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CBA’s The National on Copyright Reform

The National, the Canadian Bar Association's monthly magazine, features a lengthy article on copyright reform in the December 2005 issue (the full issue is available for download in PDF form; the relevant article is at pages 32-37).  The article contains several quotes from me on the dangers of anti-circumvention legislation.  CRIA's General Counsel Richard Pfohl offers up this choice comment:

"We've brought artists up to Ottawa to speak out about this [copyright reform], and I've seen them attacked by university professors, which I think is shameful."

I' m guessing that Pfohl believes that I am one of those professors, since I was critical of the appearance on Parliament Hill last November by several artists including Tom Cochrane and Jim Cuddy of Blue Rodeo.  My concern then was that Cochrane misrepresented the current state of Canadian copyright law and that the few artists may have brought some star power but that they did not necessarily represent the views of many other Canadian artists, including Cuddy's former Blue Rodeo bandmate Bob Wiseman.  I think that criticism is even truer today as the recent events involving the Sony rootkit highlight the fact that many musicians find their work effectively attacked by the recording industry's insistence on burying copy-control mechanisms within their creative output and building distrust between artists and their fans.  

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