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30 Days of DRM – Day 08: Privacy (Circumvention Rights)

Today's post kicks off the heart of the 30 Days of DRM series – circumvention rights.  Circumvention rights are necessary since everyone agrees that an absolute anti-circumvention provision (ie. circumvention prohibited in all circumstances) is unworkable.  There are instances where such a prohibition would result in significant costs by precluding beneficial activities, creating "unintended consequences", and lead to significant harm to the public.  Indeed, the DMCA itself includes several narrow exceptions to the general anti-circumvention rule.

The approach in Bill C-60 was to limit (the government believed eliminate) the need for circumvention rights by creating a direct link between circumvention and copyright.  Bill C-60 only made it an offence to circumvent a technological measure for the purposes of copyright infringement.  In other words, if you had another purpose – for example, protecting your personal privacy – the anti-circumvention provision would not be triggered. 

If the new copyright bill adopts a U.S. style approach, then a crucial part of the discussion will be whether the government has identified all the necessary rights to limit the harms associated with anti-circumvention legislation.  While these rights might be characterized by some as exceptions, I think they are more appropriately viewed as circumvention rights, analogous to the Supreme Court of Canada's emphasis on user rights.

Privacy protection is an obvious example of a circumvention right.

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August 26, 2006 1 comment News

Terry McBride Profiled

Wired offers an interesting look at Terry McBride, the founder of Nettwerk and Canada's most forward-looking record executive.

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August 26, 2006 Comments are Disabled News

CRTC Denies Hate Site Request

The CRTC has issued a quick decision on the Warman request to allow Canadian ISPs to block access to two U.S. based hate sites.  The Commission denied the application, basing its decision primarily on the fact that other parties (the carriers, the sites) were not provided with notice and the […]

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August 25, 2006 3 comments News

30 Days of DRM – Day 07: DRM-Free Library Deposits (Public Protection)

Legal deposit, first established in France in 1587, is a commonly used to preserve national heritage by mandating the collection of all published works.  The National Library administered legal deposit in Canada from 1953 until 2004, when responsibility was assumed by the Library and Archives Canada.  The LAC describes the […]

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August 25, 2006 2 comments News

LibriVox

The NY Times features an article on LibriVox, a project that brings together volunteers to create audiobook versions of books in the public domain.  The project is the brainchild of Hugh McGuire from Montreal.

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August 25, 2006 1 comment News