In addition to my Hill Times op-ed this week on the transformation of Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore from iPod minister to iPadlock minister, the paper includes a second article with some predictions for copyright reform. The opening of the article includes a quote from Canadian Heritage Parliamentary Secretary Dean Del Mastro on the reform process:
"It would be naïve of me to say that we could introduce a bill on copyright that would be loved on all sides."
Del Mastro's comment is consistent with the conventional wisdom on copyright reform, namely that it is a contentious issue pitting users against creators that is difficult to reconcile. Yet the conventional wisdom here may be wrong. It is true that a copyright bill is unlikely to be loved by all sides. In fact, a bill loved by any side is probably a bill that does not strike the right balance (that is one of the reasons Moore's shift to strong support for C-61 digital lock rules is so problematic – one group loves it, some tolerate it, many hate it). Far better, is a bill that is acceptable to all sides. That means there will be compromises for all with the goal of crafting a bill that meets the most stakeholder needs and maintains the copyright balance.
Is that possible? I think so. The key elements in such a bill would include:
1. Anti-Circumvention Rules
The rules on digital locks are easily the most controversial aspect of the forthcoming bill. Yet there is more agreement here than disagreement. At this stage, the majority of stakeholders accept that Canada should implement the WIPO Internet treaties and with it introduce anti-circumvention rules into Canadian copyright law. The fact that we move forward on WIPO should please the U.S. and many copyright lobby groups.
I – along with many others – have argued that it should only be a violation of the law to circumvent a technological protection measure if the underlying purpose is to infringe copyright. Circumvention should be permitted to access a work for fair dealing, private copying, or any other legal purposes. This approach – which is similar (though not identical) to the failed Bill C-60 – would allow Canada to implement the WIPO Internet treaties and avoid some of the negative “unintended consequences” that have arisen under the DMCA. It is also the approach that was recently adopted in India and bears some similarity to both New Zealand and Japan. While some would not love this – some would want more, others less – it is likely an acceptable compromise to most.
2. Fair Dealing
The other highly controversial issue is fair dealing. We should start by noting that everyone agrees that some reform is needed. The minimum additions that enjoy fairly broad support include parody, satire, time shifting, format shifting, and device shifting. These additions were either found in C-61 or have strong support from creator groups. In other words, the government could add all of these without much, if any, opposition.
The bigger question is whether to adopt a more flexible approach by making the fair dealing list illustrative rather than exhaustive. There are benefits to this approach (greater flexibility, technology neutral, reduces future lobbying and reforms) and – opponents argue – some downsides (uncertainty). I side strongly with the flexible approach as I believe the concerns are vastly overstated, similar provisions are found in other countries (including the United States), and any changes would be built upon years of Canadian jurisprudence.
However, it is important to recognize that the issue is even more complicated than an either/or choice. Bill C-61 included exceptions for education along with provisions targeting libraries and teachers. The value of flexible fair dealing is that addresses all of these exceptions as well, ensuring that many stakeholders don't get everything they want, but may get enough to find the compromise acceptable.
3 . Intermediary Liability
This should be easy. Both Bill C-60 and C-61 implemented notice-and-notice and the system has been used informally in Canada for years. Sticking with a provision that is generally viewed as acceptable by all stakeholders makes sense.
4. Other Provisions
Bill C-61 was a complicated piece of legislation with many other provisions addressing performers rights, photographers rights, statutory damages, and more. Many of these are not particularly controversial. It is not that everyone loves these provisions, but most seemingly can live with them in order to strike a deal on copyright.
5. Private Copying
Private copying has been in the spotlight with the Angus private members bill and the Canadian Heritage motion that passed in the House of Commons. The Conservatives have been vocal opponents of extending the levy and there is no hope that it will appear in the forthcoming bill. However, with support from opposition parties and artists groups, a middle ground is needed. There are multiple proposals on the table for extending the levy (ACTRA, Songwriters Association of Canada) and multiple concerns voiced about how the levy currently functions and the implications of applying it to other media. A commitment to study the levy – what works, what doesn't, and what alternate compensation systems are possible – offers some forward progress in a manner that may again be acceptable to many stakeholders.
Personally, I’d add one caveat to the private use exemption… that is, that one should only be able to claim the exemption if the content from which the copy is made was not infringing already (or, if the copy is being made remotely from someplace that is not in Canada, would not be considered infringing if it were within Canada). This essentially reverses policy an a rather infamous court ruling earlier this past decade, but I believe that the rights of copyright holders are substantially diminished if the previous court ruling is allowed to stand. This touches on the issue of “personal use piracy”, that the RCMP has said they do not currently target because they do not know how to stop it. But I do not think making it legal is a good idea, because it creates a situation where people could do it openly even in circumstances where it would have been completely feasible to actually stop them, negating, at least circumstantially, the very reason why the RCMP does not generally target such activities.
I really doubt there is anything near consensus on flexible fair dealing if it includes education, and Prof. Geist surely knows this.
grunt
I suggest analyzing the bill by cost-revenues-benefits.
Man, THAT little exe in stats would be a free-for-all, wouldn’t it?
It would let the huge xerox fees being paid by schools get by
as temporary electronic caches, not permanent copies.
or are schools now pay-per-view?
packrat
Levy
I agree that the levy should be extended, not for the sake of copyright per se, but because the levy is not technology-neutral. Because the levy covers things like blank audio and video cassettes (media that are nearly extinct) the levy does not provide the same level of funding that it once did.
I find it particularly amusing that blank DVDs are less expensive than blank CDs becuase CDs are covered by the levy and DVDs are not when a simple phrase like “optical storage medium” would have covered CDs, DVDs, BRDs and any future optical format (if there will be any more).
If the levy is to continue to be useful, it should cover the media of the day. I’m willing to pay a bit more for media knowing that the extra goes towards artists.
I think I smell some Astroturf.
@Dan Goodchild: The claim is the money does go to the artists. However, looking at the distribution of funds, the money goes to the Canadian artists who have the most album sales and are radio-friendly. Thus, an artist such as Nickleback and Michael Buble stand to get big payoffs from the levy, while artists such as Tom Cochrane and Rush would see much less. For recording media that is used for private copying of music, the private copies made of the latter artists will be paid to the former. Worse, you can only collect if you are a member of one of the collectives. The CPCC talks about the amount of money that they have distributed; I haven’t seen (granted I haven’t looked that far) a breakdown of the levy funds distributed to the artists by the collectives.
Note as well that a portion of the levy goes not to the songwriters and artists, but also to the publishers and record labels (source, CPCC). If I download an album from the Internet, I am likely to burn it to a CD so that I can play it in my car, etc. So, I pay for the album, and I pay a levy on the media that I burned the legal copy onto. It gets worse. If I download it from a non-collective member artist, they can’t get a cut of the levy I paid on the media.
I thought the whole reason why we went through a consultation was due to the fact that the C-61 approach was vastly rejected by the public. During the consultation process I found that virtually every Canadian in the consultation process wants to support creative talent, but wants to do it in a way that’s consistent with how we want to use our purchased content.
The governments own independent source in the consultation warned that with respect to DRM “to be careful in putting forth laws that you cannot enforce”, and that there has been a “Value chain disconnect” within media, in which he favored monetization of the networks as a viable way to correct that.
I think the public who took part in the consultation has a reasonable expectation that Government will put forth some sort of legislation to force a lot of these companies, not consumers, back into participating in the marketplace, and around those needs.
If legislation doesn’t put forth an understanding of a very predictable digital market, than the law becomes basically irrelevant, and creators will have the false sense that their right to a pay cheque is actually being protected.
If penalties are to be thrown on to users, there is a real danger that any sympathy for the creator groups found in the consultations will evaporate, and the Conservatives could find themselves in a very tough and possibly deep unclimbable hole. We are in the middle of a lobby scandal in Ottawa right now. I don’t think the public will take very lightly to a C-61 approach. In fact if a C-61 approach is presented after it was rejected by Canadians and clearly rejected in the consultation by the voting public, it may actually end up changing our lobby laws in the future, which is a good thing.
But the good news is, there’s still committee, and from the sounds of it, this bill may not make it to 3rd reading anyway. We are on the heels of an election call. It’ll probably end up dying on the order paper again (which is most likely to happen). It’ll be interesting though to see how much damage a C-61 approach will do this time around when Canadians are paying a lot more attention to this issue.
All anyone has to do is look across the pond to the UK to find out what kind of a devastating impact politically occurs, when governments cave to lobby pressures. Gordon Brown, is getting ready for his new career as a janitor.
Re: Levy
@Anon-K Your point is well-taken. I agree that there should be other changes to the levy including the distribution model. I was just trying to keep the focus of my comment fairly narrow; the point being that if we’re going to continue using the levy (and I think we likely are) it should be better funded by including modern media that people are actually buying. That, and since it’s been opened up for changes, make those changes more technology-neutral so that obsolete media doesn’t pose as great a problem later.
Re: Levy
@Dan Goodchild I don’t see how you could make it more technology-neutral than it is today. The phrase used is “blank audio recording media”. It’s regulations that have specified that it is payable on recordable CDs but not on recordable DVDs. The main reason for that is because the levy is music-only and the board (rightly, in my opinion) found that recordable DVDs are mostly not used for music.
Levy
The problem with the levy, is it can’t possibly target all the current and future media devices.
The iPod is the one that currently draws the most attention, but there are all kinds of other devices that can and will be used for the same purpose. The iPad is the newest, and it is almost impossible to buy a new cell phone that does not have media playback capability. Likewise nearly every computer ever built. What is next? TV’s? Cameras? In cars systems? Are we going to put a levy on every possible device that is capable of media transfer and playback? The technology advances, again and again. It is becoming ubiquitous.
And this dovetails with DRM. The fact of the matter is that DRM will be broken rapidly, and if the only way the end user can transfer their media to their newest device is to grab a DRM disabled version from the internet, they will do so.
This “problem” won’t be addressed with tighter laws. Such laws will be ignored by the majority of the population because it is unrealistic. It will take a major change in the way the copyright industries address their customers. There are ways to make money even if the content is essentially “free”, especially if it has zero marginal (reproduction) costs.
I find it both amusing and frustrating that the content industries haven’t addressed this. The only things I have seen them do, is try to “move” the existing models into digital distribution. That doesn’t work, it takes a whole new business model. Until they realize this and address it, we will continue to have this controversy. And the customers will continue to ignore them.
I agree: rather than force consumers to pay, it’s high time content creators are forced to interact once again with the market, if they want a paycheck that is.
Also, with the levy, I don’t understand why music downloading for personal use isn’t now explicitly legal. Afterall, we are paying for it.
Arguably, because the person who is uploading it isn’t using it for personal use, and by downloading one is enabling that. I see no reason to explicitly legalize even personal use downloading of copyrighted content from unauthorized sources.
Fair Dealing: For starters…
…I’m here to qualify your assertion: “We should start by noting that everyone agrees that some reform is needed.” The only issue that artists need to address is to add parody. Other than that the section works well. The urge to expand the educational application springs from the higher education sector who’s (probably overpaid) administration resent spending less than one half of one per cent to compensate creators and publishers for the use of their works.
“The problem with the levy, is it can’t possibly target all the current and future media devices.”
Why not? If a device bases its market value on its ability to access and copy creative content, why shouldn’t the content providers be factored into the retail price?
I think folks here make some broad and inaccurate assumptions about the real costs behind device retail pricing. You don’t mind dropping a couple hundred bucks for a new device as soon as it comes out, but scream foul play at a few dollars more for content access? That’s just weird.
Let me turn one of your favorite arguments around a bit. Digital access to creative content is not “traditional” property ownership, at least not when the content is protected by copyright.
Instead it is a flexible state of permitted use. As long as the price is maintained to be realistic, what’s wrong with paying for permitted use on each new device you buy?
If you maintain that I can’t possible “own” intellectual property in any traditional sense of “ownership,” how can you claim ownership of it yourself?
Re; grunt on “Xerox fees”
Dear grunt,
As I indicated, the copying licenses of Canadian colleges and universities amount to less than one half of one percent of their budgetary allocations.
@strunk:
“why not?” Because the future is unknowable. The current levy would not, for example, even begin to cover any sort of futuristic memory enhancing technology that might only initially be used to treat Alzheimer’s but can be enhanced to give a person mental access to a vast information highway much like our modern-day Internet. A technology-neutral levy is preferable.
“What’s wrong with paying for permitted use?” Because in the end you won’t get what you paid for… Why should a customer be constrained to only use content they bought if or when the copyright holder finds it convenient enough to allow them to do so, and graciously permits the person who paid for it to access it?
@oldguy
“It will take a major change in the way the copyright industries address their customers.”
I agree. It still hasn’t sunk in yet to creator groups why IP reform for all purposes has yet to any increase in pay or compensation for artistic talent. It’s sad that they are all being duped into thinking IP reform will fix this issue, when all the have to do is look at the stats from other countries that have applied IP reform. Nothing is working, and the content industry keeps asking for more reforms. Once they get those it still won’t increase creator compensation to the level of potential that they could make if other more user friendly business models were developed.
What’s changed in the past 10 years? Even with IP reforms the market pretty much bottomed out, and creators are STILL eating kraft dinner and doing up “bathroom” concerts on Youtube even in countries were IP reform has occurred. I think creators themselves deserve an answer for this from those lobbying on their behalf. I also think creators need to express their views independently without the fear of litigation by the content industry lobby. I think our Canadian Creators deserve a change from the past 10 years, and a more hopeful outlook towards their future. I think they have been listening to the wrong people.
Er… rereading what I wrote, I realized that I was implying that you should pay for what you are allowed to remember… which is absurd.
Master
All of this should take into context the long term effects of market restrictions. I believe it is the people who make up the market and thereby should have property rights on the market. It’s just like the big money companies that use up resources, cutting down trees and trashing the land: they are doing irreversible damage to the land and robbing future generations of their natural inheritance.
The proliferation of knowledge should not be restricted nor should it be monopolized. TV shows, songs, and video games are a collection of knowledge that is made acceptable by our society. The way the US makes it: you go into McDonalds and buy a burger, now that you’ve bought it, you can’t go home and make any burgers for your friends and family, as a matter of fact, just forget about the burger unless you come back an pay us for another one.
Knowledge should never become criminal. Society is creating larger and larger storage devices, portable. The CD and DVD is a pathetic joke that pollutes our world. Any material that is posted into our society should belong exclusively to our society and therefor should be distributed freely within our society. If you want to make money, then help facilitate the distribution. If you want to create something beautiful and prolific, then let it be beautiful and prolific and work at creating … not containing.
Commercialization of knowledge is a dead end. History proves that all non-prolific works are destroyed by humanity. Library of Alexandria, the scrolls, the monasteries. Once the internet is contained it will become a definite within nature (it will have a distinction)– it will become segregated and will die. Maybe this is a good thing and we should just let the big wigs continue tying the noose.
Cheers,
Hmm
Joah_, as much as I hate to say it, I have to thoroughly disagree… TV shows, songs and videos are not “knowledge” – they are entertainment (and culture, but that’s another issue). Entertainment REQUIRES rules like copyright to keep incentive to their creation. Many hours go into making a video game, what would be the point of even creating one if you couldn’t make any money (and therefore, livelihood) off it? You’d rather spend your time farming, getting food you need to survive out of it…
Public domain has its place, for sure. Copyright is extremely important as well. The real question is this idea of personal copies.
“If a device bases its market value on its ability to access and copy creative content, why shouldn’t the content providers be factored into the retail price?”
Because even though I can’t buy a new cell phone *without* that advertised capability, I would still have to pay the levy. Just as I buy CD’s (and DVDs) to backup data and still pay the levy. Extend this concept into nearly every new device today.
The point is that this capability is becoming prevalent in nearly all new technology. Even if the “primary” function isn’t that capability, it is still there. The iPod has lots of capabilities beyond simply media playback, just as the CD can be used for lots of things beyond media recording.
“Instead it is a flexible state of permitted use. As long as the price is maintained to be realistic, what’s wrong with paying for permitted use on each new device you buy? ”
Permitted use of what? What percentage of each capability gets used?
There is a false assumption built into a levy, that the devices will always (or at least primarily) be used to infringe copyright. How much should the levy on cell phones be? On computers? Netbooks? On hard drives? On usb sticks? On future devices like TV and car systems (much more than simple “entertainment devices”)? We will be chasing this forever.
You would be much better off placing a levy on earbuds and headphones, which are used with all these devices for personal listening. Or speakers.
anonymous — like with cars, you pay to use the device, whether you like it or not. Since that is going to be true even in your strange memory-enhancing future, why should the payment go only to the device-maker? Why shut out the makers of the content, which is clearly valuable since someone has gone so far as to invent a Blade Runnerish brain implant to access it.
Alright, that’s enough weird future-talk. Can we stick to compensating artists for what is happening now, and not go all Terminator in this discussion?
Sure. What’s happening right now is that many people who paid for the Blu Ray Avatar DVD aren’t able to play it. This is the legacy of DRM: inconveniencing honest customers while the pirates go on their merry old ways. Content producers can’t possibly predict every possible thing that will go wrong, and only the honest consumers end up suffering for it – some of whom will end up turning to piracy as a means of simply getting what they paid for.
Copy protection alone is bad enough, but to legislate that people aren’t even allowed to bypass it is a) unenforceable in any real sense because people will just do so behind closed doors, and b) makes it impossible for the honest consumer to legally enjoy what he paid for whenever circumstances that the content provider didn’t anticipate arise.
@Anonymous
“many people who paid for the Blu Ray Avatar DVD aren’t able to play it”
Thanks for the heads up, I was actually about to rent that tonight too, damn.
So the only reasonable response to a Blu Ray disc that won’t play is to pirate the intellectual property on the disc?
How about retunring the disc? How about demanding your money back and raising such a stink the distributor fixes the problem — like a car recall?
It sounds to me like the inconvenience you describe affects mainly impatient consumerist early adopters. To me that suggests a larger social problem, and is in no way an excuse to arbitrarily remove rights from creators and content industries.
Don’t buy Avatar on Blu Ray (for soooo many reasons). Don’t buy a 3D television. Honestly… buyer beware!
You are counseling ripping rights from hard-working people on the off-chance that impatient consumers might one day spend ridiculous amounts of early adoption money on the next BetaMax machine.
oldguy — your image of our poor overwhelmed society is a bit rich — we’d be chasing this forever?
So what? That’s the market economy. Supply and demand, baby. I’m just going to go ahead and not feel sorry for you because you have to pay a small extra charge for a new cell phone you can absolutely do without.
The “I won’t use it for content copying and or storage” argument is as disingenuous as it comes. Look at your own favorite quotes on file-sharing numbers. Claiming this kind of usage is not pernicious is just a lie. Pay the creator! Don’t be such a cheapskate.
“How about retunring the disc? How about demanding your money back and raising such a stink the distributor fixes the problem — like a car recall?”
Except they don’t design cars to NOT work. They do however explicitly design Blueray and DVD players not to work. I’ve purchased DVD’s in Europe. When I get them back here, the only way I can watch them is to rip them. I’ve had European friends buy DVDs here too. I’ve always ripped them for them and copied them to another DVD before they return home, ’cause I know they wont be able to watch them on their own players.
This has nothing to do with protecting copyright, and everything to do with artificial market segmentation so that the media companies can extract every last penny they can from a market.
“Don’t buy Avatar on Blu Ray (for soooo many reasons). Don’t buy a 3D television. Honestly… buyer beware!”
That would be fine if it really were BUYER beware. Unfortunately with legal protection for DRM you are never a buyer. Only a renter, but they let you think you are buying something. Nice racket!
Paid for it already…
“So the only reasonable response to a Blu Ray disc that won’t play is to pirate the intellectual property on the disc?”
Technically speaking you’re paid for the rights to view this already… so you might as well keep your Blu-Ray disc, download the 1080p .mkv file and watch it.
As far as I’m concerned that’s perfectly acceptable and should be acceptable to any artist as the downloader (in this case) has already paid for viewing rights.
S/he may not be using “approved” distribution channels but nobody is being robbed in this case. Only a matter of the downloader’s legit tech catching up with their not-so-legit tech.
I actually hadn’t intended to turn this into a debate about a particular issue with a specific Blu Ray title, I pointed it out to illustrate that content makers inevitably don’t think of everything and honest consumers end up not being allowed to use material they have legally paid for in ways that should have been perfectly reasonable, and are obligated to wait for the creator to fix the problem, in spite of the fact that they’ve already spent their money. Sure one can get a refund, but that’s adding just another inconvenience on top of it all.
Hook — Clearly, you’ve never owned an American made car. What part of “don’t buy it” do you not understand?
I have never, not once, ever experienced the least inconvenience from my iPod, iPhone, DVD player, CDs DVDs or any other piece of tech or content on media that I’ve bought. Of course, I also choose not to buy a lot of stuff that seems dumb and premature to me (bluuuuuray), and strangely when I go to Europe, I look at the sights and don’t bother to buy DVDs, knowing there is region coding. Does is piss you off when bookstores in Prague don’t have texts in English? Oh well, we live in a big world.
Nothing you have described is in any way an argument for stealing content from its creators. Your argument seems to be with device-makers. Yet you’re okay taking out your frustration on artists in some misguided belief that doing so is actually a blow to the tech.
@strunk&white
“Honestly… buyer beware!”
To be honest, I think we need government to start developing C.R.A.P. stickers for DRM enabled software. Let the consumer make the choice on whether to support C.R.A.P. products.
Great idea strunk&white you’ve actually proved you have some potential.
@strunk&witless
“strangely when I go to Europe, I look at the sights and don’t bother to buy DVDs, knowing there is region coding. Does is piss you off when bookstores in Prague don’t have texts in English?”
Actually given the ubiquity of English, I’d be very surprised if they did not have any english texts. Regardless, whatever book I were to buy in Prague, I’d still expect to be able to be able to read it back in Canada.
Region encoding has about the same amount of legitimacy as segregated restaurants. “No, you can’t shop here. Your kind have to shop at this other store which has a different range of pricing geared to what YOU can affort to pay. Bend over and take it baby!”
“Nothing you have described is in any way an argument for stealing content from its creators”
You are absolutely right. It was never intended to either. Does it surprise me that you can’t figure that out. Not really.
I’ve never argued for stealing content from creators, I just don’t think that creators rights should extend into what people do privately. Making copies and sharing them? That involves somebody else and isn’t private. Downloading from unauthorized sources? That involves somebody else too. Tranferring content you paid for to your own media player to watch it when you want to should *NOT* be at the whim of the copyright holder because most people will just ignore the restrictions and bypass them, breaking the law if they need to. Sorry to say this, but people do not follow laws that they do not agree with, and it is inevitable that they will not agree with copyright holders telling people when and where they can use the content they’ve supposedly bought.
Content developer who thinks current copyright is overkill.
1. The DRM issue is not going to be a long standing issue. If you look at the current situation. A DRM’d movie comes out, someone copies it somehow, and a pirated version goes out to the Internet. Once it’s out there you can’t put the magic smoke back into the computer. Not only that, but the pirated version is worth more then the DRM’d version. This is because the FBI warnings, and the advertisements and garbage are usually removed, allowing the user to just view the movie. So their is financial incentive to not buy a DRM’d movie, and no amount of legislation will fix that. DRM was a quick that frankly hasn’t worked, and won’t provide the dollars that the movie industry is looking for. Putting DRM type legislation into the Canadian economy will be saddling the Canadian public with the burden of laws requiring the purchase of buggy whips. Do we do this just to mollify the US government, who in turn adopted DRM to mollify Hollywood? I’d rather the government was run by people representing the public’s interests. I don’t think DRM is an effective solution and doesn’t help the public (or the movie industry in the long run) at all.
Fair dealing needs to be more than flexible. The whole concept needs to be abolished. We should go back to the idea that if you buy something, it is yours to do what you want with. If you want to make 10,000 copies there is no reason why you shouldn’t be able to. The ONLY thing that copyright should prohibit is the selling of those copies. Of course the “publishers” will say that because it’s so easy to make copies with computers, it should be restricted, because that will lead to selling, or even worse… giving! I don’t buy it. If this is such a big problem, then raise the price of the originals. Again legislating buggy whip purchases.
A good article was written http://www.h-online.com/open/features/Why-Making-Money-from-Free-Software-Matters-985505.html that discusses some different ways of thinking about copyright.
strunk&white – “we’d be chasing this forever?”
Yes we would. Consider, I can buy a new phone with an 8GB internal memory. How much is used for phone data/photos/etc? How much for copyrighted content? But then I add a cheap 16GB upgrade card to that same new phone, same question?
But that same 16GB card can also be used in an embedded device that never will contain copyrighted content. Same question?
1TB drives are very common nowadays, it’s the best “bang for the buck”. 2TB drives will be in that sweet spot in another year or so. In fact, a drive with only 250MB is almost as much money. Many of those drives are used to contain copyrighted content, but by far most of them never see copyrighted content. How do you assign a levy amount?
If the content is encoded at low quality vs high quality, the difference can be 3-4 times the amount of “copyrighted content” that can be stored on the same size media. At the low quality end of the encoding scale, that 1TB drive can hold well over 300,000 songs. It’s ridiculous to assume some one will simply fill that with music. Even 100,000 high quality encodings is unrealistic.
Remember, a CD is only 640MB. That phone contains internal memory equivalent to 12 CDs. That 16MB upgrade card is equivalent to 25 CDs, that 1TB drive is equivalent over 1500 CDs. If we apply the same “levy logic” to 1TB drives as we do to CDs, add $450 to the cost of that $90 1TB drive. Flash is getting bigger all the time. Memristor tech is on the horizon. How long until that cell phone also comes with between 100GB and 1TB of internal storage?
The principle of a levy sounds attractive, and perhaps made some sense in the days of CDs. In the modern world, the principle still sounds interesting, but the application is a nightmare. No matter what an administrator decides is the “correct” levy for a medium, they will be wrong. By the time they make a decision, technology will have made his assumptions outdated.
So yes, we would be chasing this forever. Or more accurately, our levy administrators would be. And they would never get it right.
they put ernst zundel in jail for 7 yrs, not for the act of writing, but for his content. logically content is the crime. acta is not about copyright. people will be going to jail for content on their devices. stopping this bill will be almost impossible, it would require mass demonstrations
Hook, you can’t very well call yourself a pirate and then expect people to take it on faith that you don’t want to steal.
I mean, maybe YOU could do that, but real pirates can’t.
I see by the comment above, and by Hook’s reference to racial segregation that this conversation is going in the usual hyperbolic direction. Enjoy your European DVDs and Blu Rays everyone.
@s&w
“Hook, you can’t very well call yourself a pirate and then expect people to take it on faith that you don’t want to steal.”
Yes, I’m not in the least bit surprised that you totally ignore the argument and focus exclusively on the person presenting it.
“I see by the comment above, and by Hook’s reference to racial segregation that this conversation is going in the usual hyperbolic direction.”
That’s right ignore the point made. Segregation is exactly what we are talking about. not racial, but financial. Artificially breaking the world market up into smaller markets based on what each geographic area is capable of paying. Ironically this is done at the same time as our various governments seek out ways of opening world markets through free trade agreements.
That’s OK though. You just label the point hyperbole and ignore it. This is probably the same tact you take in your global warming denial arguments too.
Hook — the word is tack. Tack! It’s a sailing term.
When you want to make an ad hominem attack against someone and imply they deny global warming (for some mystrerious purpose), you use the word “tack.” Otherwise you are implying that your opponent is polite (thank you).
Read a book sometime.
“When you want to make an ad hominem attack against someone and imply they deny global warming (for some mystrerious purpose), you use the word “tack.” Otherwise you are implying that your opponent is polite (thank you).”
Funny words coming from the king of ad hominem attacks. Now are you going to address the argument or just pick on the spelling? If you’re not a global warming denier, you certainly are well qualified to be one.
There’s a difference between spelling and word choice, Hook.
Like there’s a difference between idea and expression; like there’s a difference between a work and a copy; like there’s a difference between civil disobedience and lawlessness; like there’s a difference between temporary consumer inconvenience and fraud; like there’s a difference between legal lobbying and influence peddling; like there’s a difference between an actual pirate and someone who counsels infringement from behind a pirate mask.
I get that you have trouble with the fine distinctions. But then again, you do turn your head inquisitvely whenever you hear the master’s voice, so not much distinction is expected.
Define copyright.
Copyright is a government-enforced monopoly.
“There’s a difference between spelling and word choice, Hook.”
Sure there is. And I have a few choice words for you too. Unfortunately this is a family establishment so I’ll refrain from sharing those ones right now.
So I guess you see digital restrictions as merely a temporary consumer inconvenience. You are still neglecting my point. I’ll say it once again, but I really don’t expect you to address it.
The tools to legally protect digital restrictions already exist. They require the media companies to own the hardware and enforce the no tampering restriction through contract law rather than copyright law. Even if you see the restrictions imposed on private property through DRM copyright laws as merely an inconvenience rather than a fundamental attack on the principle of private property, why do you support such laws when they are not even necessary?
@strunk&white: “So what? That’s the market economy. Supply and demand, baby. I’m just going to go ahead and not feel sorry for you because you have to pay a small extra charge for a new cell phone you can absolutely do without.”
A levy such as the blank media levy short circuits the “market economy”. Under a market economy the people who produce get the money. Look at the distribution formula used for the levy monies. It has nothing to do with the people whose stuff is put onto the media used; it is distributed based on album sales and airplay. So an independent artist who provides their work using the internet as a direct to the customer online distribution mechanism and gets no airplay gets nothing for the media that is used to burn the download to. Market economy? Hardly. Subsidization of the acts who use traditional means of distribution and advertising in reality.
And I will say – again – to you, Hook, if you don’t want DRM on your devices, don’t buy DRMed devices. No-one is ripping money out of your pocket (you’re not an artist, right?) and replacing it with an iPod.
If everyone who uses DRM as a dirty word would actually put their money where their mouths are on this issue and NOT buy the stuff, you might actually convince industry to stop using it. Even better, as I may have mentioned several times already, if you combined all of your obviously considerable disposable incomes and invested in an open platform competitor device for the iPad, you’d make your point AND a whole lot of money.
If you buy a locked box and then do a lot of shouting about how unfair it is that the box is locked, that makes you at best a very silly person. At best.
So, just in case you can’t find an answer to your question in all that (shock and surprise), I am agnostic on DRM — don’t care or believe one way or another. What I do believe is that if you buy DRMed devices, like everywhere else in life, you get what you pay for.
Same goes for DRMed content. Under copyright law you are never buying the work itself, but a single restricted copy of the work. Nobody forced you to buy a regionally coded DVD. Nobody fooled you into thinking it wasn’t regionally coded. If you didn’t want the regional coding, you should have kept your money in your pocket. Enough people do that, the market will respond with the elimination of regional coding. And no-one breaks any laws.
Copyright is a time-limited exclusive right of the holder of that right to copy a work protected by it. Other people must obtain permission from the copyright holder before they can legally copy it. Certain exemptions to the exclusivity have been traditionally granted under law, such as copying for purposes of review, criticism, satire, and other fair dealings issues. I have no problem with the copyright holder having such rights, nor any problem with financially compensating the copyright holder for media that contains the content. What I have a problem with is when copyright holders desire to extend their rights to exclude privileges that have been previously afforded without causing any actual harm to the copyright holder. What I have a problem with is laws which would make it illegal for a consumer to access content they had paid for at their own convenience. If the company I worked for ever wanted to try to endorse such protections on their works, you can be sure I’d be speaking out against it there just as certainly as I am here. It is not consumer convenience, private copying, or fair dealing that harm copyright holders’ rights, it is the distribution of unauthorized copies. Yet proposals such as bill C61 and similar such lobbies would deny honest consumers the privilege of legally being able to do things which do not harm the copyright holder, while meanwhile, the actual people who intentionally infringe on copyright will merrily continue to do so. How, in any sort of sane world, is that remotely balanced?
Oh, and as for not buying DRM’d devices… it’s almost a certainty that if bypassing DRM actually becomes explicitly illegal, regardless of the intention behind the circumvention, it will be almost impossible to find any DRM-free stuff of significant quality within 5 to 10 years… consumers will simply have no choice.
I would have no problem with laws against circumvention if (and only if) the intention behind the circumvention was to infringe on copyright, but that requires actual copyright infringement to take place, which means that unauthorized copies of copyrighted works must be getting distributed before charges can be laid, and such charges would be against the distributor of those unauthorized copies, not against the manufacturer of the tools that the distributor may have used to make them.
@stunk&white
“And I will say – again – to you, Hook, if you don’t want DRM on your devices, don’t buy DRMed devices. No-one is ripping money out of your pocket (you’re not an artist, right?) and replacing it with an iPod.
If everyone who uses DRM as a dirty word would actually put their money where their mouths are on this issue and NOT buy the stuff, you might actually convince industry to stop using it. Even better, as I may have mentioned several times already, if you combined all of your obviously considerable disposable incomes and invested in an open platform competitor device for the iPad, you’d make your point AND a whole lot of money.
If you buy a locked box and then do a lot of shouting about how unfair it is that the box is locked, that makes you at best a very silly person. At best.
So, just in case you can’t find an answer to your question in all that (shock and surprise), I am agnostic on DRM — don’t care or believe one way or another. What I do believe is that if you buy DRMed devices, like everywhere else in life, you get what you pay for.
Same goes for DRMed content. Under copyright law you are never buying the work itself, but a single restricted copy of the work. Nobody forced you to buy a regionally coded DVD. Nobody fooled you into thinking it wasn’t regionally coded. If you didn’t want the regional coding, you should have kept your money in your pocket. Enough people do that, the market will respond with the elimination of regional coding. And no-one breaks any laws.”
Bulls#!+. Absolute bulls#!+.
“Oh, and as for not buying DRM’d devices… it’s almost a certainty that if bypassing DRM actually becomes explicitly illegal, regardless of the intention behind the circumvention, it will be almost impossible to find any DRM-free stuff of significant quality within 5 to 10 years… consumers will simply have no choice.”
Exactly. Especially with crap like “trusted computing” coming in, DRM will be shoved in our face no matter what.
So I’m sorry whitelett. Your shield of ignorance is useless here.
@Eric
The iPod isn’t a DRM device, as it can also deal with unprotected and non-DRM formats.
I would say many of us spoke quite directly when Sony and others tried to put DRM on Audio CDs, and it was not only bypassed very quickly, (and caused the Root Kit debacle for Sony on other fronts) but the labels very quickly pulled away from that when they saw it really did hurt sales, so I agree, avoid the DRM content if that’s important to you. It does work. It helps to write the labels (I was one of many doing so) explaining to them *why* you chose to not make the purchase, when you were intending to.
I have a question for you as being a DRM-neutral you provide another perspective. Once you have bought that copy, are you allowed to transcode it to other devices for your own personal, private enjoyment or should that be subject to another fee? If you get non-DRM but it only plays on a certain device, and that device goes EOL, should you have the right to “rip” it and transcode it onto a still-functioning device to continue to enjoy your fully-purchased content without further cost to you (other than the transcoding?)
I say yes, as I am happy to pay for content, but once for a given expression of the content, which does *not* include the way it’s stored or played back where that detail is outside of my perception. (If I bought 5.1 surround and then you have a remastered set that is DTS HD-Audio, that’s new value, and can be for an additional fee (see director’s cuts, etc. fee for value))
RE: Dallas
“The iPod isn’t a DRM device, as it can also deal with unprotected and non-DRM formats.”
Yes, the iPod is a DRM device, because it has to deal with DRM. If it comes to a point where only DRM content is legally allowed, it won’t make a difference whether or not the iPod can play protected content. Furthermore, you are thinking of DRM in the current sense. I just mentioned treacherous (“trusted”) computing. Such a scheme could be applied to all computer-based devices, including the iPod. In fact, the iPod/iPad/iPhone application limitation scheme is in itself a form of trusted computing. Apple has control on the device. What I would consider a fully DRM-free device would be a computer without a Trusted Platform Module running GNU/Linux and fully supported hardware.
What I’m talking about is the threat of having DRM/content protection akin to the type utilized in the Amazon Kindle, on a much larger scale.
Important anti-circumvention point – don’t ban technology!
Michael, one thing about “aniti-circumvention” rules that you don’t really mention, but is *hugely* important, is the banning of technology.
By not mentioning this, what you are advocating is a US-style DMCA law, whereby people are “allowed” to circumvent digital restrictions for noninfringing uses (1201.a.1.B of the DMCA allows circumvention for non-infringing uses) but legally prohibited from owning, making, importing or selling the tools necessary to carry out this exemption.
It’s like saying “everyone has the right to drive, but nobody is allowed to own, make, lend, borrow, sell or import a car.”
By focusing only on non-infringing uses, it’s possible that we will be stuck with the “right” to do something, but be legally denied the tools necessary to exercise that right.
To be “acceptable”, any law *MUST NOT* restrict people’s right to own any type of technology, just because someone else *might* use it for circumvention.
Michael, some concerns
One of consequences of the DMCA lies with the way in which content owners have first call, so to speak, on the take take-down of digital content on the web. Take for instance the recent incident with the wrongful take-down of the Hitler Satire videos on YouTube. There was no judicial review, instead a mere letter from their lawyer caused all the content to be deleted. People, afraid of the legal costs to be incurred with the defense of their material, largely opted not to oppose the wrongful notices.
We certainly can’t rely on lawyers not write letters they know would never stand up in court.
I would certainly hope that any Canadian law required proper judicial oversight to take-down notices. Without it, this legislation will be ripe for the kinds of abuses that are prevalent in the USA. The burden to prove violation must be with content owners, it must not be on the public to defend itself.
I also worry that your statements about anti-circumvention leave the question about decryption technologies unanswered. Specifically, it should not be illegal for me to change the format of my digital media with the purpose of playing it on a player of my choice. This, of necessity requires that I be able to decrypt it. And so, it is not simply just a matter of being allowed to circumvent DRM locks.
The anti-circumvention issue is fundamentally about the right to make and distribute the tools to access locked media since, without the tools, any other rights people might have are moot.
Another matter Anti-circumvention rules bring distress to is that of interoperability. Interoperability is the ability of a software to be interacted with by another software. Without it, for instance, it would not be possible for an Apple Mac to view the Folders of a Windows machine. US courts have already taken decisions against software companies decrypting the data produced by the software of other companies because they judged the tools to do so were violated the DMCA.
Again, anti-circumvention rules that make illegal the crafting of software tools to access protected data are a disaster for interoperability.
As Karl Stevens said: don’t ban techonology