Post Tagged with: "c-11"

Canadian Anti-Counterfeiting Group Calls For Graduated Response, More Restrictive Digital Lock Rules

The Canadian Anti-Counterfeiting Network is back in the news today with a refreshed version of its 2007 report that recommended new border measure powers, legal reforms, and a massive increase of public tax dollars for enforcement and education programs. Many of those same recommendations are back with claims that the government should pour millions into anti-counterfeiting activities, increase criminal penalties, expand seizure powers, and ratify the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.

On the Bill C-11 front, the CACN wants to gut many of the balancing provisions, including limiting the scope of the already overly restrictive digital lock exceptions, dropping the ISP notice-and-notice approach in favour of a graduated response that could lead to terminating Internet service for individual users, and removing the distinction between commercial and non-commercial infringement for statutory damages despite the fact that Canada is one of the few countries to have such damage provisions (which would pave the way for more Hurt Locker style lawsuits against individuals).

November 22, 2011 — 9 comments — News

Napster Drops Out of Canada, Warns Users Of Lost Purchases Due to Digital Locks

Napster Canada has advised its customers that it is shutting down operations effective December 16, 2011. The move comes weeks after Napster US became part of Rhapsody and users were assured that Canadians would be unaffected by the move. The company warns users to create backup copies of downloaded music […]

November 22, 2011 — 15 comments — News

Daily Digital Lock Dissenter, Day 35: Cdn Assoc of Edu Resource Centres for Alt Format Materials

The Canadian Association of Educational Resource Centres for Alternate Format Materials is an informal organization that promotes and facilitates the sharing of educational materials amongst eleven Educational Resource Centres across Canada. Each centre has a mandate to provide alternate format resources to students with perceptual disabilities who are enrolled in Kindergarten to Grade 12 and/or Post-Secondary education programs in their respective province or region. In its submission to the 2009 national copyright consultation, the CAER recommended:

Provide an exception that permits the circumvention of digital rights management and technological measures for purposes of creating an alternate format. Permit the use of circumvention devices for the purposes of preparing materials for alternate format production.

November 22, 2011 — 1 comment — News

The Daily Digital Lock Dissenter, Day 34: Public Interest Advocacy Centre

The Public Interest Advocacy Centre has been one of Canada’s leading consumer rights organizations, representing the public interest on consumer issues concerning telecommunications, energy, privacy, the information highway, electronic commerce, financial services, broadcasting, and competition law. PIAC submitted comments to the national copyright consultation that included the following on digital locks:

Consumers enjoy certain rights to use content without infringing copyright. The presence of technological measures doesn’t change that, and neither should anti-circumvention laws. Consumers must be able to circumvent technological measures, like DRM, providing that their access to the underlying content does not infringe copyright. These consumer rights fulfil important public policy goals, preserving consumer welfare, free speech, and innovation. The use of technological measures already threatens these values. Anti-circumvention laws shouldn’t statutorily undermine them as well.

November 21, 2011 — 1 comment — News

The Daily Digital Lock Dissenter, Day 33: City of Vancouver Archives

The City of Vancouver Archives is the oldest municipal archives in Canada. Included in their holdings are over 2,100 linear metres of textual records, 1.5 million photographs, 36,000 maps, plans and architectural drawings, and tens of thousands of digital records. The City of Vancouver Archives stated the following on digital locks in its copyright consultation submission:

Archives frequently need to undertake actions that could be considered infringing in order to preserve works, conserve a damaged work, and otherwise manage their holdings. This is particularly relevant in the case of digital works, where the inherent fragility of these works makes it regularly necessary to create back-up copies of works, to migrate works to new physical media because of hardware obsolescence, and to migrate works to new logical formats because of software obsolescence in order to prevent them from being lost or becoming inaccessible.

If a work is protected by encryption or other technical protection measures (TPMs) it may be necessary to circumvent these measures in order to be able to back-up, conserve or preserve a work. Circumvention of TPMs for these purposes should not be an infringement. Finally, it is not only archives and cultural institutions that need to undertake these actions, but all persons who own these types of works. Because of this, this exception should not be limited to only archives, libraries and museums – it should be a general exception.

November 18, 2011 — 4 comments — News