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The Daily Digital Lock Dissenter, Day 50: ACTRA

ACTRA, the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists, is the union of more than 22,000 professional performers working in English-language recorded media in Canada including TV, film, radio and digital media. I have disagreed in the past with several its positions on copyright reform, including one member calling mashups morally wrong and a six-part fix that would remove fair dealing reform. ACTRA’s 2009 national copyright consultation submission supported the use of digital locks, but also recognized the need for limits on the legal protections associated with them including the need to ensure that exceptions and limitations are not lost:

The choice of whether or not to use a TPM in connection with controlling access to a copyright protected work or which restricts copyright protected acts rests with rightsholders. Some will choose to use them, others will not. In accordance with the WIPO Treaties, rightsholders should have recourse against persons who deliberately circumvent their TPMs. By the same token, users who have legal access to a work should not be prevented by TPMs from availing themselves of statutory exceptions or limitations. Moreover, legal protection for TPMs should be subject to privacy, interoperability, and encryption research considerations, for example.

Previous Daily Digital Locks: Provincial Resource Centre for the Visually Impaired (PRCVI) BC, Canadian Consumer Initiative, Retail Council of Canada, Canadian Council of Archives, Canadian Teachers’ Federation, Canadian Federation of Students, Canadian Civil Liberties Association, Documentary Organization of Canada, Canadian Library Association, Council of Ministers of Education Canada, Business Coalition for Balanced Copyright, Canadian Association of Research Libraries, Canadian Historical Association, Canadian National Institute for the Blind, Canadian Bookseller Association, Canadian Home and School Federation, Film Studies Association of Canada, Canadian Bar Association, Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, Appropriation Art, Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Association of Newfoundland and Labrador Archives, Canadian Association of Law Libraries, Federation Etudiante Universitaire du Quebec, Canadian Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres, Canadian Association of Media Education Associations, Association of Canadian Community Colleges, Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, Association pour l’avancement des sciences et des techniques de la documentation (ASTED), Canadian Alliance of Student Associations, CIPPIC, Canadian Association of University Teachers, City of Vancouver Archives, Public Interest Advocacy Centre, Canadian Association of Educational Resource Centres for Alternate Format Materials, Canadian Political Science Association, British Columbia Teachers’ Federation, The Canadian Association for Open Source, Literary Press Group of Canada, Writers Guild of Canada, Association of Book Publishers of British Columbia, Association of Canadian Publishers, Campus Stores Canada, New Brunswick Public Library Service, Digital Security Coalition, Battlegoat Studios, Queen’s University, Canadian Urban Library Council, Union des consommateurs

One Comment

  1. …think of the artists!
    Not sure what the Average Consumer and Taxpayer Resource Association think it’s doing; “users who have legal access to a work should not be prevented by TPMs from availing themselves of statutory exceptions or limitations”? And bring privacy and interoperability into it as well? So selfish, don’t they ever think of the poor artists? Sheesh!