Post Tagged with: "bill C-60"

Bill C-60 and Private Copying

While Bill C-60 is history, a specific provision involving private copying merits a brief comment.  The bill's approach to anti-circumvention provisions was generally that circumvention of a TPM was only an infringement where the purpose was to infringe copyright.  There was, however, a notable exception for private copying.  In other words, if you defeated the encryption on a copy-control CD for the purposes of making a private copy, that act would constitute infringement, even if the copying itself was lawful.

The presumed rationale behind this exception was that the private copying levy is supposedly linked to actual copying.  Supporters of the provision argue that the levy can go up or down, depending on that copying.  Assuming a world of ubiquitous copy-controls (that actually work), the levy would decrease to zero since there would be no private copying at all.

 

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March 9, 2006 5 comments News

CBA’s The National on Copyright Reform

The National, the Canadian Bar Association's monthly magazine, features a lengthy article on copyright reform in the December 2005 issue (the full issue is available for download in PDF form; the relevant article is at pages 32-37).  The article contains several quotes from me on the dangers of anti-circumvention legislation.  […]

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December 21, 2005 Comments are Disabled News

Election Answers

For the past two weeks, I have featured columns focusing on law and technology issues within the context of the upcoming election.  Last week I focused on the Liberal record during its minority government and this week I posed "big picture" issues that need answering. I got my first answer […]

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December 16, 2005 1 comment News

Sony Commentaries

With the Sony rootkit story continuing to make news, there has been a raft of important commentary on the incident. Two of note from today – the New York Times runs an op-ed from Damian Kulash, lead singer of the group OK Go.  Kulash speaks out against DRM (noting the […]

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December 6, 2005 Comments are Disabled News

Mossberg on TPMs

Earlier this year I wrote a column on technological protection measures, arguing that we should be thinking about protection from TPMs, rather than protection for TPMs.  That view is echoed by several other professors in the In the Public Interest book, but has led to the responses from Graham Henderson […]

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October 20, 2005 Comments are Disabled News