Post Tagged with: "copyrightCopyright Microsite – Digital Rights ManagementCopyright Microsite – Canadian Copyright"

30 Days of DRM – Day 23: Education Institutions (Circumvention Rights)

Much like the Libraries, Archives, and Museums provisions discussed yesterday, Canadian educational institutions also benefit from some specific exceptions under the Copyright Act. These include:

Section 29.4(1), which permits copying a work to project in a classroom for education or training purposes
Section 29.4(2), which permits reproduction or telecommunications of works as required for examination purposes
Section 29.6, which permits educational institutions and their educators to make a copy of a news program to be shown to a class, while 29.7 covers any other program communicated to the public by telecommunication for a class presentation. These provisions are subject to several requirements including royalty payments and stringent record keeping.

All of these provisions face the prospect of being curtailed by DRM as the technology can be used to limit basic copying, reproduction, and copying of television broadcasts. Once anti-circumvention legislation is added to the mix, merely attempting to exercise those rights could constitute an infringement.

September 10, 2006 — Comments are Disabled — News

30 Days of DRM – Day 14: Private Copying (Circumvention Rights)

Several postings have noted that Bill C-60, the last failed attempt at copyright reform, sought to link anti-circumvention with copyright infringement by only making it an infringement to circumvent for the purposes of copyright infringement (thereby preserving user rights such as fair dealing). There was a notable exception, however – private copying. By excluding private copying, the bill made it an offence to circumvent a TPM (such as a copy-control on a CD) even if the purpose of the circumvention was to make a private copy. The rationale behind the exclusion was that the private copying system is designed to be compensatory, with the rate reflecting the amount of copying that is actually occurring in the marketplace. Supporters of the private copying exclusion argue that if copy-controls become pervasive, the amount of private copying will decline and so will the private copying levy.

This is pure fiction.

September 1, 2006 — 1 comment — News

30 Days of DRM – Day 08: Privacy (Circumvention Rights)

Today's post kicks off the heart of the 30 Days of DRM series – circumvention rights. Circumvention rights are necessary since everyone agrees that an absolute anti-circumvention provision (ie. circumvention prohibited in all circumstances) is unworkable. There are instances where such a prohibition would result in significant costs by precluding beneficial activities, creating "unintended consequences", and lead to significant harm to the public. Indeed, the DMCA itself includes several narrow exceptions to the general anti-circumvention rule.

The approach in Bill C-60 was to limit (the government believed eliminate) the need for circumvention rights by creating a direct link between circumvention and copyright. Bill C-60 only made it an offence to circumvent a technological measure for the purposes of copyright infringement. In other words, if you had another purpose – for example, protecting your personal privacy – the anti-circumvention provision would not be triggered.

If the new copyright bill adopts a U.S. style approach, then a crucial part of the discussion will be whether the government has identified all the necessary rights to limit the harms associated with anti-circumvention legislation. While these rights might be characterized by some as exceptions, I think they are more appropriately viewed as circumvention rights, analogous to the Supreme Court of Canada's emphasis on user rights.

Privacy protection is an obvious example of a circumvention right.

August 26, 2006 — 1 comment — News

30 Days of DRM – Day 07: DRM-Free Library Deposits (Public Protection)

Legal deposit, first established in France in 1587, is a commonly used to preserve national heritage by mandating the collection of all published works. The National Library administered legal deposit in Canada from 1953 until 2004, when responsibility was assumed by the Library and Archives Canada. The LAC describes the […]

August 25, 2006 — 2 comments — News