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Access Copyright Slams C-32

Access Copyright pulls no punches in its description of Bill C-32 in its submission on the national digital economy strategy:

Copyright laws need to give creators and consumers the tools they need to engage with trust and confidence in the digital marketplace. A copyright framework that is principles based, flexible enough to deal with new technologies and that balances the interests of creators, innovators, consumers and intermediaries is the foundation of a digital economic strategy that promotes creativity and creation, innovation, economic growth and competition.

Bill C-32 does none of this.

4 Comments

  1. Trust is the keyword. DRMs denote a certain mistrust from publishers in consumers. And since trust is a reciprocal relation, that will build a mistrust from consumers. Hence a not so healthy business relationship

  2. I wanted to point out a quote from this submission:
    ———————————–
    “The Digital Britain Final Report states, “The civil infringement of taking someone else’s intellectual property or passing it on to others through file-sharing without any compensating payment is, in plain English, wrong.”
    This is the type of message necessary from the Canadian government in its digital economy strategy. It
    is critical that the government signal in the legislation and educate its citizens about the harm that is
    done to Canadian content when consumers take it or pass it on without payment.”
    ———————————————————————————
    Critical to educate about the harm you say?? I think not. Some artists depend on file sharing to make a living. Why would anyone want to discourage that ? In fact I just downloaded an album creative commons from jamendo.com via Bit torrent. I liked the album and bought a few songs from the artist. Again, why do we want to discourage this? I’m certainly not against paying people for their works, but come on; don’t be ridiculous.

    Pointing the finger at file sharing in your digital economy strategy submission is kind of like blaming video cameras for pornography, then taking it a step further and asking the government to send a message against the distribution of video cameras because pornography is against your beliefs. *laughter*

  3. Creativity can’t be measured in dollars.
    While I am fully against people stealing others work I do have a number of issues with this submission.

    >”In Canada, as elsewhere, creativity and innovation thrive only when rewarded.”

    >”Without adequate compensation, creators cannot create.”

    Really? I spent a goodly time in the music business and I never met any one that was stopped from creating or innovating because they weren’t rewarded. As Pat Benatar famously said “If you want to be in this business you need to be willing to do it out in the streets for free.” Musicians create because they love music, not because they want to get rich fast. But I think these people are talking about book publishing. So does lack of compensation stop people from writing? There are about a billion bloggers, web page creators and others that would strongly disagree.

    >”For Canadian creators, many of whom struggle to get by on modest incomes, these revenues help pay for basic items essential for survival.”
    I don’t know about the book publishing industry but I do know that in the record and movie industries people are often struggling because they are being defrauded by the record companies and movie studios.

    http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100708/02510310122.shtml
    http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100712/23482610186.shtml

    >”For Canadian publishers, who work hard to keep their business going in an industry known for its low profitability, this
    income pays royalties and advances to creators, salaries to employees, overheads and inputs, and
    provides their businesses with the means to take risks and make investments as producers of Canadian
    content.”

    You know we pay million and millions to subsidize creating compelling Canadian TV programming and the results are obvious. The more money we have given. The less quality we have gotten. I don’t like to see artists work stolen. But trying to equate generating money with creativity is a non-starter.

  4. How does Captain Copyright give trust and confidence?
    Hypocrisy at its best! We remember that Access Copyright was behind Captain Copyright, their propaganda attempt:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Copyright

    Captain Copyright was a propaganda cartoon character created by Canada’s Access Copyright agency to educate children about the agency’s stance on copyright and copyright infringement.

    Not long after the launch of a website introducing the character, concerns were raised in a number of quarters that the character was not appropriate for educational uses, as it was produced by an entity with a commercial interest in the state of copyright law in Canada, and it is unclear that it is following copyright law itself.

    For example, it was reported that the Captain Copyright web page used two quotes about ISBNs from Wikipedia, but fails to follow the requirements of Wikipedia’s GNU FDL license by providing a direct link back to the source article or even acknowledging the GNU license as required by Wikipedia.[3] On further investigation, several more Wikipedia quotes were also found on the site; however, as of 5 June 2006, all the Wikipedia quotes were removed,[4] and Suzanne Dugard, manager of communications for Access Copyright, stated in an interview with canada.com that their inclusion had been “just an oversight”.[5]