My colleague Jeremy deBeer did a terrific job answering questions about Bill C-61 at the Globe and Mail today. The transcript is definitely worth a read.
deBeer Takes Copyright Questions
Tags: c-61 / canadian dmca / copyright / Copyright Canada / Copyright Microsite - About the Canadian DMCA / debeer
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TPM breaking tools
So I guess people like me, trained both as a programmer and mathematician and capable of devising such tools, will have to be interred if this bill passes. And let’s not even speculate on the fine for being in possession of a Linux distribution, and passing a copy to a friend– whoooooo, they’ll throw away the key. I wonder what Brazil is like?
Planted questions
Maybe I’m being paranoid, but two of the people who asked questions sounded too much like talking points from the MPAA and RIAA. The first one is “Charles Morgan from Montreal Canada”, the second and third are from “Bill Jones from Canada”
“Don’t TPMs really enable businesses to offer a variety of new and innovative services at a variety of price points (e.g. $20 to “buy” a film; or $3 to “rent” the same film by downloading a copy for time-limited use)? Who would make investments in copyright protected works (music, films) knowing that Canadian law doesn’t protect property in digital form?”
“My brother in the United States can rent and download movies straight to his computer from Netflix. I can’t get similar service here in Canada. Why are my options so limited? Are U.S. providers afraid of our weak copyright protections?”
“Even though the protections in the U.S. Digital Millenium Copyright Act are much stronger than those in this bill, don’t some artists still use innovative techniques such as Radiohead’s ‘pay what you want’ model? Just because locks exist doesn’t mean that they will be used. Aren’t artists still free to innovate in their content delivery?”