Michael Geist

I need to begin day one with a couple of introductory issues for those new to copyright reform.  When I speak of a Canadian DMCA, I am focused chiefly on anti-circumvention legislation.  The forthcoming bill will likely contain many other provisions (few of which will address the needs of users and many creators) but it is the anti-circumvention provisions that will likely prove to be the most contentious.

So what are anti-circumvention provisions?  They are provisions that grant legal protection to technological protection measures (TPMs).  In plainer English, traditional copyright law grants creators a basket of exclusive rights in their work.  TPMs or digital locks (such as anti-copying technologies on CDs) effectively provide a second layer of protection by making it difficult for most people to copy works in digital format.  Anti-circumvention legislation creates a third layer of protection by making it an infringement to simply pick or break the digital lock (in fact, it even goes further by making it an infringement to make available tools or devices that can be used to pick the digital lock).  Under the DMCA, it is an infringement to circumvent a TPM even if the intended use of the underlying work would not constitute traditional copyright infringement.

This broad legal protection for TPMs has raised numerous issues over the past eight years.