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The copyright consultation has one of its biggest days today with a major town hall in Toronto, a roundtable hours before, and increased media coverage. The consultation has attracted growing attention in recent weeks as the chart on submissions below demonstrates. There are now over 3,000 submissions with the overwhelming majority of them speaking out against Bill C-61, anti-circumvention rules, and for stronger fair dealing (earlier charts here, here, and here). Unfortunately, the chart is not entirely accurate in part because the government has effectively been altering some of the submissions. This issue has arisen because of the large number of Canadians that have chosen to use the CCER submission form service. The service allows anyone to submit their comments by either using a form letter or modifying the content as they see fit. The government has decided to treat virtually all submissions from the CCER IP address as the form letter and simply added the relevant name to a single copy of the letter (the chart below reflects the fact that each letter is, in fact, an individual submission. Note that this is not limited to CCER, the government is doing the same thing for a form letter from the Canadian Private Copying Collective). I am reliably told that 10 to 20 percent of people who use the CCER site modify their submissions. The government's approach has wiped out those modifications entirely by adding names to a letter that they did not sign. I raised this concern with Industry Canada yesterday. They responded: Industry Canada does not alter submissions. They are posted as received. We recognize participants using the form letter may alter the contents of the letter to best express their personal positions and opinions. Every effort is made to identify variance in the contents of these form submissions. When we receive a form submission which also reflects a personal position, it is posted on the web site as a formal submission, in its original format. While that may be intent, I have been provided multiple examples of original or modified letters that have not been posted to the site but rather have simply had the authors' names added. For example [update: for a second example, see the letter posted at the end of this post from Cody Faulker of Barrie, Ontario), Justin Ruf of Yorkton, Saskatchewan, is listed as having signed the CCER letter and does not have an individual submission. Yet this was his submission (posted with permission): Dear Ministers,
Update: Below is a second example of a customized letter that has not been posted on the consultation site but the author is listed as a signatory to the form letter. It comes from Cody Faulkner of Barrie, Ontario. Dear Ministers, Comments (16)
Anon-K
said:
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Not to defend... the government, but did you contact the CCER to confirm that they don't have a bug in their submission page, and that it works, as expected on all browsers? Some have a hard time with javascript, or some pages that are designed for IE. I use Firefox. When I hit "Add Comment" on this page it takes minutes to get the comment submitted. And sometimes it doesn't show up at all. |
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Look first to thine own self If the government of Canada wants to start allowing prosecutions of copyrighted work, they ought to tread very carefully. I can say with a very good degree of certainty that many government workers understand the arcane rules surrounding copyright about as clearly as most citizens--that is to say not much at all--and regularly collect, retain, and share copyrighted works on government internal networks without proper protections or attributions. Would Deputy Ministers be willing to permit CRIA to enforce DMCA-style penalties--with the attendant investigations on private networks that is required in order to locate and confirm infringements of copyrighted work--as the recording industries are proposing they ought to be able to do to private citizens? I think not. |
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... Two things: The Government of Canada has copyright licences that cover what is copied and shared, so they do a very good job of respecting copyright. And secondly, whetehr they get counted as separate submissions or not, form letters with or without changes really do not get treated seriously. |
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The CCER and CPCC folks might help distinguish the edits It might be a good idea to make the edits appear in a different color in a color display, to ease the task of the staff in the consultancy office. I suspect they don't have a nerd available to write them a custom "diff" script. --dave |
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The CCER and CPCC folks might help distinguish the edits It might be a good idea to make the edits appear in a different color in a color display, to ease the task of the staff in the consultancy office. I suspect they don't have a nerd available to write them a custom "diff" script. --dave |
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Controversy makes the Government act Well I just checked out the website again that had my name listed and they have quickly taken my name down. I tried the internet archive but could not find an original copy of the website. I hope someone made a copy of that. |
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The CCER and CPCC folks might help distinguish the edits It might be a good idea to make the edits appear in a different color in a color display, to ease the task of the staff in the consultancy office. I suspect they don't have a nerd available to write them a custom "diff" script. --dave |
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Director of Communications Dr Geist, The consultation process on copyright law provided by Industry Canada and Heritage Canada is to allow concerned Canadians a forum to present their opinions and ideas freely. The process is designed to hear from everyone who wants to offer their opinion in both official languages in a respectful manner. Our website copyrightconsultation.ca is designed to facilitate the views and opinions of Canadians to impact the shaping of future copyright legislation. Our objective is to accurately reflect the views of those who wish to contribute. The website also allows Canadians the opportunity to read other submissions to understand all sides to this debate. Just like those who read your opinions on your Blog, many Canadians come to ours as a resource on copyright. So I read with some disappointment the allegations posted your Blog that you think the government could be altering submissions to our site. I can assure you and anyone who reads your Blog the suggestion is patently false. So far the consultation process has been very constructive and positive, with a lot of feedback to consider. Each submission we receive is read by an Industry Canada employee. To date we have received 4226 submissions, we are currently in the process of getting each of these posted to the site. There have been days with well over 500 submissions, so it is possible that human error may have occurred, we are happy to address any mistakes that are brought to our attention to ensure the integrity of the postings. You allege that IP addresses are not used to sort submissions, again this is false. We welcome all submissions including form letters. Form letter submissions will be posted once to avoid the same letter posted hundreds of times. Our goal is to make the site as user friendly as possible, it is important that all views can be read and nothing inhibits that. To ensure full transparency, any carbon copied form letter submission will have the names of the signatories are added to the original letter. We are approaching the copyright consultations in the most responsible way. So far, all participants are working with the government in the same manner. Your allegations only distract this important debate away from a consultation that hears from Canadians who are concerned with copyright law. DARREN CUNNINGHAM Director of Communications Office of the Honourable Tony Clement Minister of Industry & FEDNOR |
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Darren - what about the two examples included in this post? If you want to address the issue, please at least try to explain what happened to these two examples and please fix them. Also please offer some sort of evidence that you are looking into what you termed "human error" to prevent more of these mistakes from happening. Those two examples seem pretty concrete and from everything I've read over the last year+, Dr. Geist is not one to publish allegations without some substantial proof. |
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Darren - what about using diff? Diff can compare two texts and pinpoint the differences. If the letter is too different (say 10-15% difference) from the form letter, it should be posted separately. PS. I love the captcha: "cowboys attorneys" |
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... My goodness - what about the submittors' moral right to the integrity of their work? Won't someone think of the creator? |
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... My goodness - what about the submittors' moral right to the integrity of their work? Won't someone think of the creator? |
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Behold, a preview of the new copyright in Canada Individual: You have no rights. What you can do about it: Nothing. What companies need to do: Just accuse, no proof needed, for full siezure, conviction, then destruction of your works. |
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... As someone following the submissions here, I think you didn't quite take into account the human equation. When I'm on the site browsing the submissions, I myself tend to skip these form letters when they were posted, without reading them through. Only read the first few lines, and pressed the back button on my browser. I'm pretty sure Prof. Geist that you've done the same. The important message I think here, is if you want your voice to count or want to add something in, than don't use form letters. Paraphrase these letters and send them in by e-mail don't copy and paste. Those that have had their works altered, maybe resubmitting the submissions but only with the altered content. |
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Submission guide This is why the Vancouver Fair Copyright Coalition submission guide emphasizes using your own words. We heard that this was likely to happen. The guide is available at faircopy.ca |
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... If you do not see your submission, or if your submission has been improperly posted - contact Industry right away! Justin, I still don't see your submission; have you contacted them? |
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