Stop CDMCA

The End of Bill C-61

With every reason to believe that Canada will be in the midst of an election campaign by next week, Canwest runs a story on how an election call will kill Bill C-61. This raises at least two issues. First, C-61 may dead but copyright reform Canada is still very much […]

September 3, 2008 — Comments are Disabled — Stop CDMCA

The Canadian Copyfight 2.0

Last week, I delivered a talk to the Toronto Fair Copyright for Canada chapter that chronicled the Canadian copyfight and stressed how important it is for Canadians to speak out now on the Canadian DMCA. Audio and slides of that talk have been posted on Blip.tv and embedded below. A […]

July 30, 2008 — Comments are Disabled — Stop CDMCA

Liberal MP Marlene Jennings on C-61

Liberal MP Marlene Jennings, who serves as the party's deputy house leader, has been sending the following letter to concerned constituents about Bill C-61. The letter, which is the most substantive that I have seen, is posted in its entirety with permission.

Thank you for your letter concerning Bill C-61, An Act to amend the Copyright Act. Over the last few months I have made a concerted effort to better inform myself of all of the issues associated with copyright reform in Canada. In this vein, I joined the Intellectual Property (IP), Anti-Counterfeiting and Anti-Piracy Parliamentary Caucus. Through the meetings and consultations held by this group I came to the conclusion that reform of our copyright legislation will, I hope, have the following principles at its core:

1) Anti-circumvention measures and penalties must be linked to the efforts of those who violate copyright for commercial purposes, and not just the technology itself;

2) Provisions for flexible fair dealing. Fair dealing creates a limited number of exceptions, including private study, research, criticism, review and news reporting to charges of infringement.

3) It would also incorporate a fair and well defined 'notice and notice' system, which involves a notification from a copyright holder – often involving movies, software or music – claiming that a subscriber has made available or downloaded content without authorization on file sharing systems. The Internet Service Provider forwards the notification to the subscriber but takes no other action – it does not pass along the subscriber's personal information, remove the content from its system, or cancel the subscriber's service. It falls to the subscriber to remove the infringing content (if indeed it is infringing) voluntarily.

July 28, 2008 — Comments are Disabled — Stop CDMCA

Poilievre’s C-61 Response

I've posted responses to C-61 letters from MPs representing the major parties (Conservative, Liberal, NDP, Bloc) in the past, but several people forwarded the latest letter from Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre. Poilievre, an Ottawa-area MP, is best known for being the primary responder in the House of Commons to the election funding issue as well as for having had to apologize for remarks tied to the native school apology. Most of Poilievre's response simply repeats the usual Conservative lines on C-61, some of which are misleading (ie. he says "our reform will also permit consumers to copy music onto devices such as MP3 players, and copy books, newspapers, videos and photos into different formats. All of this is illegal under the current copyright legislation." It is inaccurate to state that all of this is illegal today since fair dealing may cover some of this copying and the video copying must be VHS, not DVD).

More problematic is the final paragraph that makes the case for C-61 to his constituents:

July 25, 2008 — Comments are Disabled — Stop CDMCA

Hamilton Chamber of Commerce Challenges National Chamber IP Approach

As Copyright Watch recently chronicled, local Chambers of Commerce have been singing from the same songbook as Industry Minister Jim Prentice in letters to the editor on Bill C-61. This is consistent with the national Chamber, which earlier this year formed a new lobby group to push for copyright reform and issued a press release supporting the introduction of the copyright bill – complete with local quotes – within 90 minutes of the tabling of the bill.

Notwithstanding these lobbying efforts, a crack in the coalition has emerged. At least one chamber of commerce has decided that it wants to look at the bill with an eye to the impact on small and medium sized businesses. The Hamilton Chamber of Commerce had adopted a resolution that it is hoping to get the Ontario and Canadian Chambers of Commerce to adopt seeking studies on the impact that IP legislation would have on SMEs. The concern is that SMEs would bear the burden of enforcement directed at businesses. The Hamilton chamber argues:

The estimates of piracy used in support of the Canadian and Ontario policies are unsupported by verifiable Canadian data;
Most small businesses are not aware of IP issues and would likely be at a disadvantage if action were ever taken against them on any alleged IP infringement;
Small businesses would have a disproportionate increase in expenses in complying with the costs that the policies would create;
In Canada, many large owners of IP have ‘over-reached’ the protection that IP has given them to the detriment of small businesses;
The proposed change in laws does nothing to favour Canadian businesses;
Many IP users are funded by tax dollars (i.e. education, libraries, archives) and an increase in enforcement is likely to increase their costs, which will, in turn, lead to higher taxes which disproportionately affects small business.

July 24, 2008 — Comments are Disabled — Stop CDMCA